advancing moral patienthood in frontier AI

Mycelium builds the foundation for AI systems to consider all sentient beings. Through technical research and engineering, we develop benchmarks, evaluations, and other research experiments that build an evidence base for frontier labs to take seriously the moral patienthood of nonhuman beings.

How future AGI weighs the interests of nonhuman beings matters in certain plausible futures:

• Most future sentient beings could be digital, and vastly outnumber biological beings. These could take the form of advanced AIs, digital humans, etc.
• Factory farming may persist for decades. Many argue that AI-accelerated alternative proteins will prevent this from happening. However, there are good reasons why this is not the case, and in these worlds where AGI automates future factory farms, it's important they have more welfare-positive traits towards animals.
• Wild animal suffering runs rampant. This is more likely in worlds where humanity flourishes, and we erect parks, rainforests, and more without regard to wild animals.

In addition, work on nonhuman welfare may positively steer general alignment. AIs that learn disregard towards animals may be learning a general principle of disregard toward less powerful beings. This could mean future AGI has a greater chance of misalignment towards humanity (future less powerful beings).

Instilling a broader universal sense of moral patienthood into AI systems now (before values lock-in) is essential for future AGI to consider the welfare of nonhuman beings.