Is AI welfare work puntable?

Arguably, AI welfare work is relatively non-urgent and can be left until after the intelligence explosion, since it is hard to make progress on and not needed to avoid AI takeover or authoritarian lock-in.I think that is probably wrong, because:Maybe values will get locked in early by an AI or human takeover before we get the chance to do a long reflection and solve AI welfare.Maybe there is no lock-in, multipolarity persists indefinitely, and some people launch space colonisation missions without thinking carefully about AI welfare.I consider a bunch of other arguments about path dependency, neglectedness, deals with early schemers, heuristics about virtue ethics, the role of ems, etc.I discuss a few implications for prioritising within AI welfare work. In particular, I think complicated technical and philosophical work should be relatively deprioritised, and strategy, policy, and coalitional work should be prioritised.The case for puntingHere is a basic case for why we can delay working on AI welfare until during/after the intelligence explosion:AI welfare is hard to make progress on – it might require conceptual breakthroughs in philosophy of mind and consciousness, which is famously difficult.For longtermists, even if current or nearterm AIs are moral patients, they will be very few in number compared to the digital minds that will exist in Grand Futures.We can get AIs that are superhuman at philosophy and neuroscience and AI interpretability and so forth to do millions of years of human-equivalent research and thinking about AI welfare questions in a few months or years of time during or after an intelligence explosion. We will also have a broader array of possibly-conscious AIs to interview and run tests on.So the plan should be: 1) solve alignment, prevent AI takeover, and avoid a bad lock-in, 2) use ASIs to do lots of thinking and research about AI welfare, 3) implement good AI rights and welfare policies based on this research, 4) spread flourishing through