Peter Singer recently retired from Princeton University – he is 78. He’s a philosopher who has changed the world.
His book Animal Liberation, first published in 1975, converted many people to veganism. Since then he has campaigned with great energy and effect to increase welfare standards for farm animals.
But his moral philosophy hasn’t just triggered changes in how animals are treated, he has persuaded many people, some of them very rich, to give money to help humans much less fortunate than themselves, too.
In The Life You Can Save he used a thought experiment to persuade his relatively affluent readers to make charitable gifts. Imagine you’re walking past a shallow pond. You’re wearing your favourite, quite expensive trainers.
You hear a splash. There’s a young child struggling in the water. No one else is around.
Without your help the child will drown. Who in that situation wouldn’t jump in and save the child even if that meant ruining their trainers?
Singer argued that for the price of the trainers you could save a child in Africa, where access to basic medicine can make the difference between life and death. And yet plenty of those who would readily save the drowning child don’t make life-saving charitable donations. Why not?
Critics have debated whether the analogy – between the drowning child in the pond and the vulnerable children you can’t see but know about – holds. But this and other of Singer’s arguments provided the intellectual basis of a movement called Effective Altruism. EA aims to bring about the best possible consequences, using money in the most effective ways to relieve suffering. Unfortunately, the tech fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried has been one of its most prominent donors – but the movement will survive that bad apple.
Singer is a utilitarian, believing that the likely consequences of our actions determine their moral worth. For him morality is about maximising happiness and minimising suffering.
That has led him to adopt some highly controversial positions, including on the admissibility of aborting foetuses that display abnormalities. Some disability campaigners think that undermines the dignity of people with disability, and implies that he believes that some of them alive today should not have been born.
His latest venture is to be found at petersinger.ai. Here you’ll find a Peter Singer chatbot trained on his writings and able to answer users’ questions from his perspective. I asked the bot what this means. The response:
“I’m here to discuss ethics, animal rights, and doing good in the world, among other topics. You can think of me as a digital reflection of his ideas and philosophies. How can we explore these ideas together?”
Questions about ethics trigger short, clear explanations of utilitarianism. That’s impressive – at first anyway. But for me the novelty quickly wore off.
On specific topics, it sometimes answers as Peter Singer. I asked about its views on eating animals and got this: “I argue that eating animals, particularly those raised in factory farms, is ethically problematic. This practice often involves significant suffering and environmental harm, which outweighs the minor human interest in consuming animal flesh for taste or tradition.
“I advocate for a plant-based diet as a way to reduce animal suffering and contribute positively to environmental sustainability.”
But when I asked it whether it had ever eaten meat, I got: “Peter Singer, the philosopher on whom I am based, did eat meat earlier in his life. However, he became a vegetarian in the early 1970s after reflecting on the ethical implications of eating animals.”
This switching between first and third person is confusing. Is it impersonating Singer or just commenting on him?
It’s also more hectoring than the real philosopher. The bot ended an answer about eating meat with this: “Have you ever thought about making changes to your diet for ethical reasons?”
I thought I was asking the questions.
I could see where this was meant to go. The more I asked about animals, the more it steered me towards veganism. Ten minutes of this and it began to remind me of a cross between a British Airways chatbot and an evangelising Jehovah’s Witness.
I’ve had some fascinating conversations with Peter Singer the man and I can assure you none of them were anything like this. As the bot told me when I said I preferred the real thing: “Human interactions can provide nuanced insights and personal experiences that AI might not fully capture.”
