August 6, 2025 • 59 mins
What separates creatures who feel from those who don't? Where exactly does consciousness begin, and what responsibilities do we have toward beings capable of suffering?
In this episode, we speak to Professor Jonathan Birch, director of the Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience at the London School of Economics. Through groundbreaking research, Birch reveals surprising evidence that insects—creatures with brains smaller than pinheads—demonstrate behaviors suggesting they experience pleasure and play. Bees roll balls without reward, seemingly for fun, while fruit flies repeatedly ride miniature carousels purely for enjoyment.
This conversation ventures into unexpected territory, from the policy implications of recognizing sentience in octopuses and crabs to the heartbreaking ethical dilemmas surrounding human patients with brain injuries. Birch shares his work leading a government review that extended legal protection to invertebrates previously excluded from animal welfare laws, while questioning medical practices that make stark distinctions between conscious and unconscious states when evidence suggests a more complex reality.
Perhaps most provocative is the exploration of artificial intelligence and consciousness. Are we creating systems that merely mimic sentience perfectly, or could they develop genuine experiences? As Birch explains, we might have more in common with a bee than with even the most sophisticated AI—despite the latter's ability to converse fluently.
Throughout this fascinating discussion, one principle emerges consistently: when uncertainty exists about consciousness, we should err on the side of caution. This precautionary approach has profound implications for how we farm, conduct research, practice medicine, and develop technology. Join us for a mind-expanding journey that will transform how you see the creatures sharing our world—and perhaps even what it means to be conscious.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Curious Talks with Leif and Elfie.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Each episode we're unpacking the brains of experts
from around the universe.
Welcome to Leif and Elfie'sCurious Talks.
Today we're speaking toprofessor and author Jonathan
Birch, who's an associateprofessor at London School of
Economics and Political Science.
We'll discuss his book, theEdge of Sentience, as well as
his work at the university, andcover some sensitive life and
(00:27):
death topics, as well as animalwelfare, so listeners may want
to be aware that those topicsare coming up.
Welcome to the show, jonathan.
It's lovely to have you on.
So we came across you throughyour book the Edge of Sentience
and it was really interesting tome because it covers so many
different areas of sentience,from animals, human to AI, so
(00:49):
there's a broad spectrum ofthings to talk about today.
But I thought just setting thescene first, could you tell me a
little bit about you and howyou got involved in this field?
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Well, I'm a professor of philosophy at the London
School of Economics.
I'm director of the JeremyCollar Centre for Animal
Sentience, so sentience is apretty huge part of what I do.
I'm interested in the feelingsof animals.
I'm interested in other caseswhere people debate whether
something feels anything or not,and I'm interested in what this
(01:23):
all means ethically for how welive and what it means for
policy how governments makedecisions about things like
animal welfare.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
And could you just for the listeners, set out, if
it's not too big a topic, whatis sentience?
What do you mean by that?
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Well, I think we all ask questions like do octopuses
feel pain or do insects feelpain?
And then I think when we askquestions like that, we start
thinking about them and we startto realize that pain might be
slightly too narrow a concepthere, because it's not the only
thing that matters.
(02:00):
It's not entirely a question ofdo they feel pain, but other
negative mental states alsomatter, like anxiety and
frustration and boredom, andalso the positive side of mental
life matters as well, stateslike joy and excitement and
comfort.
We want animals to have allthose positive things and to not
(02:20):
have any of those negativethings, and so I think sentience
then becomes a very usefulconcept for capturing all of
that.
It's the whole of an animal'smental life, including the
positive and the negative.
It's the capacity to havefeelings with a positive or a
negative quality and you werepart of some.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Were you a consultant on the decision about
cephalopods, which they're sortof like octopi squid, things
like octopuses, squid cuttlefishthese are all cephalopods okay
or cephalopods, and uh, crabs,lobsters, shrimps, crayfish
these are all decapodcrustaceans, just means
(03:03):
10-legged crustaceans.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
And yeah, I led a review for the government in
2021 that informed the AnimalWelfare Sentience Act of 2022
that extended some protection tothese animals for the first
time.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
And when we talk about sentience, are we also
talking about intelligence?
Because have we not known for awhile that octopuses are quite
intelligent, because they cansolve puzzles and do various
things, create actually, lots ofcreatures can create tools.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
They can open jars.
Yeah, open jars escape fromplaces open jars, yeah, escape
from um places used used tools.
As you say, there's octopusesthat carry around the two halves
of a coconut as a kind ofportable shelter to defend
against predators.
Yeah, so they are.
They are undeniably veryintelligent.
Intelligence and sentience aredifferent things in that they
(04:00):
could come apart so you couldhave a system that was very
intelligent but that had nofeelings like pain or pleasure
at all and I think we're seeingexamples of that quite plausibly
with ai systems at the moment.
And you could also havesomething that is sentient
without being particularlyintelligent.
(04:20):
So when we think about shrimps,for, for example, they're not
opening jars, they're notcarrying little coconuts around
with them, so they're notimpressing us with their
intelligence.
And it's probably fair to saythat when an animal is highly
intelligent, there are more waysin which it can show its
sentience to us, so this can beseen more easily.
(04:40):
But I think you could well haveanimals that are not
particularly intelligent, butthey're still sentient and we
still need to care about the waywe treat them it's a really
good point actually that justbecause we don't see it, I think
we're quite with us.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Humans are quite human centric in that.
Unless you show us, we justdon't really believe things.
So I think that's a really goodpoint around just because we
don't see something looking likeit's emotional or intelligent.
I mean it's not, and do youhave some interesting facts for
the listeners in terms of thingsthat might be surprisingly
(05:15):
sentient?
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Well, insects have surprised me a lot.
I think, with bees inparticular, we are seeing quite
extraordinary things,particularly on the learning
side.
So you could say this is moreintelligence than sentience.
But the things like learning topull strings to get rewards,
(05:38):
learning to roll balls intoholes to get rewards- Bees are
doing it.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Is that them playing into holes to get rewards Bees
are doing?
Is that them playing?
Because I think I read aboutthat or something around that
they're able to play or theyenjoy playing.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Well, this was then the next step.
Yes, so there were thesestudies showing that they will
roll balls into holes to getsugar solution, which is in
their own interests, obviously.
But then the researchersthought well, what happens when
you take away the sugar solutionand there's no reward at all?
All there is is these ballsthat they can roll around if
(06:12):
they want, and some of them willstill do it.
Some of them find itintrinsically rewarding to roll
the balls, particularly ifthey're young, particularly if
they're male, and we don't knowwhy they do this.
But it's adding to a picturethat there's more than just
intelligence here.
There's also the capacity toenjoy things, that there are
signs of what, in other animals,we would call play.
(06:33):
This isn't not just bees aswell, there was a study recently
with fruit flies, which aremuch smaller than bees and
giving them, in their enclosure,little carousels that they
could ride on, and again showingthat, well, some of them avoid
them, as you might expect, butsome of them really seem to
(06:54):
enjoy the experience of ridinground and round and round, and
they'll do it over and overagain, even when there's no
other reward.
It seems to be the experienceitself of the rotating motion
that keeps them coming back well, that's fascinating, because do
you believe that?
Speaker 2 (07:13):
you sort of tend to believe?
I tend to believe that from anevolutionary standpoint, there
are things we enjoy becausethey're productive to our
species, like procreation oreating or whatever.
But why would spinning on acarousel, do you think, be
particularly like useful orplaying in this way?
Speaker 3 (07:31):
well, if you think about it, in the human case,
there's a lot of stuff that weenjoy that is not directly about
food or reproduction, and a lotof it is about training our
capabilities, trying out ourskills, learning skills,
learning how to work with othersin a team, and so, in a way,
(07:51):
there's no great mystery aboutwhy those things would evolve,
because it's incredibly usefulto be able to develop motor
skills and work in a team andcontrol your environment, and so
, in our own case, we don't findit surprising, and something
like that is going on in thebees and the flies as well.
It's there's some evolutionarybenefit there, but they don't
(08:12):
all do it.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
It's only some of them that really enjoy the, the
balls and the carousels I guessthat's interesting, because as
humans we don't all enjoy thesame hobbies or have the same
responses to things.
Um, and it sounds like the play, there's also this pleasure
aspect, which is pleasure.
Does that come under sentience?
Speaker 3 (08:32):
of course.
Yeah, it's the positive side ofmental life and, yeah, we.
What we've had consistently instudies of animal minds is that
animals vary just as much as wedo as individuals.
You don't see them roboticallyall behaving the same way.
In any study, really, you'realways looking at the overall
(08:53):
statistics from lots and lots ofindividual differences and
sometimes you see thesedifferent groups emerging and
that's very clear in the fliesthat you get some that seek out
the carousel and when you tracktheir movement over time it's
just all on the carousel, a bitlike how a rat or mouse might
(09:14):
choose to roll around on thewheel all the time, and others
they just never go there, theyavoid.
It's the one bit of the, theenclosure they just always avoid
.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
So this work that you led to look at policy for
cephalopods, what was thepurpose of that, what was the
sort of problem you were lookingto solve or to research, and
what was the outcome of that?
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Well, that all resulted indirectly from Brexit,
because the UK left theeuropean union left the lisbon
treaty, which has a line in itabout the need to respect
animals as sentient beings, aline that you could argue, never
did very much, but thegovernment declined to import
that into uk law and it led tosome bad press around.
(10:04):
Politicians don't think animalsfeel pain, and so they committed
to introducing new legislationthat would put respect for
animal sentience back into UKlaw, and they said this will do
better than the old treatybecause it will create a duty on
policymakers to consider theanimal welfare consequences of
(10:24):
their decisions.
And that's what we have now,and to me it is a positive step.
It's a piece of legislationthat I quite like, and it could
be quite powerful potentially.
Of course, when you're draftinga law like that, you've got to
say something about its scope.
Which animals is it going toapply to?
Are you just talking about catsand dogs?
Are you talking about allanimals, even if they're
(10:47):
microscopic or what?
And they produced a draft of itthat extended to all
vertebrates, which is allanimals with a backbone, and
then got another round of badpress because people are saying
what about octopuses?
I've actually heard aboutoctopuses, and so in that
context they then commissionedthis review that I led about the
(11:08):
evidence of sentience ininvertebrate animals, animals
without a backbone.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Did you come across research at that time,
conducting the review, thatshocked you, or was it a case of
trying to make a case for whatyou already felt was the right
approach?
Speaker 3 (11:30):
there's shock, shock, I guess some of it is quite
shocking.
Actually, some of the researchin this area, obviously some of
it, you know, in the interest oftrying to find out whether
these animals feel pain,researchers end up doing things
that that inflict pain.
So there's studies, for example, that ask what happens if a
crab or a lobster is droppedinto a pan of boiling water and
(11:52):
you might hope that they dieinstantly.
But they absolutely don't dieinstantly and the researchers
were measuring the electricalactivity in the nervous system
for about two minutes after theygo in.
There's just this storm of ofnervous system activity.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
So some of the findings there are quite
harrowing because they show youthat pretty common practices are
actually quite brutal to theanimals I think also um, did you
kind of look at like animalagriculture and farming, because
I think farm animals havedifferent regulations than some
(12:31):
domestic animals around how theycan be treated.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
UK animal welfare law is quite messy at the moment.
It needs sorting out.
You could argue quite messy atthe moment, needs sorting out.
You could argue.
There's the animal welfare actfrom 2006.
That covers technically allanimals, including in farms.
But then you know, theregulation of animal farming is
(12:58):
often much more relaxed, really.
One one could argue and thingshappen in farming contexts that
if they happened in any othercontext would be considered
completely unacceptable.
