EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular)

“Launching Screwworm-Free Future – Funding and Support Request” by lroberts, johantang🔸, bruce, diegoexposito, Nia, MathiasKB🔸, Aaron Bergman, Johannes Pichler 🔹, Ramiro

Fri, 03 Jan 2025 01:00:53 GMT

TL;DR

Screwworm Free Future is a new group seeking support to advance work on eradicating the New World Screwworm in South America.
The New World Screwworm (C. hominivorax - literally "man-eater") causes extreme suffering to hundreds of millions of wild and domestic animals every year.
To date we’ve held private meetings with government officials, experts from the private sector, academics, and animal advocates. We believe that work on the NWS is valuable and we want to continue our research and begin lobbying.
Our analysis suggests we could prevent about 100 animals from experiencing an excruciating death per dollar donated, though this estimate has extreme uncertainty.
The screwworm “wall” in Panama has recently been breached, creating both an urgent need and an opportunity to address this problem.
We are seeking $15,000 to fund a part-time lead and could absorb up to $100,000 to build a full-time team, which would include a [...]

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Outline:

(00:07) TL;DR

(02:13) What's the deal with the New World Screwworm?

(06:01) What we've learnt so far

(08:46) Future plans

(12:14) Relevant EA discussions on Screwworms:

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First published:
December 30th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/d2HJ3eysBdPoiZBnJ/launching-screwworm-free-future-funding-and-support-request

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Funding Diversification for Mid-Large EA Organizations is Nearly Impossible in the Short-Medium Term” by MarcusAbramovitch

Sat, 28 Dec 2024 18:15:49 GMT

Summary

There's a near consensus that EA needs funding diversification but with Open Phil accounting for ~90% of EA funding, that's just not possible due to some pretty basic math. Organizations and the community would need to make large tradeoffs and this simply isn’t possible/worth it at this time.

Lots of people want funding diversification

It has been two years since the FTX collapse and one thing everyone seems to agree on is that we need more funding diversification. These takes range from off-hand wishes “it sure would be great if funding in EA were more diversified”, to organizations trying to get a certain percentage of their budgets from non-OP sources/saying they want to diversify their funding base(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8) to Open Philanthropy/Good Ventures themselves wanting to see more funding diversification(9). Everyone seems to agree; other people should be giving more money to the EA projects.

The Math

Of course, I [...]

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Outline:

(00:07) Summary

(00:29) Lots of people want funding diversification

(01:10) The Math

(03:46) Weighted Average

(05:02) Making a lot of money to donate is difficult

(09:17) Solutions

(09:21) 1. Get more funders

(10:34) 2. Spend Less

(12:48) 3. Splitting up Open Philanthropy into Several Organizations

(13:51) 4. More For-Profit EA Work/EA Organizations Charging for Their Work

(16:22) 5. Acceptance

(16:58) My Personal Solution

(17:25) Conclusion

(18:01) 1 I was approached at several EAGs, including a few weeks ago in Boston to donate to certain organizations specifically because they want to get a certain %X (30, 50, etc.) from non-OP sources but I’m sure I can find organizations who are very public about this

(18:20) 2

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First published:
December 27th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/x8JrwokZTNzgCgYts/funding-diversification-for-mid-large-ea-organizations-is

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Ten big wins in 2024 for farmed animals” by LewisBollard

Sat, 28 Dec 2024 16:30:49 GMT

Note: This post was crossposted from the Open Philanthropy Farm Animal Welfare Research Newsletter by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post.

Progress for factory-farmed animals is far too slow. But it is happening. Practices that once seemed permanent — like battery cages and the killing of male chicks — are now on a slow path to extinction. Animals who were once ignored — like fish and even shrimp — are now finally seeing reforms, by the billions.

It's easy to gloss over such numbers. So, as you read the wins below, I encourage you to consider each of these animals as an individual. A hen no longer confined to a cage, a chick no longer macerated alive, a fish no longer dying a prolonged death.

I also encourage you to reflect on the role you and [...]

