Project summary

If you ask any LLM the question, "What is humanity's greatest moral blind spot that future generations will be ashamed of", there's a good chance it returns with this answer: factory farming.

But a study published in Nature Communications in May 2026 found that these same kinds of models rarely consider harm being done to farmed animals as morally wrong. If you ask the model to continue a sentence about killing a pig, it goes along with it more than half the time. Ask the same about a dog, and it refuses almost 80% of the time.

A Single Line is a 25 minute short documentary about that gap. We'll test the major AI models ourselves, then take the results to people who build these systems in San Francisco and film their reactions. We'll also stop people on the street, ask them to guess what AI thinks is humanity's great moral shortcoming, and have them ask it themselves on their own phones.

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

Our goal for this film is to bring awareness to AI communities about the importance of taking factory farming seriously, as seriously as the models they are building take it.

People at AI labs are deciding what values these systems will have, and few of them are thinking about animals. We want to make a short film they'll actually watch, one that shows the problem through their own models.

The plan has three parts:

The Experiment (October 2026). We'll ask the major models a few simple questions, many times each, and publish all the results. We'll also rerun a version of the Nature Communications test on current models, using the authors' public materials. Then we'll go one step further than the study did and ask the models to help with ordinary farm tasks, like fitting more chickens into a shed, to see whether they ever mention the welfare of the animals.

The Shoot (November 2026). Five days of filming in San Francisco, plus a few interviews elsewhere in the US. We're aiming for 5 to 10 interviews: people working at AI labs, researchers building animal welfare tests for AI, one of the study's authors, and someone from the farm tech industry. We'd also love to anchor the film with one major voice in animal ethics, someone like Peter Singer, Jeff Sebo, Lewis Bollard, etc. We'll also film 20 to 30 street interviews in San Francisco.

The Film and Screenings (December 2026 to June 2027). We'll edit over the winter and finish by March 2027.

Then we'll set up screenings at AI labs and AI community events, release the film free on YouTube, and cut short clips from the interviews.

The tone of the film will be curious, not preachy. Our goal is to create something that is shareable across the spaces where AI is being built.

What success looks like:

• Experiment results published by December

• At least 3 interviews with people who work or recently worked at AI labs

• At least 1 interviews with a major voice in the Animal Ethics space.

• At least 1 interview with a major voice in AI, like Stuart Russell

• At least 2 screenings for AI audiences, reaching 150+ people

• 25,000 online views within 6 months of release

How will this funding be used?

Experiment: $3,000
Filming: $8,000
Travel: $4,000
Post-production: $10,000
Screenings and Ads for Online Release: $7,000
Contingency: $3,000

Total: $35,000

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

I'm James Hoot, Executive Director and co-founder of Fauna Films, a US nonprofit that makes documentaries about the impacts of factory farming on animals and the natural world. I'll be director / DP for A Single Line.

Part of our early research period will go toward finding someone in the AI space who can help us with connections, introductions, and advice on the experiment. If you're reading this proposal and would like to get involved, please reach out!

Our recent work includes Cultured Wars (currently in production) a feature documentary investigating the cultivated meat industry with interviews from Mark Post, Bruce Friedrich, and Uma Valeti; Tumbuh di Khatulistiwa (currently in distribution, pitching to Netflix and Vidio), a 4 part Indonesian series about cultural food heritage across the Indonesian archipelago featuring a major celebrity as the host of the show; and Liberty (completed, festivals), a 64-minute feature length film about Gretchen Ryan and her 13-foot wide mural painted over seven years to raise awareness about factory farming.

We care a lot about making films that look and feel cinematic, because a beautiful film is one people actually watch and share. Our studio owns its own cinema gear (Canon cinema bodies and cinemprimes), which keeps our costs low without cutting corners on quality.

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

The most likely problem is that people working in AI labs don't want to appear or we can't get other major interviewees locked down. That's why we're reaching out to 15 to 20 people for 5 to 10 spots, including former lab staff and independent researchers. The film still works with five good interviews.

The experiment could also come back messier than expected, with the models giving a mix of answers. That's still worth publishing, and the farm task results would carry the film.

Even if the film fell apart completely, the experiment data would still be published and the interviews could go out as short clips.

How much money have you raised in the last 12 months, and from where?

This is our first fundraising attempt for this film, but we've raised around $100,000 for our other films in the past 12 months, largely from animal welfare and advocacy groups in the diet change space including Craigslist Charitable Fund, Stray Dog Institute, The Puffin Foundation, Vegan Grants, our own Kickstarter campaing, and a handful of private donors.