Jonathan Birch: The Edge of Sentience

Species Unite

“I mean, organoids in general are very exciting replacements for animal research because you could model a kidney or a liver or a or a heart without taking them from a real animal, which it’s very important to support that kind of thing. But yes, when it's the brain, there's this fear that you might end up creating another sentient being. And then and then you've just replaced one sentient being with another and maybe not made things better at all. So it seems really, really important to guard against that risk.” – Jonathan Birch

Dr. Jonathan Birch is a professor of philosophy at the London School of Economics and is Principal Investigator on the “Foundations of Animal Sentience” project, a European Union-funded project to develop better methods for studying the feelings of animals and new ways of using the science of animal minds to improve animal welfare policies and laws. In 2021, he led a review for the UK government that shaped the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022. In 2022-23, he was part of a working group that investigated the question of sentience in AI.

Jonathan is here today to talk about his most recent book, The Edge of Sentience Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI.

The Edge of Sentience is an open access book published under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, meaning it can be distributed for free in any format.