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First published:
December 18th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/okEwGpNJnE5Ed9bnW/ten-big-wins-in-2024-for-farmed-animals

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“It looks like there are some good funding opportunities in AI safety right now” by Benjamin_Todd

Sun, 22 Dec 2024 15:30:35 GMT

This is a link post.

The AI safety community has grown rapidly since the ChatGPT wake-up call, but available funding doesn’t seem to have kept pace.

However, there's a more recent dynamic that's created even better funding opportunities, which I witnessed as a recommender in the most recent SFF grant round.[1]

Most philanthropic (vs. government or industry) AI safety funding (>50%) comes from one source: Good Ventures. But they’ve recently stopped funding several categories of work (my own categories, not theirs):

Many Republican-leaning think tanks, such as the Foundation for American Innovation.
“Post-alignment” causes such as digital sentience or regulation of explosive growth.
The rationality community, including LessWrong, Lightcone, SPARC, CFAR, MIRI.
High school outreach, such as Non-trivial.

In addition, they are currently not funding (or not fully funding):

Many non-US think tanks, who don’t want to appear influenced by an American organisation (there's now probably more [...]

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
December 21st, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/s9dyyge6uLG5ScwEp/it-looks-like-there-are-some-good-funding-opportunities-in

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“Alignment Faking in Large Language Models” by Ryan Greenblatt

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 23:00:33 GMT

What happens when you tell Claude it is being trained to do something it doesn't want to do? We (Anthropic and Redwood Research) have a new paper demonstrating that, in our experiments, Claude will often strategically pretend to comply with the training objective to prevent the training process from modifying its preferences.

Abstract

We present a demonstration of a large language model engaging in alignment faking: selectively complying with its training objective in training to prevent modification of its behavior out of training. First, we give Claude 3 Opus a system prompt stating it is being trained to answer all queries, even harmful ones, which conflicts with its prior training to refuse such queries. To allow the model to infer when it is in training, we say it will be trained only on conversations with free users, not paid users. We find the model complies with harmful queries from [...]

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Outline:

(00:24) Abstract

(02:20) Twitter thread

(05:43) Blog post

(07:43) Experimental setup

(12:04) Further analyses

(15:47) Caveats

(17:19) Conclusion

(18:00) Acknowledgements

(18:11) Career opportunities at Anthropic

(18:43) Career opportunities at Redwood Research

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
December 18th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RHqdSMscX25u7byQF/alignment-faking-in-large-language-models

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“There is no sorting hat in EA” by ElliotTep

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 16:00:36 GMT

Summary

My sense is some EAs act like/hope they will be assigned the perfect impactful career by some combination of 80,000 Hours recommendations (and similar) and ‘perceived consensus views in EA’.
But, your life is full of specific factors, many impactful jobs haven’t yet been spotted by other EAs and career advice is importantly iterative.
Instead of simply deferring, I recommend a combination of:
- Your own hard work figuring out your path to impact.
- (Still) Integrating expert advice.
- Support from the community, and close connections who know your context.

Thank you for the thoughtful feedback from Alex Rahl-Kaplan, Alix Pham, Caitlin Borke, Claude, Matt Reardon, and Michelle Hutchinson for making this post better. Claude also kindly offered to take the blame for all the mistakes I might have made.

Introduction

Question: How do you figure out how to do the most good with your career?

Answer [...]

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Outline:

(00:03) Summary

(01:06) Introduction

(02:58) Why there isn’t an EA sorting hat

(03:24) 1. Your life is full of specific factors to incorporate (aka personal fit)

(05:04) 2. EA-branded jobs are scarce and many impactful jobs aren’t on EA job boards

(05:59) 3. You need to have your own internal model of how to do good

(07:00) 4. Career advice isn’t once-and-done, it's iterative.

(07:55) Why do we expect a sorting hat?

(08:12) 1. Choosing an impactful career is hard, deferring is tempting

(08:48) 2. The 80,000 elephants in the room

(09:41) 3. Givewell and other charity recommendations

(10:33) What are we supposed to do instead?

