This isn't clear to me. Whey is a byproduct of milk->cheese production.
This is objectionable if you find any of the meat farming practices objectionable, but whey itself does not necessitate killing anything.
A replacement rate breeding program for cows that rotates dairy production is probably possible. It's just not what we seem to want.
This is assuming that people would eat calves if they weren't killed so that we can take their milk.
We _could_ (probably) figure out a way to not require killing them, I just don't know what that would be.
If god appeared and said that the Hindus were right all along and cows are sacred and milk is their gift to us - we'd do it just fine.
If AI means "Artificial Intelligence" I do not believe you.
Not sure I'd single out whey. It is really all dairy.
And, all chicken, all beef, etc... If you dig into the actual mechanisms of how harvesting is done, it is a horror show.
We do it anyway.
When I sit down and think about the amount of murder required to maintain any omnivorous or carnivorous creature, it's really a mindwarp. I (at least) have been quite separated from it my whole life, until I started hunting, really.
Wolves and large carnivores especially are just brutal. They will take your children down and eat them alive in front of you. Fair exchange we drive them off and kill you quickly, is at least one way of looking at it. But there's no "pleasant" way of looking at any of it.