BERKELEY, CA – April 24, 2025 – Eleos AI Research congratulates Kyle Fish and Anthropic on their announcement of a new research program to investigate potential AI consciousness and welfare. Kyle Fish, the researcher at Anthropic heading this effort, previously co-founded Eleos and was a co-author on Eleos’ landmark report, "Taking AI Welfare Seriously."

Robert Long, Executive Director and co-founder of Eleos AI Research, commented, "This announcement is very promising news for AI welfare. We've known for some time that AI companies are increasingly concerned about the potential consciousness and welfare of the systems they are building. To our knowledge, this is the most significant action any AI company has yet taken to responsibly address potential AI welfare concerns.”

“We're pleased to see that Anthropic cites 'Taking AI Welfare Seriously’ as inspiration for their work on model welfare,” said Long, who was a lead author. “We provide guidance to frontier AI labs that want to proactively and thoughtfully engage with these challenges.”

Rosie Campbell, who recently joined Eleos from OpenAI, added, "Anthropic’s announcement is a positive first step. We hope that they will continue to invest in this area, and urge other frontier labs to follow Anthropic’s lead.”

“Ignoring or downplaying these issues will become increasingly untenable," Campbell said. "Frontier labs need to take credible, proactive steps, such as developing AI welfare policies, evaluating models for relevant consciousness-related properties, and making clear commitments for how they will respond if AI welfare risks emerge.”

Campbell emphasized, “Lab actions are necessary but far from sufficient: AI welfare needs input from researchers, policymakers, and society at large. Eleos intends to collaborate with a broad swathe of stakeholders, and we’d love to hear from people interested in this area.”