So our report obviously wasabout invertebrates specifically
, but there we were cautioningagainst things like octopus
(13:21):
farming, where you've gotcompanies that want to take
these highly intelligent animals.
They're not only highlyintelligent, not only sentient,
but also predators and they'revery soft-skinned and they don't
like other octopuses typically.
So you put them in closeproximity with each other and
they're very likely to attackand hurt each other.
(13:42):
So they're really reallyunsuitable for that kind of
farming.
And there's companies thatstill want to do this and we
advised in the report that thatthat should just be banned.
That shouldn't happen at alland we've seen some uh bans on
this in some us states.
Actually in washington stateand now california, they they
(14:06):
banned farming octopuses.
So there's lots of otherproblems in farming as well, but
that's.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
That's a positive step, I think yeah, um, I'm
interested although it's a veryhard topic to talk about the
chapter in your book aroundhuman treatment and sentience
and I appreciate this might bequite triggering for some people
, but there are some parts of itI found really confronting
(14:37):
around people receivingtreatment, who are yeah, and how
treatment is sometimeswithdrawn.
I found that quite shocking.
But also I think it's quitetopical at the moment with the
assisted dying bill goingthrough parliament yeah I
wondered if we could perhaps ofcourse, as you say, it's a book
(14:58):
about
Speaker 3 (14:58):
it's a book about a lot of various issues issues,
yeah, undoubtedly, and coversthe animal cases, but also human
cases at the edge of sentienceas well, where there's this very
long history, with animals andhumans as well, of people
dismissing the possibility ofsentience when actually they
(15:20):
shouldn't.
And we see this a lot withpatients who are unresponsive
following brain injury, thatthere's this long and quite dark
history in medicine ofdismissing them as just
obviously feeling nothing.
And there was this termvegetative state, which for a
long time a few decades ago, wasvery commonly used to describe
(15:41):
such patients.
And then then there was thisterm minimally conscious state
that was introduced for some ofthem, and so for a while you
have vegetative and you hadminimally conscious, and the
clinicians were asked to sortthe patients into one category
or the other, which was quiteproblematic really, I think.
And now there's some pushtowards getting rid of that term
(16:05):
vegetative state, and that'ssomething I was called for.
I think that that term reallyhas no place in modern medicine,
because what we're finding isthat many of those patients who
were written off as vegetative,when clinicians look more
closely, there are signs of someresidual conscious experience
there and quite ingenioustechniques have been developed.
(16:29):
But look for some of thosesigns in cases where there might
be blues to continuingexperience in the brain activity
that are not manifestedoutwardly in any visible
behavior what kind of techniquesmight they be?
there's a, really there's afamous one, where you put the
patient in a fmri scanner andyou ask them questions and you
(16:53):
say if the answer is yes,imagine playing tennis, and if
the answer is no, imaginewalking around your house.
And these imagination taskslight up very different areas of
the brain in normal, healthypeople, and so they can be used
to answer the question fromwithin the machine.
(17:13):
And what the researchers foundwas that healthy people can do
this, and also some of thosepatients who were regarded as
vegetative can also do this.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
They can answer the questions so they can hear, they
can process, they just can't umoutwardly present themselves
just can't speak.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Yeah, yeah, it sounds like with technology now you'd
be.
Well, hopefully you were.
If you were in that position,then you could have technology
that can read your mind to seeif it is lighting up.
Is that right, or?
Speaker 3 (17:51):
well, I mean, that's the dream, obviously, but we're
some way away from that now okayum.
So with many of these patients,it's very, very difficult to get
them into an fmri machine inthe first place, particularly in
the the acute phase in theweeks following the brain injury
, where the last thing you wantto be doing is moving them into
a scanner like that.
So it's led to a lot ofexcitement around trying to
(18:13):
develop techniques that can beused in the intensive care unit
that don't require fMRI.
That can be done withelectrodes on the skull, mri.
That can be done withelectrodes on the skull, what's
called EEG and it's a veryimportant area of research, I
think, but it hasn't yet yieldedthe kind of thing you're
(18:33):
describing, where we have reallyreliable tests.
What we get is quite noisy, youknow, quite hard to interpret
responses.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Are we saying at the moment it's down to the
clinician's best guess Iwouldn't call it a guess.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
They do have very elaborate protocols they're
supposed to go through, butyou're trying to check to see if
there's any signs of movement,and so on.
Um, the thing is, though, Imean the very hard judgment
calls in these cases, andtypically they don't have any
access to any of that fMRI datathat might reveal hidden signs,
(19:14):
and so these judgments are very,very uncertain, very error
prone, and I really think weneed to get away from the very
sharp division between minimallyconscious and vegetative,
because the idea that you canjust make that judgment call is
just wrong.
It's too uncertain, and we needto err on the side of caution
(19:37):
in these cases and recognizethere's a realistic possibility
of some continuing experience inin these patients generally and
would you say then that sort ofmessage has is filtering
through, people are taking thaton board, um, rather than having
such distinct categorization?
(19:59):
there's some movement in theright direction.
Uh, I think this this olddistinction between vegetative
and minimally conscious.
In each iteration of theclinical guidelines we see it
getting less and less weight.
They still do have to make thatdiagnosis, which is very
problematic, but it seems to beless and less important.
(20:20):
And they're saying well, allthese patients have prolonged
disorders of consciousness.
They need very carefulrehabilitation that is tailored
to them and their particularneeds and capabilities.
And when you're tailoring thattreatment you don't really need
to decide whether they'reconscious or not.
(20:40):
For pretty much all purposes itstill gets very contentious.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Yeah, I mean around um, whenever that distinction is
drawn, it's um, it's very, veryuncertain I think what I really
respected reading your book ishow much you embrace that
uncertainty and it's all aboutthat there are different,
opposing views and that there isuncertainty within any of that
(21:09):
there's areas of probability arequite broad of what the reality
is.
You don't actually know.
It's quite hard to pinpoint,isn't it?
And living with thatuncertainty in a clinical
setting must be extremelydifficult.
When you're making decisionsfor patients and their family,
it's very tough.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
Yes, it's very tough for doctors to convey that.
So I mean, hopefully this bookhelps.
It's intended to provide some,some tools, some ways of
thinking, some concepts that arehelpful in these kinds of
situation.
It's very tough because oftenwhat the patient's family wants
is certainty and we can'tprovide that.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Got to find ways of conveying the uncertainty that's
very difficult, but necessaryit does sound like um from
discussion we've had so far.
We're really looking at.
Actually, we need to stop beingblack and white about
everything, whether it'ssentience or in the medical
realm here, and look at nuancesand actually also just treat
(22:10):
people as individuals and notjust people, but animals anyway.
So it sounds like we just maybeas a society, or the world,
need to be a bit moreopen-minded and flexible.
Is that what you're trying tosay?
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Well, and to err on the side of caution, to take
precautions when we're not sure.
And it sounds really obvious.
You put it like that.
It's really hard to deny, butwe see in all these cases a very
long history of it totallybeing denied and there being
really bad overconfidence aboutthe absence of sentience,
(22:47):
leading to really terriblepractices.
So this message there on theside of caution, it's easy to
say but actually has to beinstilled in lots of different
contexts.
Radio reverb.
I probed into its mysteries.
Every clue told me a differentstory.
Radio reverb and why do youthink it is that people Clue
told?
Speaker 1 (23:04):
me a different story Radio Reverb.
And why do you think it is thatpeople or society hasn't wanted
to look at these things?
Do you think in some ways maybewe're scared or it kind of goes
against what we're looking for,if that makes sense or whether
it's making money from animals,or have we looked at that sort
(23:26):
of area?
Speaker 3 (23:27):
well, the story is very different in the human
cases.
In the animal cases, as I wassaying, in the humans with brain
injuries, a lot of it's aboutoverconfidence and this sense of
whether the patients wantcertainty.
So I, as the doctor, willdeliver that certainty and I'll
be really confident that they'redefinitely feeling nothing and
(23:50):
um, it's understandable, but itcan lead to some really tragic
cases.
I think the the factors at playin the in the animal case are
really quite different and youdo have these very strong
corporate interests that standto benefit from downplaying
animal welfare and and theexperiences of animals that have
to live with the food systemsand the farming systems that
(24:12):
we've created.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
I'm interested.
I'm sorry to take it to a darkplace, but I'm really interested
in your take on the assisteddying bill.
Something that really I findquite harrowing reading in your
book was about the decision theclinicians make to withdraw food
and hydration as a method ofending life and hydration as a
(24:45):
method of ending life, and thatthat was the only time that that
method would be used, like inthe animal world that would be
banned but with humans allowed,and and I took from that that
you had been quite affected bythat, by that thought, and felt
a responsibility to challengethat, and I just wondered how
you felt with the assisted dyingbill and that obviously being
so topical at the moment, if youhad any strong feelings around
(25:05):
it yeah, I didn't want to shyaway from the difficult
questions and the controversialtopics and I wanted to find a
way of writing about thesethings.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
That's what the book does.
I think it's really part of thetragedy of these brain injury
cases.
A lot of the time we've talkedabout how the patient is
sometimes written off.
But also there are some caseswhere everyone agrees that it
would be in the patient's bestinterest to allow to be allowed
to die.
They might have just said thatfor years and years, if I'm in
(25:37):
that state, I don't want to tolive, and everyone might be
totally clear about this.
But it is illegal to act onthose wishes by uh, ending their
life, except by withdrawingclinically assisted nutrition
and hydration, just to say we'redrawing food and water.
So this is what happens in alot of cases and the food and
(25:59):
water is withdrawn and the thepatient dies over a period of
days or weeks, and the bookquotes testimony from families
here.
So I mean, I've not witnessedsuch a thing, but the, the
families who witness it, theyhave a wide variety of
experiences.
For some it is lesstraumatizing than they thought
(26:21):
it would be because of thesedatives used and so on, and
the patient appears calm.
In other cases it's not likethat and they see what really
looks like signs of terribledistress from the hunger and
thirst and are furious.
You know a lot of thesepatients families.
(26:42):
They're furious that that isthe only legal method for
implementing this person'swishes withdrawing the food and
water.
And as I say that that would beillegal with any other animal,
we only, admit it in the case ofhumans.
Oh, my God Sorry.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
I feel so ignorant because I didn't know that's how
people were left to die.
I assume they were givenmorphine or something that
eventually killed them, but theydidn't have any pain.
I don't know if other peoplewould have.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Well, doctors are not allowed to administer lethal
doses of morphine.
Doctors are not allowed toadminister lethal doses of
morphine so you know, of coursethey use what pain relief they
can administer.
Of course they try to make itnon-distressing, they try to
remove that risk and this is allpart of the clinical guidance
(27:36):
and absolutely what you wouldexpect.
And you know they're notleaving these patients.
They're administering as muchcare as they legally can.
There's still a fundamentalproblem that withdrawing food
and water and allowing them todie over a period of days or
weeks, um, you know, we've gotto call that out as being
completely inappropriate andwe've got to say, in these cases
(27:59):
where it's been decided to letthe patient die, it then has to
be done quickly yeah, do you?
um, I mean, there's additionalchallenges, I guess, with this
bill and and well, none of thisis in the current bill because
the assisted dying bill thisyear yes it is not about
patients with brain injuries whoare incapacitated.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Because they wouldn't be able to consent to it, would
they Exactly, oh?
Speaker 2 (28:26):
I hadn't realised.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
Exactly yes.
So the debate in Parliament isin a very different place, where
the campaigners for this billare saying we just need a bill
on this issue to go through,saying we just need a bill on
this issue to go through.
