AI for Animals 2025 Bay Area Retrospective

By Constance Li, AI for Animals @ 2025-04-05T19:58 (+129)

Our Mission: To build a multidisciplinary field around using technology—especially AI—to improve the lives of nonhumans now and in the future. 

Overview

Background

This hybrid conference had nearly 550 participants and took place March 1-2, 2025 at UC Berkeley. It was organized by AI for Animals for $74k by volunteer core organizers Constance Li, Sankalpa Ghose, and Santeri Tani. 

This conference has evolved since 2023:

We have been quickly expanding this conference in order to prepare those that are working toward the reduction of nonhuman suffering to adapt to the drastic and rapid changes that AI will bring. 

Luckily, it seems like it has been working! 

This year, many animal advocacy organizations attended (mostly smaller and younger ones) as well as newly formed groups focused on digital minds and funders who spanned both of these spaces. We also had more diversity of speakers and attendees which included economists, AI researchers, investors, tech companies, journalists, animal welfare researchers, and more. This was done through strategic targeted outreach and a bigger team of volunteers. 

Outcomes

On our feedback survey, which had 85 total responses (mainly from in-person attendees), people reported an average of 7 new connections (defined as someone they would feel comfortable reaching out to for a favor like reviewing a blog post) and of those new connections, an average of 3 that might be impactful (defined as someone who would accelerate their path to impact by connecting them to a job opportunity or collaborating on a project). 

 

 

See some quotes from our attendees about highlight (and lowlights) of the conference.

 

 

According to Swapcard, there were 2,100 total contacts made and 3,222 messages exchanged.

89% of respondents thought that participating in the conference was more impactful than how they would have otherwise spent their time.

The Event(s)

Overview: Our conference brought together leading thinkers at the intersection of artificial intelligence and animal welfare, featuring 81 unique sessions including keynote presentations, panels, workshops, and interactive meetups. 

A selection of the sessions were recorded and are available on on our YouTube channel. Click ▶️ beside their names below  to watch.

Speaking Sessions

Featured Talks

Lightning Talks

Interactive Sessions

Unconferences

Meetups

Precision Livestock Farming, Interspecies Communication, AI Benchmarking, Animal Advocacy, Alternative Proteins, Digital Minds, Veterinary Medicine
 

Mapping Workshops

Precision Livestock Farming, Interspecies Communication
 

Office Hours 

David Pearce, Constance Li, Oscar Horta, Soenke Ziesche, Rob Long and Kathleen Finlinson, Dustin Crummett and Daniela Waldhorn, Jeff Sebo – The Moral Circle Book Reading

 

Topic Distribution

The following breakdown illustrates how our conference programming was split between different topics.

 

Satellite Events

Recognizing the significant effort required for attendees to travel, we strategically scheduled this conference one week after EAG. We curated a full lineup of satellite events throughout the interim week, providing participants with valuable work and social opportunities to maximize their time with like-minded individuals in the area.

 

Behind the Scenes

For even more details, see this accompanying appendix.

Personnel

AI for Animals Team:

Volunteer Team Leads:

Thanks to everyone who made the conference run smoothly!

Do the shirts look familiar?

Handbooks

We borrowed a lot of what has historically worked from EAG, including many document templates, and adapted it to our needs. It is a great format and we wanted to iterate, not reinvent the wheel. See our comprehensive guides for attendees and volunteers.

Finances

The total cost for the conference was approximately $74k for 250 in-person attendees over 2 days along with related expenses in the week leading up to the conference. While this represents a significant increase from our previous conference ($~6k for ~60 in-person attendees over 3 days), we believe the expanded investment delivered substantially higher quality. We charged registration fees ranging from $75 - $800 depending on level of financial need, generating ~$23k in revenue.

See itemized breakdown here.

Here are explainers for some of the major components of our budget:

Accommodations

Professional Networking Platform

Contractor Compensation

Venue Upgrade

More Meals

Outreach

We implemented a proactive speaker recruitment strategy beginning 6+ months before the conference. This approach featured personalized outreach and leveraged our existing networks, enabling us to secure high-profile speakers including Peter Singer, David Pearce, and Cass Sunstein well in advance.

