AI is being developed for many applications in the livestock industry to control the environmental impact of livestock and reduce inefficiency in the sector while also responding to some of the ethical concerns raised earlier about the welfare of farm animals (Bao & Xie, 2022). Some ways AI has been developed in the sector are to test for pig coughing for respiratory issues (Zhao et al., 2020), poultry health detection (Alex & Joseph, 2019), to optimise the input and output of chicken broilers (Amid & Mesri Gundoshmian, 2017), and analysing lactating sow postures as determinants of their welfare (Zheng et al., 2018). 

However, the increased use of AI on the farm is also raising ethical and social concerns (Bossert & Hagendorff, 2021); for example, studies on the negative biases caused by AI toward animals (with words such as cow, pig, and chicken generating images of the meat of these animals or their conditions on the farm). Researchers claim that this is a form of speciesism against animals by depicting them as simply food (Hagendorff et al., 2022). There is a concern that AI is being developed with a lack of care for animals or they are simply objects or things to be manipulated. As a result, some voices in AI ethics are calling for better treatment of animals and inclusion within AI ethics debates (Singer & Tse, 2022).

Responding to these concerns, this paper implements a ‘policy scenario’ methodology (Wright et al., 2020) to identify the impacts AI will have on farm animals by 2035. I will begin by identifying where current state-of-the-art AI livestock research is and, through expert-led discussions and workshops, will propose potential future developments in this area. The input from 15 experts (from biotechnological, social, animal, and environmental sciences) will be gathered in an interdisciplinary half-day workshop to develop a scenario of AI's impact on the livestock sector by 2035. This paper will present these findings, specifically addressing the drivers and barriers and potential ethical, legal, social, and economic (ELSE) impacts caused by AI in the livestock sector in the coming 10 years.