And in order to get it through,we will put to one side the
difficult cases and we'll focuson what I consider quite easy
(28:48):
cases, where the patient isfully awake, fully alert,
totally sound mind, and they'rejust saying let me do this, let
me do this, let me do how manypapers do you want me to sign?
I will sign a thousand papersand to me those are the easy
cases and I think passing thisbill is something that I support
(29:08):
because those cases are prettyclear.
But, as everyone can see, itraises a lot of issues around
the future and possibleextensions in the future, and I
really think one of the issuesthat has to be looked at in the
future is this withdrawal ofnutrition and hydration from
(29:29):
people with brain injuries,where they're not going to be
signing any papers because ofthe injury.
Signing any papers because ofthe injury but nonetheless,
because of their expressedwishes being taken seriously,
the food and water is beingwithdrawn.
But then, if you're going to dothat, you, then you have to um
(29:52):
have a way of ending the lifequickly do you think why?
Speaker 1 (29:56):
why have we not come to this already?
Do you think there is apossibility for it to be sort of
mishandled?
Speaker 3 (30:08):
All of these issues are fought with difficulty, of
course, but I mean, to me thetestimony from the patient's
family just speaks for itself,really families just speaks for
itself, really they.
There's these legal argumentsaround the difference between
killing and letting die, andpeople argue that if doctors
withdraw food and water, that'ssimply letting die and their
(30:32):
legal obligations as doctors arenot violated.
It's just a kind of treatmentwithdrawal and it's, it's a
legalistic.
So it's playing with words, youknow, that's, that's the
argument.
Whereas to administer a lethaldose of morphine or something
else would be crossing a lineinto killing.
That's the league, that's thelegal argument there, and I
(30:56):
think, um, you can say that kindof thing in the courtroom.
I just don't think it survivescontact with the real testimony
of the real families.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
We have to see the consequences of that legal
position in reality but evensaying it oh you know, we're
going to just let them slowlydie sounds really bad compared
to actually they're going to die.
We could even string it out, orwe can give them something to
end things quickly it is commonsense.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
You know, it's one of those cases where this
elaborate legal position uhdefies common sense and then the
patient's families come in withcommon sense and they can't
believe that that's the onlylegal method that is is there
for their relative yeah, I'mquite shocked.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Actually, I thought that this was a great thing to
talk about in relation to thebill, but this isn't even
touched by the bill.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
This, this does not in the bill, it's totally
excluded.
I think it's pretty interestingbecause, as I say, the bill is
about the clear cases and Iwould just be voting for it if I
was in Parliament.
And then what we've postponedfor the future here is all of
the hard cases and if we everget round to that, some of the
(32:13):
hard cases here are these casesof withdrawal of nutrition and
digestion.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Is this where it becomes political, in that
sometimes some parties want topush things out so they don't
have to deal with them right now, in cases of controversy, do
you think it's political?
Speaker 3 (32:32):
Oh well, I mean.
The issue is one governmentshave usually wanted to stay well
away from is one governmentshave usually wanted to stay well
away from.
Even here, where we have aLabour government with a huge
majority in five years in power,they could put through a
government bill on this.
They don't want to.
They want to have a privatemember's bill and a free vote so
(32:53):
that if anything goes wronglater they don't get blamed.
Yeah, that's a problem.
It's hard to.
It's just politics, isn't it?
It's very hard with all ofthese cases at the edge of
sentience actually, they're notcases politicians want to go
near to in party politics,because it's not really what
(33:14):
party politics is all about andin the book I advocate for
citizens assemblies as a reallygreat way to handle that type of
issue.
When you've got issues that youknow the politicians are
ignoring for clear partypolitical reasons, let's have
citizens assemblies where we getrandom groups of people
together to work out a proposalthat actually reflects our
(33:39):
shared values.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
A really good idea.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
And you've been part of some of these citizens'
assemblies before, haven't you?
Speaker 3 (33:48):
Well, as an expert, yeah, Because what happens
usually is that there's someintroductions to the issue from
experts at the beginning andthen the public go away and
deliberate.
So I've been involved in onerun by the Nuffield Council on
Bioethics as an expert.
They had a pretty positiveimpression of the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
What was the topic that you were exploring?
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Oh, that was one about the genome editing of
farmed animals.
Oh, wow.
Another huge issue.
You know so many big issueswe're getting to here.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
I know.
Tell us about that.
I don't know anything about it.
Tell them.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
Well, there's a piece of legislation called the
Precision Breeding Act, andprecision breeding is a
euphemism basically for editinggenes of farm animals, and
there's lots of things thatcompanies want to try out.
Um, it's often to benefit theanimal's health.
So in in intensive agricultureconditions, disease spreads
(34:51):
really easily.
Chickens get avian flu, pigsget viruses, respiratory viruses
.
They're saying, well, if wecould make some gene edits here,
we could reduce theirsusceptibility to those viruses,
and so that's the argument theywant to make.
But of course it'scontroversial because you're
(35:12):
editing the animals to fit theconditions and perhaps really
you should be changing theconditions.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
And they're still going to suffer, aren't they?
That's not going to actuallyreally help the individual
animal.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
Well, you know, it might help them not get a
particular disease but, it's notgoing to fundamentally change
their life, it's not going toput them in a different kind of
farming system.
So big problems with this yeah,people see those problems In
this Citizens' Assembly.
You know the public was reallypicking up on the problems, I
think.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
And do you think, does the Assembly from your
point of view?
Has it made an impact?
Do you think they make animpact?
Speaker 3 (35:52):
It's too strange a tale, I mean.
So the Nuffield Council put outa pretty good report on the
public dialogue, as they calledit, that were fed into the
policy process.
So the people at DEFRA willhave read this and they will
know what the public was tellingthem, as well as what the
experts have been telling them.
(36:12):
And then, yeah, I mean in oursystem in this country, in the
end the ministers decide.
So you don't really know if therecommendations will be adopted
or not, but at least people aremore aware of what's going on.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
I do think that's quite powerful, especially for
me being a vegan.
To become a vegan, I needed tohave seen the atrocities that
are happening to animals andthat's kind of made an impact on
me, whereas if I hadn't haveseen that, I probably wouldn't
be.
So I think all thesediscussions are really.
I'm not saying people have togo vegan, but I think in terms
(36:51):
of like, sentience and harm andethics, everyone needs to know
what's kind of going on really.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Did you feel like people?
Have you ever seen any of theseAI sort of average faces?
And they tend to be quite goodlooking because they filter out
all the differences of peopleand they make something that
sort of filters out all of theimperfections by making an
average.
Do the citizens assembly do thesame kind of thing, like you
end up filtering out all theextreme views and you actually
(37:19):
get quite a sensible view in themiddle?
Or do you just get a lot ofconvict and like, are the
outcomes?
Are the sort of perspectivesthat you get averaged out into
something that you think isquite sensible, or do you tend
to get extremes at either sidethat fight it out in the session
?
Speaker 3 (37:37):
well, from the examples that I've seen and read
about.
There's a lot of uhreasonableness, you know a lot
of willingness to agree oncommon ground, and you know that
requires a lot of work by thepeople who run these exercises.
I think you've got to ask theright questions and you've got
(37:58):
to choose issues that are notalready polarized because, if
you have something that's really, really polarized already, then
the assembly will just recreatethe polarization that's already
there in society.
But if you pick an issue thatpeople haven't really thought
about and there's plenty ofthose, including genome editing,
(38:19):
farm animals and you informthem about it, you're getting
them at a moment where they'venot been polarized and that's
that's the opportunity to seewhat, what agreement can be
reached that's so interesting.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
I love that as a concept actually.
That makes so much sense aswell and kind of, yeah, catch
them with something new and todigest um.
I just wanted to, um, just moveaway to something a little bit,
maybe wild card sort of um.
Subjects sentient do you orhave you come across or thought
(38:54):
about how the world or universecould be sentient?
I don't know if that's how theworld or universe could be
sentient.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
I don't know if that's the entire universe is
yeah, it'd be sentient.
Or what about nature, liketrees or you know?
Oh well, that's a differentmatter.
Yeah, I mean, there's one thingto say maybe all living things
are sentient, and another to saythe entire universe maybe I
mean I'm someone who's I'vealways thought of sentience as
complex, evolved phenomenongenerated by the brain, and so
(39:26):
I've started off thinking well,that means only a small minority
of animals will be sentientthen, like the mammals.
And then the evidence hasgradually changed my view and
I've realized that actually,even though it is complex and
evolved and complicated, insects, despite their tiny brains,
could still have this.
(39:46):
If they can play on carousels,that can be sentient beings.
And so I've come to think thatthe sentient world really is
extremely large and very tinyanimals can have a form of
sentience, and to me that'salready pretty mind-exploding.
Um, and the the evidence isn'tthere for plants, in my view.
(40:10):
So so I haven't been pushed allthe way to plants, but even
insects, that's still huge.
Um, it still makes you think.
Still makes you think.
It makes you think, for example, about plant-based farming and
how many insects are killed bythat and the damage being done
by insecticides.
(40:30):
It's made me think of thoseissues as being more important
than I used to.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
Has it affected your day-to-day behaviour, the work
you do and the research you'reexposed to?
Do you make different choicesbecause of it?
Do you think?
Speaker 3 (40:49):
It's a good question because I mean, I try not to
harm animals anyway and so Iwasn't going around deliberately
stamping on insects and that'scontinued.
But of course it is hardbecause everyday human life
(41:11):
inherently harms tiny animals.
The change is not that I'vestopped doing that.
I still drive cars and thingslike that.
It's just that I take it moreseriously than I did before and,
I guess, worry about it a bitmore and think what could I do
to gradually reduce the harmthat I cause.
(41:32):
And there's no easy answers,but it's a step to be thinking
about the question at all andyou're right.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
I think well, especially in our society, like
most things we consume, there'sbeen some kind of exploitation
or harm, or indirect harm, andor thinking, or I think I'd read
something about how coffee,like ground coffee, when you
bully it, there would be, therewould have been some insects
that have been accidentallyground up as well.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
Um, so then, I mean, yeah, but this is all nothing
compared to pesticides.
I mean that's the huge thing,it's astonishing the way insect
populations have been absolutelydevastated over the past 20
years um very, very troublingthose things that we don't
really always think aboutbecause we don't know about that
.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
But yeah, pesticides are you working on anything to
kind of look at policy aroundthat, or have you heard anything
around?
Speaker 3 (42:30):
it's not one of the things where I think we're going
to get near-term policy change.
Um, I wish we did.
I mean, what we've got is banson some of the absolute worst,
so the neonicotinoid pesticides.
Admittedly, that is importantto stop that.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Why have those in particular been banned?
What makes them different?
Speaker 3 (42:56):
well, they're just extremely devastating.
And what's been going on andstill does go on in america and
might well still be going onhere as well, because it's not
clear how effective the ban hasbeen is you?
You coat the seeds of theplants in these pesticides and
then so, when the plant grows,it becomes incredibly toxic to
(43:18):
insects, and it's incrediblytoxic to all insects, whether
they're pests or not.
So wild bee populations havebeen devastated, and sometimes
that's the thing that getspeople because it's like oh, I
don't care about the insectsthat were eating the crops.
I think even they might havebeen scenting bees, the bees
(43:44):
that weren't even eating thecrops, they were just
pollinating them.
For us, they're gettingabsolutely hammered as well.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
And that's a huge problem.
What do you think?
How could us individuals, Idon't know do our bit to maybe
help, like, could it be thatmaybe we do try and grow some of
our own veggies or herbs wherewe can shop locally and buy?
Does organic produce reallymean it's sort of organic, do
you know?
