What’s On Our Plate — And What It Teaches AI

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As an educator and vegan, I know something about human nature. How we treat those with less power says a great deal about who we are, and that makes me wonder what AI might learn from us.

AI learns from vast amounts of information created by humans, and that information includes our achievements, but also our prejudice, cruelty, and hypocrisy. What might AI learn from a species that confines, exploits, and kills billions of animals every year for food, even when plant-based alternatives are available?

The issue is not just whether AI will learn how factory farms operate. It is whether it might also absorb the reasoning we use to defend them: that the powerful can control the weak, and that suffering is acceptable when we benefit from it, and it is out of sight.

We take away animals’ freedom, separate them from their families, and treat their lives as products. Then we sit down to eat, without thinking about the suffering behind our meals. We call it tradition, taste or personal choice. But changing the name does not change what happens to the animals.

I am no AI expert, and I cannot predict how AI will develop. But if it learns from human knowledge and behavior, we should seriously consider what our eating habits are unintentionally teaching it.

The day is fast approaching when AI surpasses us in certain kinds of intelligence and decision-making. That possibility raises an uncomfortable question: If we justify exploiting animals because we consider them less intelligent than ourselves, what happens when we are no longer the most intelligent in the room?

I am not saying AI will turn against humanity or treat people exactly as we treat farmed animals. I am asking us to consider the example we are setting. We worry that AI might take away our freedom, jobs, treat us as inferior, or decide that our lives have little value. We fear being controlled by something more powerful than ourselves. We want it to respect our rights and protect our interests, but based on human behavior, this is but wishful thinking.

We worry and condemn the abuse of power when we might become its victims, but defend it when we benefit from it. We want our suffering to matter while accepting the suffering of other beings as the price of a meal. That is more than an inconsistency. It is hypocrisy.

Intelligence should not determine whether a living being deserves care and protection. Animals do not need to speak our language or think like us for their suffering to matter. If they can feel pain and fear, we have reason to care about what happens to them.

We can begin with something as ordinary as a meal. Behind the food on our plates are living beings with their own needs, feelings, and relationships. We have turned their lives into products, their suffering into a business, and their deaths into everyday purchases.

But we have choices. Plant-based foods offer a way to reduce animal suffering and lessen some of the environmental harm caused by our diets. We do not have to accept animal exploitation as a normal part of life.

I don’t need to be a computer scientist to question the values we are passing on to AI. If we want AI to respect human life, we should examine how we treat the lives already under our control. We cannot demand compassion from a more powerful intelligence while refusing to show compassion to those over whom we already have power.

What’s on our plate is more than a source of food. It is a mirror reflecting what we value, and offers a warning about how artificial intelligence might one day treat us.

Lewis M. Randa is a Quaker, pacifist, vegan, educator and social change activist. He is the Executive Director of The Peace Abbey Foundation and The Life Experience School. 

Find holistic Veganism in the Spirit of Change online Alternative Health Directory.

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