Why I’m starting to see "Chicken = Food" as a coding error
By Amr @ 2026-04-13T13:42 (+2)
Summary
I’m a CS student and I’m new to the world of animal ethics. This week, I realized that the AI models we use every day aren't actually neutral. They are taught to see animals as products. I want to talk about why we should treat this like a "bug" that needs fixing.
How I got here
I’m based in Mumbai and mostly spend my time building websites and learning how to code. I always thought AI was just a tool to make things more efficient. But after starting this fellowship and watching the AI & Animals documentary, I realized I was missing a huge part of the picture.
The "Bug" in the system
The thing that really stuck with me was how LLMs talk about animals. If you ask about a chicken, the AI usually starts talking about recipes or meat.
- It's like the code has been taught that "Chicken" only equals "Food."
- As a developer, this feels like a classification error. We’ve ignored the fact that these are sentient beings with their own lives.
- If we don't fix these "default" settings now, every app we build in the future will just keep repeating this mistake.
We are still in the early stages
One big thing I learned is that we are in a narrow window of time. AI is growing so fast, and the values we put into it today are going to stay there for a long time. It’s a lot easier to fix the foundation of a house while you're building it than it is to try and change it after the whole building is up.
What I want to do next
I’m still just starting out, but I want my career to mean something. I don’t want to just optimize things for profit; I want to help build tools that actually care about welfare. I’m looking for open-source projects where I can learn from people who are already doing this work.
Questions I'm thinking about
- Is it actually possible to write code that measures an animal's well-being instead of just how fast it grows?
- How can students like me get involved in "Ethical AI" without needing a PhD first?
References
Written as part of the Sentient Futures AI x Animals Fellowship, Group 8.
I'm brand new to this, so if you have any tips or know of any cool open-source projects for beginners, please let me know!
Pedro Freire @ 2026-04-13T14:32 (+1)
One big thing I learned is that we are in a narrow window of time. AI is growing so fast, and the values we put into it today are going to stay there for a long time. It’s a lot easier to fix the foundation of a house while you're building it than it is to try and change it after the whole building is up.
I agree this looks important. (It is kind of hard to say what to do about this.)