An emerging research area concerning possible machine welfare and moral status.
AI welfare is the newest and most unsettled topic here: an emerging question about whether artificial systems could ever have welfare of their own, and if so, under what conditions we could know it. Unlike animal welfare, where sentience is uncertain in degree but not in kind, AI systems raise the harder question of whether the relevant kind of inner experience is present at all.
What recursive self-improvement in AI could mean for humanity, and why welfare-economic reasoning offers a practical framework for managing the risk under deep uncertainty.
Read research note →Why artificial systems raise the question of moral status differently than animals do, and why the uncertainty itself is starting to matter for AI governance.
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