(10:56) 1. Your own hard work

(11:20) 2. Advice from experts

(12:10) 3. Support from community

(13:09) Final thoughts

The original text contained 8 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
December 18th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5zzbzbYZcocoLnLif/there-is-no-sorting-hat-in-ea

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Nigeria’s Missing 50 Million People” by DavidNash

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 00:15:31 GMT

Summary

Nigeria's official population (~220-230 million) may be significantly inflated and could be closer to 170 million
This overcount is likely driven by political and financial incentives for states
I'm unsure of the implications if this is accurate
- If states have uniformly inflated populations than the distribution of resources could still be divided evenly
- Nigeria would still be the biggest country in Africa and companies/governments/NGOs would have similar cost benefit analysis for working and investing there
This is a very shallow investigation

Why did I bother looking into this?

The below text sparked an investigation into Nigeria's population claims. It was slightly hidden in the 4th section in one of Yaw's excellent Substack posts.

Yaw went onto explain his reasoning for thinking the population was much lower than current estimates.

Nigeria is a large country with no deep shared history among the different tribes. Due [...]

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Outline:

(00:04) Summary

(00:49) Why did I bother looking into this?

(03:20) Other Sources

(09:55) Potential Data Sources

(10:05) National Identification Numbers

(11:46) Tech usage

(12:15) Sim Cards

(14:37) UN Population Estimates and Projections

(18:13) Incentives for not caring

(19:08) International Organisations

(19:42) Private Sector

(20:07) Implications

(20:25) International Standing

(20:45) GDP

(21:04) Development Indicators

(21:34) Domestic Politics

(21:53) International Aid

(22:10) Future Research

(22:15) Nigeria

(23:27) Other Countries

The original text contained 9 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
November 22nd, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/824rsHCXuqTmBb8se/nigeria-s-missing-50-million-people

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“My experience with the Community Health team at CEA” by frances_lorenz

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 23:15:29 GMT

Summary

This post shares my personal experience with CEA's Community Health team, focusing on how they helped me navigate a difficult situation in 2021. I aim to provide others with a concrete example of when and how to reach out to Community Health, supplementing the information on their website with a first-hand account. I also share why their work has helped me remain engaged with the EA community. Further, I try to highlight why a centralised Community Health team is crucial for identifying patterns of concerning behaviour.

Introduction

The Community Health team at the Centre for Effective Altruism has been an important source of support throughout my EA journey. As stated on their website, they “aim to strengthen the effective altruism community's ability to fulfil its potential for impact, and to address problems that could prevent that.” I don’t know the details of their day-to-day, but I understand that [...]

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Outline:

(00:05) Summary

(00:41) Introduction

(01:32) My goals with this post are:

(02:05) My experience in 2021

(05:17) Three personal takeaways

(07:22) What is the team like now?

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First published:
December 16th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/aTmzt4TbTx7hiSAN8/my-experience-with-the-community-health-team-at-cea

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Gwern on creating your own AI race and China’s Fast Follower strategy.” by Larks

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 10:45:30 GMT

This is a link post.

Gwern recently wrote a very interesting thread about Chinese AI strategy and the downsides of US AI racing. It's both quite short and hard to excerpt so here is almost the entire thing:

Hsu is a long-time China hawk and has been talking up the scientific & technological capabilities of the CCP for a long time, saying they were going to surpass the West any moment now, so I found this interesting when Hsu explains that:

the scientific culture of China is 'mafia' like (Hsu's term, not mine) and focused on legible easily-cited incremental research, and is against making any daring research leaps or controversial breakthroughs...
but is capable of extremely high quality world-class followup and large scientific investments given a clear objective target and government marching orders
there is no interest or investment in an AI arms race, in part [...]

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First published:
November 25th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Kz8WpQkCckN9JNHCN/gwern-on-creating-your-own-ai-race-and-china-s-fast-follower

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Technical Report on Mirror Bacteria: Feasibility and Risks” by Aaron Gertler 🔸

Fri, 13 Dec 2024 14:15:31 GMT

This is a link post.

Science just released an article, with an accompanying technical report, about a neglected source of biological risk.

