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How AI is helping - and harming - animals

Hosted by the Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience

In-person and online public event (LSE campus, venue tbc to ticketholders)

Speakers

Professor Kristin Andrews

Professor Jonathan Birch

Dr Leonie Bossert

Jane Lawton

Dr Jeff Sebo

Chair

Professor Roman Frigg

Join us to learn more about the Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience, a new LSE initiative committed to making sure technological change works for - rather than against - the interests of other species.

Would you trust a device that claimed to translate your dog or cat's emotions into English? Would you be OK with completely automated, human-free farming? What if you had a driverless car that was indifferent to hitting birds and foxes? AI is transforming the lives of animals at speed, but these huge impacts are going unnoticed and unregulated. Some of the changes could transform our relationships with our fellow creatures for the better, whereas others could make existing animal welfare problems much worse and even more deeply entrenched. How can we curb the risks and take the opportunities?

Meet our speakers and chair

Kristin Andrews (@KristinAndrewz) is Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center, York Research Chair in Animal Minds and Professor of Philosophy at York University (Toronto), and CIFAR Fellow in the Future Flourishing program. She is on the board of directors of the Borneo Orangutan Society Canada, a member of the College of the Royal Society of Canada, and the author of several books on social minds, animal minds, and ethics.

Jonathan Birch (@birchlse) is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the new Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience at LSE. In 2021, he led a "Review of the Evidence of Sentience in Cephalopod Molluscs and Decapod Crustaceans" that led to invertebrate animals including octopuses, crabs and lobsters being included in the UK government's Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act. In 2024, he published The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI, an Open Access book.

Leonie Bossert works on Environmental, Animal, AI, and Conservation Ethics at the University of Vienna. Leonie's research focuses on the intersection of technology and environmental ethics, the ethics of life science, theories of interspecies and intergenerational justice, as the ethics of sustainable development, including research on sustainable AI.

Jane Lawton is Managing Director of the Earth Species Project, an initiative to decode animal communication using AI. She has more than 30 years of international experience working with leading organizations focused on sustainable development and nature conservation.

Jeff Sebo (@jeffrsebo) is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Director of the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy, and Co-Director of the Wild Animal Welfare Program at New York University.

Roman Frigg is Professor of Philosophy and Head of Department at LSE. He has won the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation's Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award and is a permanent visiting professor in the Munich Centre for Mathematical Philosophy of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich.

More about this event

Join us on campus or register to watch the event online at LSE Live. LSE Live is the home for our live streams, allowing you to tune in and join the global debate at LSE, wherever you are in the world. If you can't attend live, a video will be made available shortly afterwards on LSE's YouTube channel.

The Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience at LSE Philosophy (@LSEPhilosophy) is dedicated to improving the lives of non-human animals through interdisciplinary, impact-oriented research across the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities.

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This public event is free and open to all. This event will be a hybrid event, with an in-person audience and an online audience.

For the in person event: You can request one ticket via the online ticket request form, which will open after 12noon on Monday 8 September. The ticket line will stay open until all tickets have been allocated. 

For the online event: Registration for this event will open in early September.

For any queries email events@lse.ac.uk.

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