Summary 

I’m a CS student and I’m new to the world of animal ethics. This week, I realized that the AI models we use every day aren't actually neutral. They are taught to see animals as products. I want to talk about why we should treat this like a "bug" that needs fixing.

How I got here 

I’m based in Mumbai and mostly spend my time building websites and learning how to code. I always thought AI was just a tool to make things more efficient. But after starting this fellowship and watching the AI & Animals documentary, I realized I was missing a huge part of the picture.

The "Bug" in the system 

The thing that really stuck with me was how LLMs talk about animals. If you ask about a chicken, the AI usually starts talking about recipes or meat.

• It's like the code has been taught that "Chicken" only equals "Food."
• As a developer, this feels like a classification error. We’ve ignored the fact that these are sentient beings with their own lives.
• If we don't fix these "default" settings now, every app we build in the future will just keep repeating this mistake.

We are still in the early stages 

One big thing I learned is that we are in a narrow window of time. AI is growing so fast, and the values we put into it today are going to stay there for a long time. It’s a lot easier to fix the foundation of a house while you're building it than it is to try and change it after the whole building is up.

What I want to do next 

I’m still just starting out, but I want my career to mean something. I don’t want to just optimize things for profit; I want to help build tools that actually care about welfare. I’m looking for open-source projects where I can learn from people who are already doing this work.

Questions I'm thinking about

• Is it actually possible to write code that measures an animal's well-being instead of just how fast it grows?
• How can students like me get involved in "Ethical AI" without needing a PhD first?

References

1. Animal Ethics (2026), AI & Animals: A Documentary.

Written as part of the Sentient Futures AI x Animals Fellowship, Group 8. 

I'm brand new to this, so if you have any tips or know of any cool open-source projects for beginners, please let me know!