The NYU Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy examines the nature and intrinsic value of nonhuman minds, with special focus on invertebrates and AI systems. Which nonhumans are conscious, sentient, and agentic? What kind of moral, legal, and political status should they have? How should we make decisions that affect them in circumstances involving disagreement and uncertainty? Our research agenda focuses on the following general themes, all of which are important, difficult, and contested—calling for considerable caution and humility. 

CMEP advances research on the nature and value of nonhuman minds by contributing funding, authorship, or both. What follows is a list of relevant outputs to which our team has contributed since the launch of CMEP in 2022, in reverse chronological order. 

What will society think about AI consciousness? Lessons from the animal case
Lucius Caviola,  Jeff Sebo, and Jonathan Birch
Trends in Cognitive Sciences (6/24/2025)

How will society respond to the idea that artificial intelligence (AI) could be conscious? Drawing on lessons from perceptions of animal consciousness, we highlight psychological, social, and economic factors that shape perceptions of AI consciousness. These insights can inform emerging debates about AI moral status, ethical treatment, and future policy.

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Is There a Tension between AI Safety and AI Welfare?
Robert Long, Jeff Sebo, and Toni Sims
Philosophical Studies (5/23/2025)

The field of AI safety considers whether and how AI development can be safe and beneficial for humans and other animals, and the field of AI welfare considers whether and how it can be safe and beneficial for AI systems. There is a prima facie tension between these projects, since some measures in AI safety, if deployed against humans and other animals, would raise questions about the ethics of constraint, deception, surveillance, alteration, suffering, death, disenfranchisement, and more. Is there in fact a tension between these projects? It depends in part on what potentially conscious, robustly agentic, or otherwise morally significant AI systems might need and what we might owe them. This paper argues that, all things considered, there is indeed a moderately strong tension—and it deserves more examination.

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Evaluating Animal Consciousness
Kristin Andrews, Jonathan Birch, and Jeff Sebo
Science (2/20/2025)

The emerging science of animal consciousness is advancing through investigations of behavioral and neurobiological markers associated with subjective experience across diverse species. Research on honeybee pessimism, cuttlefish planning, and self-recognition in cleaner wrasse fish provides evidence that consciousness may be widespread throughout the animal kingdom. Although the field faces uncertainties—stemming from the absence of a secure, unified theory of consciousness and the complexity of differentiating conscious from unconscious processes—these investigations underscore the value of open-minded inquiry. By exploring consciousness across taxa, researchers can collect valuable evidence and set the stage for a more inclusive understanding of the tree of life.

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Are Individuals or Ecological Wholes What Matter? Yes.
Jeff Sebo
Oxford Public Philosophy (12/1/2024)

There tends to be strong disagreement in animal and environmental ethics between individuals, who hold that individuals are the primary units of moral analysis, and ecocentrists, who hold that ecological wholes are the primary units of moral analysis. This essay suggests that the concept ‘primary unit of moral analysis’ is ambiguous, and that when we disambiguate it, we can identify a plausible view according to which individualists are correct in one sense and ecocentrists are correct in another sense. Specifically, in both science and ethics, we can make a distinction between the most basic units of analysis and the most helpful units of analysis, and we can say that smaller beings like individuals tend to be more basic but that larger beings like ecological wholes tend to be more helpful in many contexts. 

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Taking AI Welfare Seriously
Robert Long, Jeff Sebo, Patrick Butlin, Kathleen Finlinson, Kyle Fish, Jacqueline Harding, Jacob Pfau, Toni Sims, Jonathan Birch, David Chalmers
arXiv (11/4/2024; co-sponsored with Eleos AI)

This report argues that some AI systems may soon be conscious and/or robustly agentic, meaning that AI welfare and moral patienthood are no longer concerns only for science fiction or the distant future. They are pressing issues for the near future, and AI companies and other actors have a responsibility to take them seriously. We recommend three first steps: (1) acknowledge that AI welfare is an important and difficult issue, (2) assess AI systems for evidence of consciousness and robust agency, and (3) prepare policies and procedures for treating AI systems with an appropriate level of moral concern. We also offer frameworks for guiding this work amid persistent disagreement and uncertainty, and the risk of over-attribution of welfare in some cases and under-attribution in others.

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Below we list select op-eds, essays,  talks, panels, interviews, and coverage related to the nature and intrinsic value of nonhuman minds from CMEP researchers and affiliates. 

The NYU Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy — with support from the Guarini Center on Environmental, Energy, & Land Use Law and the More-Than-Human Life (MOTH) Program at NYU Law — is thrilled to be hosting the fourth annual Brooks Animal Law Student Summit on November 15, 2025. The aim of this event is to bring together students and faculty in animal law and animal studies for a full day of group discussions and open networking, with a vegan breakfast, lunch, and reception for all. This summit will be preceded by a public event hosted by the NYU Wild Animal Welfare Program on Friday, November 14, 2025.