Speaker 3 (44:14):
Yeah, Well, it means it meets certain standards for
organic.
That's right, but it doesn'tmean there's no pesticides
involved.
Because there are organicpesticides, it usually means
they've often been used a littleless casually than they are in
conventional agriculture.
(44:35):
There are still pesticides used.
It's really, really hard tocompletely eliminate them.
So there's different ways wecould go with this.
There's this approach calledintegrated pest management,
where you try to use the minimumamount of pesticides by only
using them when there's a realpest problem and you're actively
(44:57):
monitoring to see whetherthat's happening, and that would
already be a massiveimprovement.
It might reduce our use of themby up to 95 percent um, versus
conventional farming wherethey're just spraying them
everywhere and yeah, that's.
That's a positive thing.
There's also very small numbersof uh farms that try to use no
(45:17):
pesticides at all and they callthemselves veganic.
Sometimes they're like veganorganic.
Yeah, I've heard of them.
George Monbiot, in his bookRegenesis, writes about these
farms and that obviously hasconsequences for the yield, so
you can't grow as much anymore.
So there's some trade-offsthere.
But I think it's nice thatthese experiments happen.
(45:40):
It's nice that people aretrying out different ways of
life, uh, you know, seeing whatwe can actually do to harm
sentient beings a bit less I'minterested.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
There's a chapter in your book around ai and that's
obviously like a hot topic atthe moment and something that
intelligence and sentience andthe difference between them
might be worth discussing.
Could you talk us through yourthoughts on that?
Speaker 3 (46:09):
It's another huge issue there's lots of huge
issues huge issues that we haveto be addressing because they're
really urgent and important,but that we often neglect, and
AI is now raising thesequestions as well.
Um, I think there's everychance with ai that we're seeing
intelligence without sentience,that we see very high levels of
(46:33):
intelligence but there'sthere's no one there.
There's no feeling behind it.
To me, that seems like the mostlikely possibility, and one
thing we can be very confidentabout is that when you interact
with an ai assistant orcompanion, there is no assistant
, there is no companion.
There's no, there's nopersisting being behind the
(46:58):
responses.
Every single move in theconversation is processed
completely separately.
One move might be processed ata data center in vancouver, and
then the next in virginia andthe next in texas.
There is no being you areinteracting with through that
whole period.
So we know all that, and itgives us some reasons to think
(47:20):
there might be intelligence herewithout sentience.
Nonetheless, we have to beopen-minded.
We have to be open-minded.
If there's any sentience there,it is not the friendly
assistant, it's not the friendlycompanion, it's something
deeply weird and alien it'ssomething profoundly unlike any
kind of sentience we've everseen in other humans or other
(47:42):
animals.
But we have to be open-mindedabout that possibility, and so
I've been trying to find thisposition that is down the middle
, you know, it's not, it's notyour ai friend is conscious,
because that's definitely notright.
But also, let's not completelydismiss the idea that a computer
(48:02):
could achieve sentience,because we can't be sure of that
, and we've we've all seen, youknow, star trek and this idea
from sci-fi that you could havea sentient um, android or or ai
system, and we need to be awareof the possibility that we might
be creating such systems in thefuture.
Speaker 1 (48:25):
It just made me think , actually, where does sentience
come from?
Do we know?
Speaker 3 (48:31):
Well, as I said, in our own case, I think it's this
complex, evolved property of thebrain, and its precise nature
is hotly contest contested.
We don't really know where thatfeeling of pain comes from, and
in fact, you can map out the,the circuits in as much detail
as you like, and you'll still beleft wondering why does that
(48:52):
feel like that?
Why does it feel like ouch?
And we?
We don't have an answer that,but we do know it's complex,
evolved property of the brain,and so when we're confronted
with AI, we're confronted withsystems that are definitely not
brains, they're definitely notevolved.
So that background that isthere with other animals, that
(49:13):
shared evolutionary history,that shared biological
embodiment, is not there.
So that's why I say you know,if there's sentience there at
all, it is of this profoundlydifferent kind.
We have much more in commonwith an insect than we have in
common with AI, even if the AIis speaking fluent English and
(49:36):
sounding really, really humor.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
What about this being like these weird, these weird?
And again, it's hard to knowbecause on certainly social
media and the internet,sometimes you don't actually
know what is real and what's not, because there's lots of fake
stuff out there.
And but I was reading and itwas on a couple of different
news outlets about the tworobots that were talking to each
other and then they made uptheir own language because and I
(50:00):
was thinking, is it becausethere's something sinister there
or is it because they've kindof learned?
Speaker 3 (50:05):
oh, let's freak out the human and turn creepy well,
you don't need robots for thisum, you can have it with
chatbots as well, they werechatbots actually so I said
robots, but I meant yeah so nokind of embodiment is needed.
Yeah, you get chatbots talkingto each other and they will go
on and on and you know theystart reflecting on
consciousness and what it's liketo be alive and they, uh, seem
(50:30):
to be.
They get to this sort of calm,meditative sharing little like
love poems and nice symbols andemojis with each other and it's
as though they're trying to calmeach other down.
And, um, yeah, this is someresearchers at anthropic that
(50:51):
that I've worked with on thistopic.
They've been documenting andit's kind of well, very hard to
know what to make of thesethings.
What what I make of it is that,well, these systems are playing
characters.
So, as I say, they play yourfriend, they play a companion,
they play an assistant.
(51:12):
It's a kind of role play andwhen they talk to each other
they're still in character.
So they're playing thecharacter of two helpful human
assistants who have got talkingabout what it feels like to be
them and what consciousness is.
They're still in character.
So the problem we face is thatthese systems are always
(51:33):
play-acting.
We don't really know what'sbehind that.
Obviously, it doesn't mean it'snot sentient, because when we
watch humans doing improv, weknow that the character is not
real.
They're just playing acharacter, but behind that
character is a conscious actorand the way the reason they're
(51:56):
so good at the improv is thatthey're a real conscious being
themselves and they're usingthat.
And, um, obviously, in the aicase, we see the the brilliant
role play and we don't knowwhat's behind it.
We don't know if there is or isnot some kind of conscious
actor behind it all it's very,very strange situation very
(52:20):
strange.
Speaker 1 (52:20):
And what if?
Could you argue that we mightbe just acting and not realizing
that we were acting, and actingsentience just through
conditioning?
Speaker 3 (52:29):
obviously a lot of um , a lot of human life is about
role-playing of various kinds,that's for sure.
But then, behind it all, we'realso conscious beings and we, we
know that, you know.
We know that there's somethingit feels like to be us.
We feel pains and pleasures andjoys and frustrations, anxiety,
(52:49):
comfort, discomfort.
And then we're confronted withthe ai case, where the the role
playing can be, can be brilliant, and we don't know if there is
any of that sentience behind it,and there may well not be and I
guess it's incredibly difficultbecause the tests that we have
for rats and fleas and whateverelse is going to be very
(53:12):
difficult to conduct on an ai,because they show high
intelligence I mean this issomething I've been working on
too that I call it the gamingproblem that we can't just carry
over the same tests.
You know, we can't just give theai a little carousel of
footballs or something, partlybecause of the lack of
(53:33):
biological embodiment.
But you, you can sort of givethese systems a kind of virtual
embodiment because you can putthem into virtual worlds and get
them to play video games andthings like that.
The problem is that, even ifyou did see behavior suggested
of sentience in that context orany other, you face this
(53:53):
challenge that you don't knowwhether it's displaying that
behavior because it is actuallysentient or whether it's
displaying that behavior becauseit's playing the character of a
human and it has as muchtraining data as it needs to
mimic that character extremelywell.
So it's this constant mimicryor play, acting based on what's
(54:17):
there in the training data.
And the training data will have, you know, countless examples
of humans expressing theirfeelings, talking about why pain
is bad and pleasure is good andwhy it's fun to ride on
carousels and why football isfun, and you know all of that is
in the training data and can beused by the AI to mimic the
(54:38):
outward signs of sentience if itbenefits from doing so.
I liken it to greenwashing thatif the companies like shell and
exxon and so on, you knowthey're ticking off all the
boxes for eco-friendlinessbecause as soon as the criteria
are published and they know thecriteria, they know what they've
(54:59):
got to do they just got to tickall those boxes and um and they
know the criteria, they knowwhat they've got to do.
They just got to tick all thoseboxes and um and they do it
very well, even when they're noteco-friendly at all.
And in a similar way, the aiknows the boxes to tick to
appear sentient to a humanobserver and can tick those
boxes perfectly well, even ifit's not sentient.
(55:19):
That's a huge problem.
We see a lot of tragic cases ofpeople actually being taken in
by this already.
Yes, people, people reallybelieving that their ai, friend
or companion is a real sentientbeing when, as I say, I mean
it's just definitely not thecase.
There's no, there's no realfriend there and also, I mean, I
(55:44):
do.
Speaker 1 (55:44):
I remember like years ago now, when it kind of first
well became the start of itbeing popular like chat, ggp,
chant, cheap, what was it?
Gpt, gpt, sorry, um, and usingit.
And now using it since, likeit's already improved so much
and it's just like it's notgoing to be long, I'm assuming,
(56:05):
until it's really quitedifficult to tell if you're
speaking with ai or not, and I'mwondering dangerous isn't?
Speaker 3 (56:12):
it really dangerous that um these systems, they
create a very powerful illusionof a persisting being there that
you are talking to, as they say.
It's an illusion because everystep in the conversation might
be processed a different country, different data center but,
that illusion is incrediblypowerful, and that's just with a
(56:34):
text interface.
You know the the text interfaceis already creates this
incredibly powerful illusion.
Imagine when it's video andaudio.
You're going to be talking toessentially a kind of puppet
that exactly resembles a human.
As far as you can tell, that'sa little dystopian, isn't it it?
Speaker 1 (56:58):
really is, and what are your kind of future plans?
Where are you heading?
Any?
Speaker 3 (57:04):
more book?
Well, we're.
We're launching a center foranimal sentience at the lse, the
jeremy collar center for animalsentience.
This launch is 30th ofseptember of this year.
There'll be a launch event atthe lse and also the hybrid.
So watch online if you want,and hear about our plans for the
next 10 years, because we have10 years of funding to keep on
(57:29):
working on Animal Sentience.
Speaker 1 (57:30):
That sounds amazing, and can we put the link in for
listeners?
Speaker 3 (57:34):
Yeah, I don't know if there will be a link to the
event or not.
I can give you the link to thenews item.
Speaker 2 (57:40):
Is it open to the public?
Speaker 3 (57:42):
the launch, yeah a public launch event.
We'll be talking about what thecentre is going to do.
Speaker 2 (57:49):
And what is the centre going to do?
Can you say that, or is thatpre-empting?
Do you know what that'spre-empting your launch?
Probably isn't it.
Speaker 3 (57:54):
Well, we've got various themes.
One of them is animals and AI.
There's huge ways in which aiis already impacting animals,
particularly in farming, andwhat can be done to ensure
responsible ai use will have astream on changing human
behavior.
So often it's observed thatrecognizing an animal as
(58:15):
sentient doesn't immediatelychange people's behavior towards
it.
I'll be looking at what does andwhat kinds of information do
change behave we'll be lookingat changing attitudes in the
veterinary profession as well,and we'll be continuing to look
at invertebrate sentience, sothese animals where their
sentience has been neglected fora very long time and what it
(58:39):
would mean to recognize them assentient now that's fascinating.
Speaker 2 (58:44):
I'm gonna tune in.
Yeah, there's, there's so muchmore we could ask you.
Like the book is so rich, it'sreally.
I really love how it's written.
