The AI×Animals future is in your hands. This final session distills all that we have learned over the past seven weeks into a concrete impact plan for you to carry forward after the fellowship. You will develop and receive targeted feedback on your project pitches and career strategies. Together, let’s build better AI futures for all sentient beings.
🧩 Central questions
- Major issues: Which specific challenges at the AI×Animals frontier are currently the most important, tractable, and neglected?
- Personal fit and synergy: How can individuals from diverse professional backgrounds (tech, policy, science, advocacy, etc.) uniquely leverage their existing expertise to advance positive AI-animal outcomes? What opportunities are there for high-impact transdisciplinary collaboration?
- Organizations: Who are the key organizations currently working on these high-stakes, high-leverage issues, and what defines their core strategy?
- Gaps and opportunities: Where are the most critical gaps and opportunities in this space?
- Resources: What are the most valuable informational resources, funding sources, connections, and events necessary to enter and succeed in this area?
🧭 Learning objectives
- Understand: Identify important, tractable, and neglected problems. Map the relevant ecosystem of organizations and stakeholders working on these issues, and pinpoint critical gaps and opportunities.
- Assess: Evaluate your own personal fit for working in this area through quick and easy tests for fitness. Identify areas of uncertainty and anticipate backfire risks.
- Reason: Apply evidence and principles to build a personalised post-fellowship impact plan (project pitch and/or career strategy).
- Next Steps: Execute the first steps of your impact plan. Establish strategic connections, explore leads, and learn more. Leverage the Sentient Futures Slack community for ongoing collaboration and support.
Use the table of contents on the right to quickly navigate this page.
Resources
Required readings
Further readings (optional)
Pre-session exercises
This week's exercises are designed to help you synthesize your learnings into actionable personal strategy – no matter where you are in your career.
Please complete both if you would like feedback on both your project proposal and career plan. Alternatively, you may choose to focus on either one or the other depending on which would be most useful for you to receive critical feedback on during our final session.
The more detail you provide up front, the better feedback you will receive.
At the same time, make sure you are able to communicate your ideas briefly and clearly to people who may not have thought about the issue as much as you!
- Leave at least one comment on somebody else’s response.
- Submit your responses in the weekly Slack thread created by your facilitator in your channel at least 24 hours before your regularly scheduled meeting.
- You can write your responses in bullet point format if that’s easier.
Pitch a project for the Sentient Futures Project Incubator Fellowship
[400 words] Translate your learning into impact in our upcoming Project Incubator Fellowship. Starting in January, you will have the chance to work with experienced mentors on impactful projects over the course of two months.
Topics can be anything related to nonhuman sentience and welfare, including (but not limited to):
- Impact of AI on animals (e.g. PLF, interspecies communication, AI-powered advocacy)
- Longtermism and future suffering risks
- Wild animal suffering
- Neglected and future farmed animals
- Transition to post-AGI society
- Artificial sentience/Digital minds
- Space governance
- Macrostrategy and cause prioritization
Follow the template below to design a pitch to share and receive feedback on during our final session.
Mentee applications for the Project Incubator Fellowship will open soon– stay tuned!
1. The problem statement
- Identify the specific, narrow problem you aim to solve.
- Why the problem is important (e.g. welfare implications, scale, stakes) or neglected
2. The solution & deliverable
- What is the concrete, feasible output you will produce in 2 months? (e.g., literature review, policy brief, technical demo, pilot study design, grant proposal, survey, etc.).
- What methodology will you use? (e.g. research, coding, case studies, expert interviews, etc.).
3. High impact potential
- Define the impact: How will the successful completion of this 2-month project significantly move the needle on the problem outlined above?
4. Personal fit & next steps
- Why are you the right person? How does your current background, skills, or specialized knowledge uniquely position you to execute this project?
- How does this project fit into your post-fellowship impact journey? (e.g. career capital, connections, project portfolio, upskilling).
- What is the immediate next step for the project after the fellowship concludes (the "launch plan")? Think about a rough 8 week timeline.
Mapping your impact journey
[400 words] How has the AI×Animals Fellowship prepared you to amplify your own career impact? In this exercise, you will chart your own path ahead by developing a concrete, prioritized strategy. Start by defining your ultimate goal and then, working backward, “reverse engineer” it into specific milestones, including immediate steps.
This exercise is designed to be valuable whether you are planning a full career switch or aiming to maximize your influence within your current professional role/field.
3-5 years (long-term goals)
- Specific actions: Define a specific, ambitious career impact achievement (e.g. “develop a welfare certification and monitoring scheme for PLF chickens”, “transition to full-time work as an AI policy advisor”, etc.).
- If applicable, list 2-3 organizations that represent this ideal impact target. (Hint: browse in the further readings appendix.)
- Rationale: How does this goal serve nonhuman welfare in a high-stakes cause area (e.g. PLF, interspecies communication, etc.)?
6-24 months (mid-term goals)
- Specific actions: Build foundational expertise. List 2 concrete, long-term commitments (e.g. degree, research affiliation, etc.).
- Rationale: Which types of career capital (expertise, network, publications) are required to achieve your 3-5 year long-term goals? How do these activities build that career capital?
0-6 months (immediate next steps)
- Specific actions: Secure next position/training. List up to 3 high-priority next steps you can take to enable your midterm goals (e.g. connections to make, project ideas, conferences to attend, roles/internships/courses to apply for, etc.).
- Test of fitness: Identify a quick and easy way to test your suitability for this trajectory before fully committing (e.g. completing a project internship or course, publishing a forum post, joining a reading group, directly reaching out to individuals from orgs working on related issues).
- Rationale: How does this action directly address a skill gap or leverage a new connection to enable your 6-24 month mid-term goals?
Targeted feedback
- Identify 1-2 specific areas of uncertainty where you need expert input (e.g. "Am I overlooking backfire risks of strategy X?" or "Which PhD program is best for pursuing this research?").
- Identify 1-3 individuals or orgs who you can reach out to clarify these matters
