How AI is affecting farmed aquatic animals
Welcome to the RP Strategic Animal Webinars and the talk and Q&A session: “How AI is affecting farmed aquatic animals”
Date: Tuesday, July 28 (10 AM PDT, 1 PM EDT, 6 PM BST, 7 PM CEST)
About: Aquaculture represents hundreds of billions of shrimp and fish at any given moment. While increased automation has been a long-term trend in the industry, artificial intelligence is quietly moving into these underwater operations. Cameras can count fish, algorithms decide when and how much to feed, and machine-learning systems flag disease before a human spots it. As AI reshapes how aquatic animals are farmed, will it improve their welfare? Might it entrench or even scale up their suffering?
In this Strategic Animal webinar, Rethink Priorities Senior Researcher Dr. Sophie Williamson will share findings from RP's three-part research series How AI Is Affecting Farmed Aquatic Animals. Drawing on a database of 90+ AI-aquaculture companies with evidence of deployment across 71 countries, and interviews with industry experts, she will map:
what AI tech for aquaculture is,
where it's actually being used,
and what it could mean for the fish, shrimp, and other animals living inside these systems.
Whether you work in animal advocacy, research or funding, this session offers a grounded, evidence-based look at a fast-moving frontier for some of the world’s most farmed animals.
Speaker: Dr. Sophie Williamson is a Senior Researcher in the Animal Welfare Department at Rethink Priorities, where she leads the research series How AI Is Affecting Farmed Aquatic Animals. Previously, she was a Project Manager at TWS Partners, an economic strategy consultancy (2021–2025), and a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (2019–2021). She holds a PhD in theoretical particle physics from the Sorbonne University.
Format: We’ll start with a focused 20-30-minute presentation, followed by an extended Q&A session.