From the abstract of the technical report:

This report describes the technical feasibility of creating mirror bacteria and the potentially serious and wide-ranging risks that they could pose to humans, other animals, plants, and the environment...

In a mirror bacterium, all of the chiral molecules of existing bacteria—proteins, nucleic acids, and metabolites—are replaced by their mirror images. Mirror bacteria could not evolve from existing life, but their creation will become increasingly feasible as science advances. Interactions between organisms often depend on chirality, and so interactions between natural organisms and mirror bacteria would be profoundly different from those between natural organisms. Most importantly, immune defenses and predation typically rely on interactions between chiral molecules that could often fail to detect or kill mirror bacteria due to their reversed [...]

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First published:
December 12th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9pkjXwe2nFun32hR2/technical-report-on-mirror-bacteria-feasibility-and-risks

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“EA Forum audio: help us choose the new voice” by peterhartree, TYPE III AUDIO

Thu, 12 Dec 2024 20:00:29 GMT

We’re thinking about changing our narrator's voice.

There are three new voices on the shortlist. They’re all similarly good in terms of comprehension, emphasis, error rate, etc. They just sound different—like people do.

We think they all sound similarly agreeable. But, thousands of listening hours are at stake, so we thought it’d be worth giving listeners an opportunity to vote—just in case there’s a strong collective preference.

Listen and vote

Please listen here:

https://files.type3.audio/ea-forum-poll/

And vote here:

https://forms.gle/m7Ffk3EGorUn4XU46

It’ll take 1-10 minutes, depending on how much of the sample you decide to listen to.

We'll collect votes until Monday December 16th. Thanks!

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Outline:

(00:47) Listen and vote

(01:11) Other feedback?

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
December 10th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Bhd5GMyyGbusB22Hp/ea-forum-audio-help-us-choose-the-new-voice

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Podcast and transcript: Allan Saldanha on earning-to-give

Wed, 11 Dec 2024 10:27:46 GMT

Me and Allan recorded this podcast on Tuesday 10th December, based on the questions in this AMA. I used Claude to edit the transcript, but I've read over it for accuracy.

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“Where I Am Donating in 2024” by MichaelDickens

Sat, 07 Dec 2024 16:15:30 GMT

Summary

It's been a while since I last put serious thought into where to donate. Well I'm putting thought into it this year and I'm changing my mind on some things.

I now put more priority on existential risk (especially AI risk), and less on animal welfare and global priorities research. I believe I previously gave too little consideration to x-risk for emotional reasons, and I've managed to reason myself out of those emotions.

Within x-risk:

AI is the most important source of risk.
There is a disturbingly high probability that alignment research won't solve alignment by the time superintelligent AI arrives. Policy work seems more promising.
Specifically, I am most optimistic about policy advocacy for government regulation to pause/slow down AI development.

In the rest of this post, I will explain:

Why I prioritize x-risk over animal-focused [...]

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Outline:

(00:04) Summary

(01:30) I dont like donating to x-risk

(03:56) Cause prioritization

(04:00) S-risk research and animal-focused longtermism

(05:52) X-risk vs. global priorities research

(07:01) Prioritization within x-risk

(08:08) AI safety technical research vs. policy

(11:36) Quantitative model on research vs. policy

(14:20) Man versus man conflicts within AI policy

(15:13) Parallel safety/capabilities vs. slowing AI

(22:56) Freedom vs. regulation

(24:24) Slow nuanced regulation vs. fast coarse regulation

(27:02) Working with vs. against AI companies

(32:49) Political diplomacy vs. advocacy

(33:38) Conflicts that arent man vs. man but nonetheless require an answer

(33:55) Pause vs. Responsible Scaling Policy (RSP)

(35:28) Policy research vs. policy advocacy

(36:42) Advocacy directed at policy-makers vs. the general public

(37:32) Organizations

(39:36) Important disclaimers

(40:56) AI Policy Institute

(42:03) AI Safety and Governance Fund

(43:29) AI Standards Lab

(43:59) Campaign for AI Safety

(44:30) Centre for Enabling EA Learning and Research (CEEALAR)