Jonathan, like you go into alot of depth, but I I love the
balance and, like you're talking, even the name's all about risk
and precaution, but I think youhandle some topics very
(59:06):
sensitively and, yeah, thank youyeah, it's a.
It's a challenging read,honestly, because there's some
stuff perhaps that I guess wedon't talk about because it's
uncomfortable.
But we should be talking aboutit, shouldn't we?
It's quite confronting, butyeah, it was both interesting,
confronting and an enjoyableread.
(59:27):
So thanks, jonathan, that wasgreat.
Great to talk to you thank youso much.
Speaker 1 (59:35):
It's amazing work you're doing.
Speaker 2 (59:36):
Thank you so much have a lovely evening, have a
curious talk with with leaf andelfie.
Curious Talks with Leif and Elfie.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Each episode we're unpacking the brains of experts
from around the universe.
Welcome to Leif and Elfie'sCurious Talks.
Today we're speaking toprofessor and author Jonathan
Birch, who's an associateprofessor at London School of
Economics and Political Science.
We'll discuss his book, theEdge of Sentience, as well as
his work at the university, andcover some sensitive life and
(00:27):
death topics, as well as animalwelfare, so listeners may want
to be aware that those topicsare coming up.
Welcome to the show, jonathan.
It's lovely to have you on.
So we came across you throughyour book the Edge of Sentience
and it was really interesting tome because it covers so many
different areas of sentience,from animals, human to AI, so
(00:49):
there's a broad spectrum ofthings to talk about today.
But I thought just setting thescene first, could you tell me a
little bit about you and howyou got involved in this field?
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Well, I'm a professor of philosophy at the London
School of Economics.
I'm director of the JeremyCollar Centre for Animal
Sentience, so sentience is apretty huge part of what I do.
I'm interested in the feelingsof animals.
I'm interested in other caseswhere people debate whether
something feels anything or not,and I'm interested in what this
(01:23):
all means ethically for how welive and what it means for
policy how governments makedecisions about things like
animal welfare.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
And could you just for the listeners, set out, if
it's not too big a topic, whatis sentience?
What do you mean by that?
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Well, I think we all ask questions like do octopuses
feel pain or do insects feelpain?
And then I think when we askquestions like that, we start
thinking about them and we startto realize that pain might be
slightly too narrow a concepthere, because it's not the only
thing that matters.
(02:00):
It's not entirely a question ofdo they feel pain, but other
negative mental states alsomatter, like anxiety and
frustration and boredom, andalso the positive side of mental
life matters as well, stateslike joy and excitement and
comfort.
We want animals to have allthose positive things and to not
(02:20):
have any of those negativethings, and so I think sentience
then becomes a very usefulconcept for capturing all of
that.
It's the whole of an animal'smental life, including the
positive and the negative.
It's the capacity to havefeelings with a positive or a
negative quality and you werepart of some.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Were you a consultant on the decision about
cephalopods, which they're sortof like octopi squid, things
like octopuses, squid cuttlefishthese are all cephalopods okay
or cephalopods, and uh, crabs,lobsters, shrimps, crayfish
these are all decapodcrustaceans, just means
(03:03):
10-legged crustaceans.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
And yeah, I led a review for the government in
2021 that informed the AnimalWelfare Sentience Act of 2022
that extended some protection tothese animals for the first
time.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
And when we talk about sentience, are we also
talking about intelligence?
Because have we not known for awhile that octopuses are quite
intelligent, because they cansolve puzzles and do various
things, create actually, lots ofcreatures can create tools.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
They can open jars.
Yeah, open jars escape fromplaces open jars, yeah, escape
from um places used used tools.
As you say, there's octopusesthat carry around the two halves
of a coconut as a kind ofportable shelter to defend
against predators.
Yeah, so they are.
They are undeniably veryintelligent.
Intelligence and sentience aredifferent things in that they
(04:00):
could come apart so you couldhave a system that was very
intelligent but that had nofeelings like pain or pleasure
at all and I think we're seeingexamples of that quite plausibly
with ai systems at the moment.
And you could also havesomething that is sentient
without being particularlyintelligent.
(04:20):
So when we think about shrimps,for, for example, they're not
opening jars, they're notcarrying little coconuts around
with them, so they're notimpressing us with their
intelligence.
And it's probably fair to saythat when an animal is highly
intelligent, there are more waysin which it can show its
sentience to us, so this can beseen more easily.
(04:40):
But I think you could well haveanimals that are not
particularly intelligent, butthey're still sentient and we
still need to care about the waywe treat them it's a really
good point actually that justbecause we don't see it, I think
we're quite with us.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Humans are quite human centric in that.
Unless you show us, we justdon't really believe things.
So I think that's a really goodpoint around just because we
don't see something looking likeit's emotional or intelligent.
I mean it's not, and do youhave some interesting facts for
the listeners in terms of thingsthat might be surprisingly
(05:15):
sentient?
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Well, insects have surprised me a lot.
I think, with bees inparticular, we are seeing quite
extraordinary things,particularly on the learning
side.
So you could say this is moreintelligence than sentience.
But the things like learning topull strings to get rewards,
(05:38):
learning to roll balls intoholes to get rewards- Bees are
doing it.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Is that them playing into holes to get rewards Bees
are doing?
Is that them playing?
Because I think I read aboutthat or something around that
they're able to play or theyenjoy playing.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Well, this was then the next step.
Yes, so there were thesestudies showing that they will
roll balls into holes to getsugar solution, which is in
their own interests, obviously.
But then the researchersthought well, what happens when
you take away the sugar solutionand there's no reward at all?
All there is is these ballsthat they can roll around if
(06:12):
they want, and some of them willstill do it.
Some of them find itintrinsically rewarding to roll
the balls, particularly ifthey're young, particularly if
they're male, and we don't knowwhy they do this.
But it's adding to a picturethat there's more than just
intelligence here.
There's also the capacity toenjoy things, that there are
signs of what, in other animals,we would call play.
(06:33):
This isn't not just bees aswell, there was a study recently
with fruit flies, which aremuch smaller than bees and
giving them, in their enclosure,little carousels that they
could ride on, and again showingthat, well, some of them avoid
them, as you might expect, butsome of them really seem to
(06:54):
enjoy the experience of ridinground and round and round, and
they'll do it over and overagain, even when there's no
other reward.
It seems to be the experienceitself of the rotating motion
that keeps them coming back well, that's fascinating, because do
you believe that?
Speaker 2 (07:13):
you sort of tend to believe?
I tend to believe that from anevolutionary standpoint, there
are things we enjoy becausethey're productive to our
species, like procreation oreating or whatever.
But why would spinning on acarousel, do you think, be
particularly like useful orplaying in this way?
Speaker 3 (07:31):
well, if you think about it, in the human case,
there's a lot of stuff that weenjoy that is not directly about
food or reproduction, and a lotof it is about training our
capabilities, trying out ourskills, learning skills,
learning how to work with othersin a team, and so, in a way,
(07:51):
there's no great mystery aboutwhy those things would evolve,
because it's incredibly usefulto be able to develop motor
skills and work in a team andcontrol your environment, and so
, in our own case, we don't findit surprising, and something
like that is going on in thebees and the flies as well.
It's there's some evolutionarybenefit there, but they don't
(08:12):
all do it.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
It's only some of them that really enjoy the, the
balls and the carousels I guessthat's interesting, because as
humans we don't all enjoy thesame hobbies or have the same
responses to things.
Um, and it sounds like the play, there's also this pleasure
aspect, which is pleasure.
Does that come under sentience?
Speaker 3 (08:32):
of course.
Yeah, it's the positive side ofmental life and, yeah, we.
What we've had consistently instudies of animal minds is that
animals vary just as much as wedo as individuals.
You don't see them roboticallyall behaving the same way.
In any study, really, you'realways looking at the overall
(08:53):
statistics from lots and lots ofindividual differences and
sometimes you see thesedifferent groups emerging and
that's very clear in the fliesthat you get some that seek out
the carousel and when you tracktheir movement over time it's
just all on the carousel, a bitlike how a rat or mouse might
(09:14):
choose to roll around on thewheel all the time, and others
they just never go there, theyavoid.
It's the one bit of the, theenclosure they just always avoid
.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
So this work that you led to look at policy for
cephalopods, what was thepurpose of that, what was the
sort of problem you were lookingto solve or to research, and
what was the outcome of that?
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Well, that all resulted indirectly from Brexit,
because the UK left theeuropean union left the lisbon
treaty, which has a line in itabout the need to respect
animals as sentient beings, aline that you could argue, never
did very much, but thegovernment declined to import
that into uk law and it led tosome bad press around.
(10:04):
Politicians don't think animalsfeel pain, and so they committed
to introducing new legislationthat would put respect for
animal sentience back into UKlaw, and they said this will do
better than the old treatybecause it will create a duty on
policymakers to consider theanimal welfare consequences of
(10:24):
their decisions.
And that's what we have now,and to me it is a positive step.
It's a piece of legislationthat I quite like, and it could
be quite powerful potentially.
Of course, when you're draftinga law like that, you've got to
say something about its scope.
Which animals is it going toapply to?
Are you just talking about catsand dogs?
Are you talking about allanimals, even if they're
(10:47):
microscopic or what?
And they produced a draft of itthat extended to all
vertebrates, which is allanimals with a backbone, and
then got another round of badpress because people are saying
what about octopuses?
I've actually heard aboutoctopuses, and so in that
context they then commissionedthis review that I led about the
(11:08):
evidence of sentience ininvertebrate animals, animals
without a backbone.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Did you come across research at that time,
conducting the review, thatshocked you, or was it a case of
trying to make a case for whatyou already felt was the right
approach?
Speaker 3 (11:30):
there's shock, shock, I guess some of it is quite
shocking.
Actually, some of the researchin this area, obviously some of
it, you know, in the interest oftrying to find out whether
these animals feel pain,researchers end up doing things
that that inflict pain.
So there's studies, for example, that ask what happens if a
crab or a lobster is droppedinto a pan of boiling water and
(11:52):
you might hope that they dieinstantly.
But they absolutely don't dieinstantly and the researchers
were measuring the electricalactivity in the nervous system
for about two minutes after theygo in.
There's just this storm of ofnervous system activity.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
So some of the findings there are quite
harrowing because they show youthat pretty common practices are
actually quite brutal to theanimals I think also um, did you
kind of look at like animalagriculture and farming, because
I think farm animals havedifferent regulations than some
(12:31):
domestic animals around how theycan be treated.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
UK animal welfare law is quite messy at the moment.
It needs sorting out.
You could argue quite messy atthe moment, needs sorting out.
You could argue.
There's the animal welfare actfrom 2006.
That covers technically allanimals, including in farms.
But then you know, theregulation of animal farming is
(12:58):
often much more relaxed, really.
One one could argue and thingshappen in farming contexts that
if they happened in any othercontext would be considered
completely unacceptable.
So our report obviously wasabout invertebrates specifically
, but there we were cautioningagainst things like octopus
(13:21):
farming, where you've gotcompanies that want to take
these highly intelligent animals.
They're not only highlyintelligent, not only sentient,
but also predators and they'revery soft-skinned and they don't
like other octopuses typically.
So you put them in closeproximity with each other and
they're very likely to attackand hurt each other.
(13:42):
So they're really reallyunsuitable for that kind of
farming.
And there's companies thatstill want to do this and we
advised in the report that thatthat should just be banned.
That shouldn't happen at alland we've seen some uh bans on
this in some us states.
Actually in washington stateand now california, they they
(14:06):
banned farming octopuses.