Our promotion strategy centered on tailored invitations to special guests who could attract key audience segments that were stakeholders in this field. These invitations included:

This strategy was based on the hypothesis that reaching a critical mass of diverse, notable guests would create a snowball effect, attracting additional prominent and relevant participants. We believe a significant portion of the conference's impact stemmed from connecting previously separate communities, including:

We also did the usual promotional avenues like inviting past attendees, including it in our newsletter, making it the homepage of our website, posting on the EA/FAST Forums, posting on Hive and other Slack workspaces, and starting our Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Bluesky, and X accounts and posting there. Emma wrote this report analyzing the social media strategy she used.

One unique promotion we did was a sneak peak webinar with 3 speakers on a range of topics that would be discussed at the conference. 

We also gave out lots of discount codes for people who went to EAG Bay Area or who participated in the Code4Compassion Hackathon. 

Event Reflection

What Went Well

Areas for Improvement

Nostalgia Note

One beloved element we brought back from our first conference: giant philosopher heads!

Get Involved

We're building a global community at the intersection of nonhuman welfare and artificial intelligence, and there are many ways to contribute to this growing field:

Join Our Next Events

Ways to Participate

Contact Information

We look forward to continuing this important work together and welcome your participation in whatever capacity suits your interests and availability.

Elliot Billingsley @ 2025-04-09T17:50 (+4)

Congratulations on the event! Great to see this conversation expand. And great report for ops nerds  


I’m curious about the accommodation you provided. The itemized breakdown notes that it was mostly airbnbs. Was it self-booked and compensated or centrally organized? Was taking out a block of rooms at a hotel or hostel considered?

Constance Li @ 2025-04-09T20:44 (+4)

Glad that it was interesting for op-sy people! 

Accommodations: We self booked the airbnbs and had people fill out a form about accommodation preferences (comfort with sleeping in common spaces, sharing rooms with same/opposite gender, light/sound sensitivity). Then we assigned houses to everyone and set up a whatsapp chat for each of the houses to communicate with one another. One person was the designated housing manager who made sure each house had the things it needed and the relevant airbnb checkin/out info was posted to each whatsapp. We didn't charge anything for housing because the ops side of collecting money for each person corresponding to how long they stayed seemed like too much overhead. Instead of reimbursing people for travel support (which many conferences do), we just offered a free registration and spot in the shared accommodations instead, making it much cleaner from an expense tracking perspective. 

I'll share the form privately with you via a DM on the forum!

CB🔸 @ 2025-04-08T07:06 (+4)

So great to see progress on this topic! Thanks for your inspiring work.

SummaryBot @ 2025-04-07T14:55 (+1)

Executive summary: The 2025 AI for Animals Bay Area conference successfully expanded its scope and impact, connecting a multidisciplinary community around using AI to improve nonhuman welfare, with high-profile speakers, diverse sessions, and strong attendee engagement highlighting its growing influence in the field.

Key points:

  1. The third annual AI for Animals conference drew ~550 participants and featured 81 sessions across panels, workshops, and unconferences, supported by a volunteer-led team and a $74k budget.
  2. Attendees averaged 7 new connections and 3 potentially high-impact ones; 89% rated the event as more valuable than alternative uses of their time.
  3. The event brought together diverse stakeholders—AI researchers, ethicists, NGOs, digital minds researchers, and funders—through strategic outreach and partnerships, especially aligning with the EA Global Bay Area schedule.
  4. Session highlights included talks by Peter Singer, Cass Sunstein, and David Pearce, as well as panels on AI sentience, digital minds, legal personhood, and precision livestock farming.
  5. Notable innovations included a custom unconference system integrated with Swapcard, expanded accommodations, professional recordings, and satellite events.
  6. Organizers identified areas for improvement such as clearer knowledge level indicators, earlier agenda release, and better-structured meetups and workshops.

 

 

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