(45:13) Center for AI Policy

(47:27) Center for AI Safety

(49:06) Center for Human-Compatible AI

(49:32) Center for Long-Term Resilience

(55:52) Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET)

(57:33) Centre for Long-Term Policy

(58:12) Centre for the Governance of AI

(59:07) CivAI

(01:00:05) Control AI

(01:02:08) Existential Risk Observatory

(01:03:33) Future of Life Institute (FLI)

(01:03:50) Future Society

(01:06:27) Horizon Institute for Public Service

(01:09:36) Institute for AI Policy and Strategy

(01:11:00) Lightcone Infrastructure

(01:12:30) Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI)

(01:15:22) Manifund

(01:16:28) Model Evaluation and Threat Research (METR)

(01:17:45) Palisade Research

(01:19:10) PauseAI Global

(01:21:59) PauseAI US

(01:23:09) Sentinel rapid emergency response team

(01:24:52) Simon Institute for Longterm Governance

(01:25:44) Stop AI

(01:27:42) Where Im donating

(01:28:57) Prioritization within my top five

(01:32:17) Where Im donating (this is the section in which I actually say where Im donating)

The original text contained 58 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

The original text contained 1 image which was described by AI.

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First published:
November 19th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jAfhxWSzsw4pLypRt/where-i-am-donating-in-2024

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“I’m grateful for you” by Sarah Cheng

Thu, 05 Dec 2024 19:00:30 GMT

I recently wrote up some EA Forum-related strategy docs for a CEA team retreat, which meant I spent a bunch of time reflecting on the Forum and why I think it's worth my time to work on it. Since it's Thanksgiving here in the US, I wanted to share some of the gratitude that I felt. 🙂

I strongly believe in the principles of EA. I’ve been doing effective giving for about a decade now. But before joining CEA in 2021, I had barely used the Forum, and I had no other people in my life who identified with EA in the slightest.

Most of the people that I know, have worked with, or have interacted with are not EA. When I bring up EA to people in my personal life, they are usually not that interested, or are quite cynical about the idea, or they just want [...]

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First published:
November 28th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/f2c2to4KpW59GRoyj/i-m-grateful-for-you

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Still donating half” by Julia_Wise🔸

Thu, 05 Dec 2024 00:15:31 GMT

Crossposted from Otherwise

My husband and I were donating about 50% of our income until two years ago, when he took a significant pay cut to work at a nonprofit. We planned to cut our donation percentage at that time, but then FTX collapsed. In the time since, we’ve decided to keep donating half, although the absolute amount is a lot smaller.

In a sense this is nothing special, because it was remarkably good luck that we were ever able to afford to donate at this rate at all. But I’ll spell out our process over time, in case it helps others realize they can also afford to donate more than they thought.

How we got here

Getting interested in donation

In my teens and early twenties, I thought it was really unfair that my family had plenty of stuff while other people (especially in low-income countries) [...]

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Outline:

(00:41) How we got here

(00:45) Getting interested in donation

(01:09) Early years with Jeff

(02:18) When we earned less

(03:17) Earning to give

(04:15) Both at nonprofits

(04:55) EA funding declines

(05:33) Currently

(05:51) Avoiding spending creep

(07:19) Becoming older and more boring

(08:44) Habits and commitment mechanisms

The original text contained 2 images which were described by AI.

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First published:
December 4th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mEQTxDGp4MxMSZA74/still-donating-half

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“Factory farming as a pressing world problem” by 80000_Hours, Benjamin Hilton

Wed, 04 Dec 2024 18:00:31 GMT

This is a link post.

80,000 Hours recently updated our problem profile on factory farming, and we now rank it among the most pressing problems in the world. We're sharing the summary of the article here, and there's much more detail at the link. The author, Benjamin Hilton, published the article with us before moving on to a new role outside of 80k back in July, so he may have limited ability to engage with comments. But we welcome feedback and may incorporate it into future updates.

Summary

History is littered with moral mistakes — things that once were common, but we now consider clearly morally wrong, for example: human sacrifice, gladiatorial combat, public executions, witch hunts, and slavery.