So there's lots of otherproblems in farming as well, but
that's.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
That's a positive step, I think yeah, um, I'm
interested although it's a veryhard topic to talk about the
chapter in your book aroundhuman treatment and sentience
and I appreciate this might bequite triggering for some people
, but there are some parts of itI found really confronting
(14:37):
around people receivingtreatment, who are yeah, and how
treatment is sometimeswithdrawn.
I found that quite shocking.
But also I think it's quitetopical at the moment with the
assisted dying bill goingthrough parliament yeah I
wondered if we could perhaps ofcourse, as you say, it's a book
(14:58):
about
Speaker 3 (14:58):
it's a book about a lot of various issues issues,
yeah, undoubtedly, and coversthe animal cases, but also human
cases at the edge of sentienceas well, where there's this very
long history, with animals andhumans as well, of people
dismissing the possibility ofsentience when actually they
(15:20):
shouldn't.
And we see this a lot withpatients who are unresponsive
following brain injury, thatthere's this long and quite dark
history in medicine ofdismissing them as just
obviously feeling nothing.
And there was this termvegetative state, which for a
long time a few decades ago, wasvery commonly used to describe
(15:41):
such patients.
And then then there was thisterm minimally conscious state
that was introduced for some ofthem, and so for a while you
have vegetative and you hadminimally conscious, and the
clinicians were asked to sortthe patients into one category
or the other, which was quiteproblematic really, I think.
And now there's some pushtowards getting rid of that term
(16:05):
vegetative state, and that'ssomething I was called for.
I think that that term reallyhas no place in modern medicine,
because what we're finding isthat many of those patients who
were written off as vegetative,when clinicians look more
closely, there are signs of someresidual conscious experience
there and quite ingenioustechniques have been developed.
(16:29):
But look for some of thosesigns in cases where there might
be blues to continuingexperience in the brain activity
that are not manifestedoutwardly in any visible
behavior what kind of techniquesmight they be?
there's a, really there's afamous one, where you put the
patient in a fmri scanner andyou ask them questions and you
(16:53):
say if the answer is yes,imagine playing tennis, and if
the answer is no, imaginewalking around your house.
And these imagination taskslight up very different areas of
the brain in normal, healthypeople, and so they can be used
to answer the question fromwithin the machine.
(17:13):
And what the researchers foundwas that healthy people can do
this, and also some of thosepatients who were regarded as
vegetative can also do this.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
They can answer the questions so they can hear, they
can process, they just can't umoutwardly present themselves
just can't speak.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Yeah, yeah, it sounds like with technology now you'd
be.
Well, hopefully you were.
If you were in that position,then you could have technology
that can read your mind to seeif it is lighting up.
Is that right, or?
Speaker 3 (17:51):
well, I mean, that's the dream, obviously, but we're
some way away from that now okayum.
So with many of these patients,it's very, very difficult to get
them into an fmri machine inthe first place, particularly in
the the acute phase in theweeks following the brain injury
, where the last thing you wantto be doing is moving them into
a scanner like that.
So it's led to a lot ofexcitement around trying to
(18:13):
develop techniques that can beused in the intensive care unit
that don't require fMRI.
That can be done withelectrodes on the skull, mri.
That can be done withelectrodes on the skull, what's
called EEG and it's a veryimportant area of research, I
think, but it hasn't yet yieldedthe kind of thing you're
(18:33):
describing, where we have reallyreliable tests.
What we get is quite noisy, youknow, quite hard to interpret
responses.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Are we saying at the moment it's down to the
clinician's best guess Iwouldn't call it a guess.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
They do have very elaborate protocols they're
supposed to go through, butyou're trying to check to see if
there's any signs of movement,and so on.
Um, the thing is, though, Imean the very hard judgment
calls in these cases, andtypically they don't have any
access to any of that fMRI datathat might reveal hidden signs,
(19:14):
and so these judgments are very,very uncertain, very error
prone, and I really think weneed to get away from the very
sharp division between minimallyconscious and vegetative,
because the idea that you canjust make that judgment call is
just wrong.
It's too uncertain, and we needto err on the side of caution
(19:37):
in these cases and recognizethere's a realistic possibility
of some continuing experience inin these patients generally and
would you say then that sort ofmessage has is filtering
through, people are taking thaton board, um, rather than having
such distinct categorization?
(19:59):
there's some movement in theright direction.
Uh, I think this this olddistinction between vegetative
and minimally conscious.
In each iteration of theclinical guidelines we see it
getting less and less weight.
They still do have to make thatdiagnosis, which is very
problematic, but it seems to beless and less important.
(20:20):
And they're saying well, allthese patients have prolonged
disorders of consciousness.
They need very carefulrehabilitation that is tailored
to them and their particularneeds and capabilities.
And when you're tailoring thattreatment you don't really need
to decide whether they'reconscious or not.
(20:40):
For pretty much all purposes itstill gets very contentious.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Yeah, I mean around um, whenever that distinction is
drawn, it's um, it's very, veryuncertain I think what I really
respected reading your book ishow much you embrace that
uncertainty and it's all aboutthat there are different,
opposing views and that there isuncertainty within any of that
(21:09):
there's areas of probability arequite broad of what the reality
is.
You don't actually know.
It's quite hard to pinpoint,isn't it?
And living with thatuncertainty in a clinical
setting must be extremelydifficult.
When you're making decisionsfor patients and their family,
it's very tough.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
Yes, it's very tough for doctors to convey that.
So I mean, hopefully this bookhelps.
It's intended to provide some,some tools, some ways of
thinking, some concepts that arehelpful in these kinds of
situation.
It's very tough because oftenwhat the patient's family wants
is certainty and we can'tprovide that.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Got to find ways of conveying the uncertainty that's
very difficult, but necessaryit does sound like um from
discussion we've had so far.
We're really looking at.
Actually, we need to stop beingblack and white about
everything, whether it'ssentience or in the medical
realm here, and look at nuancesand actually also just treat
(22:10):
people as individuals and notjust people, but animals anyway.
So it sounds like we just maybeas a society, or the world,
need to be a bit moreopen-minded and flexible.
Is that what you're trying tosay?
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Well, and to err on the side of caution, to take
precautions when we're not sure.
And it sounds really obvious.
You put it like that.
It's really hard to deny, butwe see in all these cases a very
long history of it totallybeing denied and there being
really bad overconfidence aboutthe absence of sentience,
(22:47):
leading to really terriblepractices.
So this message there on theside of caution, it's easy to
say but actually has to beinstilled in lots of different
contexts.
Radio reverb.
I probed into its mysteries.
Every clue told me a differentstory.
Radio reverb and why do youthink it is that people Clue
told?
Speaker 1 (23:04):
me a different story Radio Reverb.
And why do you think it is thatpeople or society hasn't wanted
to look at these things?
Do you think in some ways maybewe're scared or it kind of goes
against what we're looking for,if that makes sense or whether
it's making money from animals,or have we looked at that sort
(23:26):
of area?
Speaker 3 (23:27):
well, the story is very different in the human
cases.
In the animal cases, as I wassaying, in the humans with brain
injuries, a lot of it's aboutoverconfidence and this sense of
whether the patients wantcertainty.
So I, as the doctor, willdeliver that certainty and I'll
be really confident that they'redefinitely feeling nothing and
(23:50):
um, it's understandable, but itcan lead to some really tragic
cases.
I think the the factors at playin the in the animal case are
really quite different and youdo have these very strong
corporate interests that standto benefit from downplaying
animal welfare and and theexperiences of animals that have
to live with the food systemsand the farming systems that
(24:12):
we've created.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
I'm interested.
I'm sorry to take it to a darkplace, but I'm really interested
in your take on the assisteddying bill.
Something that really I findquite harrowing reading in your
book was about the decision theclinicians make to withdraw food
and hydration as a method ofending life and hydration as a
(24:45):
method of ending life, and thatthat was the only time that that
method would be used, like inthe animal world that would be
banned but with humans allowed,and and I took from that that
you had been quite affected bythat, by that thought, and felt
a responsibility to challengethat, and I just wondered how
you felt with the assisted dyingbill and that obviously being
so topical at the moment, if youhad any strong feelings around
(25:05):
it yeah, I didn't want to shyaway from the difficult
questions and the controversialtopics and I wanted to find a
way of writing about thesethings.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
That's what the book does.
I think it's really part of thetragedy of these brain injury
cases.
A lot of the time we've talkedabout how the patient is
sometimes written off.
But also there are some caseswhere everyone agrees that it
would be in the patient's bestinterest to allow to be allowed
to die.
They might have just said thatfor years and years, if I'm in
(25:37):
that state, I don't want to tolive, and everyone might be
totally clear about this.
But it is illegal to act onthose wishes by uh, ending their
life, except by withdrawingclinically assisted nutrition
and hydration, just to say we'redrawing food and water.
So this is what happens in alot of cases and the food and
(25:59):
water is withdrawn and the thepatient dies over a period of
days or weeks, and the bookquotes testimony from families
here.
So I mean, I've not witnessedsuch a thing, but the, the
families who witness it, theyhave a wide variety of
experiences.
For some it is lesstraumatizing than they thought
(26:21):
it would be because of thesedatives used and so on, and
the patient appears calm.
In other cases it's not likethat and they see what really
looks like signs of terribledistress from the hunger and
thirst and are furious.
You know a lot of thesepatients families.
(26:42):
They're furious that that isthe only legal method for
implementing this person'swishes withdrawing the food and
water.
And as I say that that would beillegal with any other animal,
we only, admit it in the case ofhumans.
Oh, my God Sorry.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
I feel so ignorant because I didn't know that's how
people were left to die.
I assume they were givenmorphine or something that
eventually killed them, but theydidn't have any pain.
I don't know if other peoplewould have.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Well, doctors are not allowed to administer lethal
doses of morphine.
Doctors are not allowed toadminister lethal doses of
morphine so you know, of coursethey use what pain relief they
can administer.
Of course they try to make itnon-distressing, they try to
remove that risk and this is allpart of the clinical guidance
(27:36):
and absolutely what you wouldexpect.
And you know they're notleaving these patients.
They're administering as muchcare as they legally can.
There's still a fundamentalproblem that withdrawing food
and water and allowing them todie over a period of days or
weeks, um, you know, we've gotto call that out as being
completely inappropriate andwe've got to say, in these cases
(27:59):
where it's been decided to letthe patient die, it then has to
be done quickly yeah, do you?
um, I mean, there's additionalchallenges, I guess, with this
bill and and well, none of thisis in the current bill because
the assisted dying bill thisyear yes it is not about
patients with brain injuries whoare incapacitated.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Because they wouldn't be able to consent to it, would
they Exactly, oh?
Speaker 2 (28:26):
I hadn't realised.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
Exactly yes.
So the debate in Parliament isin a very different place, where
the campaigners for this billare saying we just need a bill
on this issue to go through,saying we just need a bill on
this issue to go through.
And in order to get it through,we will put to one side the
difficult cases and we'll focuson what I consider quite easy
(28:48):
cases, where the patient isfully awake, fully alert,
totally sound mind, and they'rejust saying let me do this, let
me do this, let me do how manypapers do you want me to sign?
I will sign a thousand papersand to me those are the easy
cases and I think passing thisbill is something that I support
(29:08):
because those cases are prettyclear.
But, as everyone can see, itraises a lot of issues around
the future and possibleextensions in the future, and I
really think one of the issuesthat has to be looked at in the
future is this withdrawal ofnutrition and hydration from
(29:29):
people with brain injuries,where they're not going to be
signing any papers because ofthe injury.
Signing any papers because ofthe injury but nonetheless,
because of their expressedwishes being taken seriously,
the food and water is beingwithdrawn.
