“AI for Animals 2025 Bay Area Retrospective” by Constance Li, AI for Animals

Apr 19, 2025

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Our Mission: To build a multidisciplinary field around using technology—especially AI—to improve the lives of nonhumans now and in the future.

Overview

Background

This hybrid conference had nearly 550 participants and took place March 1-2, 2025 at UC Berkeley. It was organized by AI for Animals for $74k by volunteer core organizers Constance Li, Sankalpa Ghose, and Santeri Tani.

This conference has evolved since 2023:

The 1st conference mainly consisted of philosophers and was a single track lecture/panel.
The 2nd conference put all lectures on one day and followed it with 2 days of interactive unconference sessions happening in parallel and a week of in-person co-working.
This 3rd conference had a week of related satellite events, free shared accommodations for 50+ attendees, 2 days of parallel lectures/panels/unconferences, 80 unique sessions, of which 32 are available on Youtube, Swapcard to enable 1:1 connections, and a Slack community to continue conversations year [...]

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Outline:

(00:32) Overview

(00:35) Background

(02:27) Outcomes

(03:51) The Event(s)

(04:19) Speaking Sessions

(04:23) en-US-AvaMultilingualNeural__ Conference presentation scenes with speakers and audience in auditorium setting. The image shows a collage of different presentation scenes at what appears to be an academic or professional conference. The main image shows an auditorium with attendees watching a video presentation on a large screen. Other smaller images show speakers on stage in different settings - some seated in orange chairs for a panel discussion, others at podiums. Theres a logo visible for what appears to be a research institute in one of the frames. The setting appears academic/professional in nature, with proper presentation equipment, stage lighting, and organized seating arrangements typical of a conference or symposium event.

(05:10) Featured Talks

(10:13) Lightning Talks

(11:55) Interactive Sessions

(12:19) Unconferences

(13:22) Meetups

(13:36) Mapping Workshops

(13:44) Office Hours

(13:59) Topic Distribution

(14:18) Satellite Events

(14:41) en-US-AvaMultilingualNeural__ Events schedule showing AI and animal-focused activities from Feb 26-Mar 2.

(14:52) en-US-AvaMultilingualNeural__ People gathered at social events, networking and dining in various settings.

(15:02) Behind the Scenes