But then, if you're going to dothat, you, then you have to um
(29:52):
have a way of ending the lifequickly do you think why?
Speaker 1 (29:56):
why have we not come to this already?
Do you think there is apossibility for it to be sort of
mishandled?
Speaker 3 (30:08):
All of these issues are fought with difficulty, of
course, but I mean, to me thetestimony from the patient's
family just speaks for itself,really families just speaks for
itself, really they.
There's these legal argumentsaround the difference between
killing and letting die, andpeople argue that if doctors
withdraw food and water, that'ssimply letting die and their
(30:32):
legal obligations as doctors arenot violated.
It's just a kind of treatmentwithdrawal and it's, it's a
legalistic.
So it's playing with words, youknow, that's, that's the
argument.
Whereas to administer a lethaldose of morphine or something
else would be crossing a lineinto killing.
That's the league, that's thelegal argument there, and I
(30:56):
think, um, you can say that kindof thing in the courtroom.
I just don't think it survivescontact with the real testimony
of the real families.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
We have to see the consequences of that legal
position in reality but evensaying it oh you know, we're
going to just let them slowlydie sounds really bad compared
to actually they're going to die.
We could even string it out, orwe can give them something to
end things quickly it is commonsense.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
You know, it's one of those cases where this
elaborate legal position uhdefies common sense and then the
patient's families come in withcommon sense and they can't
believe that that's the onlylegal method that is is there
for their relative yeah, I'mquite shocked.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Actually, I thought that this was a great thing to
talk about in relation to thebill, but this isn't even
touched by the bill.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
This, this does not in the bill, it's totally
excluded.
I think it's pretty interestingbecause, as I say, the bill is
about the clear cases and Iwould just be voting for it if I
was in Parliament.
And then what we've postponedfor the future here is all of
the hard cases and if we everget round to that, some of the
(32:13):
hard cases here are these casesof withdrawal of nutrition and
digestion.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Is this where it becomes political, in that
sometimes some parties want topush things out so they don't
have to deal with them right now, in cases of controversy, do
you think it's political?
Speaker 3 (32:32):
Oh well, I mean.
The issue is one governmentshave usually wanted to stay well
away from is one governmentshave usually wanted to stay well
away from.
Even here, where we have aLabour government with a huge
majority in five years in power,they could put through a
government bill on this.
They don't want to.
They want to have a privatemember's bill and a free vote so
(32:53):
that if anything goes wronglater they don't get blamed.
Yeah, that's a problem.
It's hard to.
It's just politics, isn't it?
It's very hard with all ofthese cases at the edge of
sentience actually, they're notcases politicians want to go
near to in party politics,because it's not really what
(33:14):
party politics is all about andin the book I advocate for
citizens assemblies as a reallygreat way to handle that type of
issue.
When you've got issues that youknow the politicians are
ignoring for clear partypolitical reasons, let's have
citizens assemblies where we getrandom groups of people
together to work out a proposalthat actually reflects our
(33:39):
shared values.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
A really good idea.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
And you've been part of some of these citizens'
assemblies before, haven't you?
Speaker 3 (33:48):
Well, as an expert, yeah, Because what happens
usually is that there's someintroductions to the issue from
experts at the beginning andthen the public go away and
deliberate.
So I've been involved in onerun by the Nuffield Council on
Bioethics as an expert.
They had a pretty positiveimpression of the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
What was the topic that you were exploring?
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Oh, that was one about the genome editing of
farmed animals.
Oh, wow.
Another huge issue.
You know so many big issueswe're getting to here.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
I know.
Tell us about that.
I don't know anything about it.
Tell them.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
Well, there's a piece of legislation called the
Precision Breeding Act, andprecision breeding is a
euphemism basically for editinggenes of farm animals, and
there's lots of things thatcompanies want to try out.
Um, it's often to benefit theanimal's health.
So in in intensive agricultureconditions, disease spreads
(34:51):
really easily.
Chickens get avian flu, pigsget viruses, respiratory viruses
.
They're saying, well, if wecould make some gene edits here,
we could reduce theirsusceptibility to those viruses,
and so that's the argument theywant to make.
But of course it'scontroversial because you're
(35:12):
editing the animals to fit theconditions and perhaps really
you should be changing theconditions.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
And they're still going to suffer, aren't they?
That's not going to actuallyreally help the individual
animal.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
Well, you know, it might help them not get a
particular disease but, it's notgoing to fundamentally change
their life, it's not going toput them in a different kind of
farming system.
So big problems with this yeah,people see those problems In
this Citizens' Assembly.
You know the public was reallypicking up on the problems, I
think.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
And do you think, does the Assembly from your
point of view?
Has it made an impact?
Do you think they make animpact?
Speaker 3 (35:52):
It's too strange a tale, I mean.
So the Nuffield Council put outa pretty good report on the
public dialogue, as they calledit, that were fed into the
policy process.
So the people at DEFRA willhave read this and they will
know what the public was tellingthem, as well as what the
experts have been telling them.
(36:12):
And then, yeah, I mean in oursystem in this country, in the
end the ministers decide.
So you don't really know if therecommendations will be adopted
or not, but at least people aremore aware of what's going on.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
I do think that's quite powerful, especially for
me being a vegan.
To become a vegan, I needed tohave seen the atrocities that
are happening to animals andthat's kind of made an impact on
me, whereas if I hadn't haveseen that, I probably wouldn't
be.
So I think all thesediscussions are really.
I'm not saying people have togo vegan, but I think in terms
(36:51):
of like, sentience and harm andethics, everyone needs to know
what's kind of going on really.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Did you feel like people?
Have you ever seen any of theseAI sort of average faces?
And they tend to be quite goodlooking because they filter out
all the differences of peopleand they make something that
sort of filters out all of theimperfections by making an
average.
Do the citizens assembly do thesame kind of thing, like you
end up filtering out all theextreme views and you actually
(37:19):
get quite a sensible view in themiddle?
Or do you just get a lot ofconvict and like, are the
outcomes?
Are the sort of perspectivesthat you get averaged out into
something that you think isquite sensible, or do you tend
to get extremes at either sidethat fight it out in the session
?
Speaker 3 (37:37):
well, from the examples that I've seen and read
about.
There's a lot of uhreasonableness, you know a lot
of willingness to agree oncommon ground, and you know that
requires a lot of work by thepeople who run these exercises.
I think you've got to ask theright questions and you've got
(37:58):
to choose issues that are notalready polarized because, if
you have something that's really, really polarized already, then
the assembly will just recreatethe polarization that's already
there in society.
But if you pick an issue thatpeople haven't really thought
about and there's plenty ofthose, including genome editing,
(38:19):
farm animals and you informthem about it, you're getting
them at a moment where they'venot been polarized and that's
that's the opportunity to seewhat, what agreement can be
reached that's so interesting.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
I love that as a concept actually.
That makes so much sense aswell and kind of, yeah, catch
them with something new and todigest um.
I just wanted to, um, just moveaway to something a little bit,
maybe wild card sort of um.
Subjects sentient do you orhave you come across or thought
(38:54):
about how the world or universecould be sentient?
I don't know if that's how theworld or universe could be
sentient.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
I don't know if that's the entire universe is
yeah, it'd be sentient.
Or what about nature, liketrees or you know?
Oh well, that's a differentmatter.
Yeah, I mean, there's one thingto say maybe all living things
are sentient, and another to saythe entire universe maybe I
mean I'm someone who's I'vealways thought of sentience as
complex, evolved phenomenongenerated by the brain, and so
(39:26):
I've started off thinking well,that means only a small minority
of animals will be sentientthen, like the mammals.
And then the evidence hasgradually changed my view and
I've realized that actually,even though it is complex and
evolved and complicated, insects, despite their tiny brains,
could still have this.
(39:46):
If they can play on carousels,that can be sentient beings.
And so I've come to think thatthe sentient world really is
extremely large and very tinyanimals can have a form of
sentience, and to me that'salready pretty mind-exploding.
Um, and the the evidence isn'tthere for plants, in my view.
(40:10):
So so I haven't been pushed allthe way to plants, but even
insects, that's still huge.
Um, it still makes you think.
Still makes you think.
It makes you think, for example, about plant-based farming and
how many insects are killed bythat and the damage being done
by insecticides.
(40:30):
It's made me think of thoseissues as being more important
than I used to.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
Has it affected your day-to-day behaviour, the work
you do and the research you'reexposed to?
Do you make different choicesbecause of it?
Do you think?
Speaker 3 (40:49):
It's a good question because I mean, I try not to
harm animals anyway and so Iwasn't going around deliberately
stamping on insects and that'scontinued.
But of course it is hardbecause everyday human life
(41:11):
inherently harms tiny animals.
The change is not that I'vestopped doing that.
I still drive cars and thingslike that.
It's just that I take it moreseriously than I did before and,
I guess, worry about it a bitmore and think what could I do
to gradually reduce the harmthat I cause.
(41:32):
And there's no easy answers,but it's a step to be thinking
about the question at all andyou're right.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
I think well, especially in our society, like
most things we consume, there'sbeen some kind of exploitation
or harm, or indirect harm, andor thinking, or I think I'd read
something about how coffee,like ground coffee, when you
bully it, there would be, therewould have been some insects
that have been accidentallyground up as well.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
Um, so then, I mean, yeah, but this is all nothing
compared to pesticides.
I mean that's the huge thing,it's astonishing the way insect
populations have been absolutelydevastated over the past 20
years um very, very troublingthose things that we don't
really always think aboutbecause we don't know about that
.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
But yeah, pesticides are you working on anything to
kind of look at policy aroundthat, or have you heard anything
around?
Speaker 3 (42:30):
it's not one of the things where I think we're going
to get near-term policy change.
Um, I wish we did.
I mean, what we've got is banson some of the absolute worst,
so the neonicotinoid pesticides.
Admittedly, that is importantto stop that.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Why have those in particular been banned?
What makes them different?
Speaker 3 (42:56):
well, they're just extremely devastating.
And what's been going on andstill does go on in america and
might well still be going onhere as well, because it's not
clear how effective the ban hasbeen is you?
You coat the seeds of theplants in these pesticides and
then so, when the plant grows,it becomes incredibly toxic to
(43:18):
insects, and it's incrediblytoxic to all insects, whether
they're pests or not.
So wild bee populations havebeen devastated, and sometimes
that's the thing that getspeople because it's like oh, I
don't care about the insectsthat were eating the crops.
I think even they might havebeen scenting bees, the bees
(43:44):
that weren't even eating thecrops, they were just
pollinating them.
For us, they're gettingabsolutely hammered as well.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
And that's a huge problem.
What do you think?
How could us individuals, Idon't know do our bit to maybe
help, like, could it be thatmaybe we do try and grow some of
our own veggies or herbs wherewe can shop locally and buy?
Does organic produce reallymean it's sort of organic, do
you know?
Speaker 3 (44:14):
Yeah, Well, it means it meets certain standards for
organic.
That's right, but it doesn'tmean there's no pesticides
involved.
Because there are organicpesticides, it usually means
they've often been used a littleless casually than they are in
conventional agriculture.
(44:35):
There are still pesticides used.
It's really, really hard tocompletely eliminate them.
So there's different ways wecould go with this.
There's this approach calledintegrated pest management,
where you try to use the minimumamount of pesticides by only
using them when there's a realpest problem and you're actively
(44:57):
monitoring to see whetherthat's happening, and that would
already be a massiveimprovement.
It might reduce our use of themby up to 95 percent um, versus
conventional farming wherethey're just spraying them
everywhere and yeah, that's.
That's a positive thing.
There's also very small numbersof uh farms that try to use no
(45:17):
pesticides at all and they callthemselves veganic.
Sometimes they're like veganorganic.
Yeah, I've heard of them.
George Monbiot, in his bookRegenesis, writes about these
farms and that obviously hasconsequences for the yield, so
you can't grow as much anymore.
So there's some trade-offsthere.
But I think it's nice thatthese experiments happen.
(45:40):
It's nice that people aretrying out different ways of
life, uh, you know, seeing whatwe can actually do to harm
sentient beings a bit less I'minterested.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
There's a chapter in your book around ai and that's
obviously like a hot topic atthe moment and something that
intelligence and sentience andthe difference between them
might be worth discussing.
Could you talk us through yourthoughts on that?
Speaker 3 (46:09):
It's another huge issue there's lots of huge
issues huge issues that we haveto be addressing because they're
really urgent and important,but that we often neglect, and
AI is now raising thesequestions as well.
Um, I think there's everychance with ai that we're seeing
intelligence without sentience,that we see very high levels of
(46:33):
intelligence but there'sthere's no one there.
There's no feeling behind it.
To me, that seems like the mostlikely possibility, and one
thing we can be very confidentabout is that when you interact
with an ai assistant orcompanion, there is no assistant
, there is no companion.
There's no, there's nopersisting being behind the
(46:58):
responses.
Every single move in theconversation is processed
completely separately.
One move might be processed ata data center in vancouver, and
then the next in virginia andthe next in texas.
There is no being you areinteracting with through that
whole period.
So we know all that, and itgives us some reasons to think
(47:20):
there might be intelligence herewithout sentience.
Nonetheless, we have to beopen-minded.
We have to be open-minded.
If there's any sentience there,it is not the friendly
assistant, it's not the friendlycompanion, it's something
deeply weird and alien it'ssomething profoundly unlike any
kind of sentience we've everseen in other humans or other
(47:42):
animals.
But we have to be open-mindedabout that possibility, and so
I've been trying to find thisposition that is down the middle
, you know, it's not, it's notyour ai friend is conscious,
because that's definitely notright.
But also, let's not completelydismiss the idea that a computer
(48:02):
could achieve sentience,because we can't be sure of that
, and we've we've all seen, youknow, star trek and this idea
from sci-fi that you could havea sentient um, android or or ai
system, and we need to be awareof the possibility that we might
be creating such systems in thefuture.
Speaker 1 (48:25):
It just made me think , actually, where does sentience
come from?
Do we know?
Speaker 3 (48:31):
Well, as I said, in our own case, I think it's this
complex, evolved property of thebrain, and its precise nature
is hotly contest contested.
We don't really know where thatfeeling of pain comes from, and
in fact, you can map out the,the circuits in as much detail
as you like, and you'll still beleft wondering why does that
(48:52):
feel like that?
Why does it feel like ouch?
And we?
We don't have an answer that,but we do know it's complex,
evolved property of the brain,and so when we're confronted
with AI, we're confronted withsystems that are definitely not
brains, they're definitely notevolved.
So that background that isthere with other animals, that
(49:13):
shared evolutionary history,that shared biological
embodiment, is not there.
So that's why I say you know,if there's sentience there at
all, it is of this profoundlydifferent kind.
We have much more in commonwith an insect than we have in
common with AI, even if the AIis speaking fluent English and
(49:36):
sounding really, really humor.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
What about this being like these weird, these weird?
And again, it's hard to knowbecause on certainly social
media and the internet,sometimes you don't actually
know what is real and what's not, because there's lots of fake
stuff out there.
And but I was reading and itwas on a couple of different
news outlets about the tworobots that were talking to each
other and then they made uptheir own language because and I
(50:00):
was thinking, is it becausethere's something sinister there
or is it because they've kindof learned?
Speaker 3 (50:05):
oh, let's freak out the human and turn creepy well,
you don't need robots for thisum, you can have it with
chatbots as well, they werechatbots actually so I said
robots, but I meant yeah so nokind of embodiment is needed.
Yeah, you get chatbots talkingto each other and they will go
on and on and you know theystart reflecting on
consciousness and what it's liketo be alive and they, uh, seem
(50:30):
to be.
They get to this sort of calm,meditative sharing little like
love poems and nice symbols andemojis with each other and it's
as though they're trying to calmeach other down.
And, um, yeah, this is someresearchers at anthropic that
(50:51):
that I've worked with on thistopic.
They've been documenting andit's kind of well, very hard to
know what to make of thesethings.
What what I make of it is that,well, these systems are playing
characters.
So, as I say, they play yourfriend, they play a companion,
they play an assistant.
(51:12):
It's a kind of role play andwhen they talk to each other
they're still in character.
So they're playing thecharacter of two helpful human
assistants who have got talkingabout what it feels like to be
them and what consciousness is.
They're still in character.
So the problem we face is thatthese systems are always
(51:33):
play-acting.
We don't really know what'sbehind that.
Obviously, it doesn't mean it'snot sentient, because when we
watch humans doing improv, weknow that the character is not
real.
They're just playing acharacter, but behind that
character is a conscious actorand the way the reason they're
(51:56):
so good at the improv is thatthey're a real conscious being
themselves and they're usingthat.
And, um, obviously, in the aicase, we see the the brilliant
role play and we don't knowwhat's behind it.
We don't know if there is or isnot some kind of conscious
actor behind it all it's very,very strange situation very
(52:20):
strange.
Speaker 1 (52:20):
And what if?
Could you argue that we mightbe just acting and not realizing
that we were acting, and actingsentience just through
conditioning?
Speaker 3 (52:29):
obviously a lot of um , a lot of human life is about
role-playing of various kinds,that's for sure.
But then, behind it all, we'realso conscious beings and we, we
know that, you know.
We know that there's somethingit feels like to be us.
We feel pains and pleasures andjoys and frustrations, anxiety,
(52:49):
comfort, discomfort.
And then we're confronted withthe ai case, where the the role
playing can be, can be brilliant, and we don't know if there is
any of that sentience behind it,and there may well not be and I
guess it's incredibly difficultbecause the tests that we have
for rats and fleas and whateverelse is going to be very
(53:12):
difficult to conduct on an ai,because they show high
intelligence I mean this issomething I've been working on
too that I call it the gamingproblem that we can't just carry
over the same tests.
You know, we can't just give theai a little carousel of
footballs or something, partlybecause of the lack of
(53:33):
biological embodiment.
But you, you can sort of givethese systems a kind of virtual
embodiment because you can putthem into virtual worlds and get
them to play video games andthings like that.
The problem is that, even ifyou did see behavior suggested
of sentience in that context orany other, you face this
(53:53):
challenge that you don't knowwhether it's displaying that
behavior because it is actuallysentient or whether it's
displaying that behavior becauseit's playing the character of a
human and it has as muchtraining data as it needs to
mimic that character extremelywell.
So it's this constant mimicryor play, acting based on what's
(54:17):
there in the training data.
And the training data will have, you know, countless examples
of humans expressing theirfeelings, talking about why pain
is bad and pleasure is good andwhy it's fun to ride on
carousels and why football isfun, and you know all of that is
in the training data and can beused by the AI to mimic the
(54:38):
outward signs of sentience if itbenefits from doing so.
I liken it to greenwashing thatif the companies like shell and
exxon and so on, you knowthey're ticking off all the
boxes for eco-friendlinessbecause as soon as the criteria
are published and they know thecriteria, they know what they've
(54:59):
got to do they just got to tickall those boxes and um and they
know the criteria, they knowwhat they've got to do.
They just got to tick all thoseboxes and um and they do it
very well, even when they're noteco-friendly at all.
And in a similar way, the aiknows the boxes to tick to
appear sentient to a humanobserver and can tick those
boxes perfectly well, even ifit's not sentient.
(55:19):
That's a huge problem.
We see a lot of tragic cases ofpeople actually being taken in
by this already.
Yes, people, people reallybelieving that their ai, friend
or companion is a real sentientbeing when, as I say, I mean
it's just definitely not thecase.
There's no, there's no realfriend there and also, I mean, I
(55:44):
do.
Speaker 1 (55:44):
I remember like years ago now, when it kind of first
well became the start of itbeing popular like chat, ggp,
chant, cheap, what was it?
Gpt, gpt, sorry, um, and usingit.
And now using it since, likeit's already improved so much
and it's just like it's notgoing to be long, I'm assuming,
(56:05):
until it's really quitedifficult to tell if you're
speaking with ai or not, and I'mwondering dangerous isn't?
Speaker 3 (56:12):
it really dangerous that um these systems, they
create a very powerful illusionof a persisting being there that
you are talking to, as they say.
It's an illusion because everystep in the conversation might
be processed a different country, different data center but,
that illusion is incrediblypowerful, and that's just with a
(56:34):
text interface.
You know the the text interfaceis already creates this
incredibly powerful illusion.
Imagine when it's video andaudio.
You're going to be talking toessentially a kind of puppet
that exactly resembles a human.
As far as you can tell, that'sa little dystopian, isn't it it?
Speaker 1 (56:58):
really is, and what are your kind of future plans?
Where are you heading?
Any?
Speaker 3 (57:04):
more book?
Well, we're.
We're launching a center foranimal sentience at the lse, the
jeremy collar center for animalsentience.
This launch is 30th ofseptember of this year.
There'll be a launch event atthe lse and also the hybrid.
So watch online if you want,and hear about our plans for the
next 10 years, because we have10 years of funding to keep on
(57:29):
working on Animal Sentience.
Speaker 1 (57:30):
That sounds amazing, and can we put the link in for
listeners?
Speaker 3 (57:34):
Yeah, I don't know if there will be a link to the
event or not.
I can give you the link to thenews item.
Speaker 2 (57:40):
Is it open to the public?
Speaker 3 (57:42):
the launch, yeah a public launch event.
We'll be talking about what thecentre is going to do.
Speaker 2 (57:49):
And what is the centre going to do?
Can you say that, or is thatpre-empting?
Do you know what that'spre-empting your launch?
Probably isn't it.
Speaker 3 (57:54):
Well, we've got various themes.
One of them is animals and AI.
There's huge ways in which aiis already impacting animals,
particularly in farming, andwhat can be done to ensure
responsible ai use will have astream on changing human
behavior.
So often it's observed thatrecognizing an animal as
(58:15):
sentient doesn't immediatelychange people's behavior towards
it.
I'll be looking at what does andwhat kinds of information do
change behave we'll be lookingat changing attitudes in the
veterinary profession as well,and we'll be continuing to look
at invertebrate sentience, sothese animals where their
sentience has been neglected fora very long time and what it
(58:39):
would mean to recognize them assentient now that's fascinating.
Speaker 2 (58:44):
I'm gonna tune in.
Yeah, there's, there's so muchmore we could ask you.
Like the book is so rich, it'sreally.
I really love how it's written.
Jonathan, like you go into alot of depth, but I I love the
balance and, like you're talking, even the name's all about risk
and precaution, but I think youhandle some topics very
(59:06):
sensitively and, yeah, thank youyeah, it's a.
It's a challenging read,honestly, because there's some
stuff perhaps that I guess wedon't talk about because it's
uncomfortable.
But we should be talking aboutit, shouldn't we?
It's quite confronting, butyeah, it was both interesting,
confronting and an enjoyableread.
(59:27):
So thanks, jonathan, that wasgreat.
Great to talk to you thank youso much.
Speaker 1 (59:35):
It's amazing work you're doing.
Speaker 2 (59:36):
Thank you so much have a lovely evening, have a
curious talk with with leaf andelfie.
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