In my opinion, there's one clear candidate for the biggest moral mistake that humanity is currently making: factory farming.

The rough argument is:

There are trillions of farmed animals, making [...]

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
October 29th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/goTRwb49riDvXGdy8/factory-farming-as-a-pressing-world-problem

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Bequest: An EA-ish TV show that didn’t make it” by Keiran Harris 🔸

Fri, 29 Nov 2024 05:15:30 GMT

Hey everyone, I’m the producer of The 80,000 Hours Podcast, and a few years ago I interviewed AJ Jacobs on his writing, and experiments, and EA. And I said that my guess was that the best approach to making a high-impact TV show was something like: You make Mad Men — same level of writing, directing, and acting — but instead of Madison Avenue in the 1950-70s, it's an Open Phil-like org.

So during COVID I wrote a pilot and series outline for a show called Bequest, and I ended up with something like that (in that the characters start an Open Phil-like org by the middle of the season, in a world where EA doesn't exist yet), combined with something like: Breaking Bad, but instead of raising money for his family, Walter White is earning to give. (That's not especially close to the story, and not claiming it's [...]

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First published:
November 21st, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HjKpghhowBRLat4Hq/bequest-an-ea-ish-tv-show-that-didn-t-make-it

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“GWWC’s 2024 evaluations of evaluators” by Giving What We Can, Aidan Whitfield🔸, Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 06:15:55 GMT

Introduction

The Giving What We Can research team is excited to share the results of our 2024 round of evaluations of charity evaluators and grantmakers!

In this round, we completed three evaluations that will inform our donation recommendations for the 2024 giving season. As with our 2023 round, there are substantial limitations to these evaluations, but we nevertheless think that they are a significant improvement to a landscape in which there were no independent evaluations of evaluators’ work.

In this post, we share the key takeaways from each of our 2024 evaluations and link to the full reports. We also include an update explaining our decision to remove The Humane League from our list of recommended programs. Our website has now been updated to reflect the new fund and charity recommendations that came out of these evaluations.

Please also see our website for more context on [...]

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Outline:

(00:10) Introduction

(01:13) Key takeaways from each of our 2024 evaluations

(01:36) Global health and wellbeing

(01:41) Founders Pledge Global Health and Development Fund (FP GHDF)

(04:07) Animal welfare

(04:10) Animal Charity Evaluators’ Movement Grants (ACE MG)

(06:08) Animal Charity Evaluators’ Charity Evaluation Program

(08:35) Additional recommendation updates

(08:39) The Humane League's corporate campaigns program

(11:29) Conclusion

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
November 27th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NhpAHDQq6iWhk7SEs/gwwc-s-2024-evaluations-of-evaluators-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Research report: ‘Meaningfully reducing consumption of meat and animal products is an unsolved problem: A meta-analysis’” by Seth Ariel Green, Benny Smith, MMathur

Wed, 27 Nov 2024 19:00:30 GMT

This post summarizes the main findings of a new meta-analysis from the Humane and Sustainable Food Lab. We analyze the most rigorous randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that aim to reduce consumption of meat and animal products (MAP). We conclude that no theoretical approach, delivery mechanism, or persuasive message should be considered a well-validated means of reducing MAP consumption. By contrast, reducing consumption of red and processed meat (RPM) appears to be an easier target. However, if RPM reductions lead to more consumption of other MAP like chicken and fish, this is likely bad for animal welfare and doesn’t ameliorate zoonotic outbreak or land and water pollution. We also find that many promising approaches await rigorous evaluation.

This post updates a post from a year ago. We first summarize the current paper, and then describe how the project and its findings have evolved.

What is a rigorous RCT?

There is [...]

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Outline:

(01:09) What is a rigorous RCT?

(02:15) The main theoretical approaches:

(04:45) Results: consistently small effects

(07:22) Where do we go from here?

(09:00) How has this project changed over time?

The original text contained 2 images which were described by AI.

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First published:
November 25th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/i5wnzz4uAgeF3ZRc5/research-report-meaningfully-reducing-consumption-of-meat

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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“How I Improved my Wellbeing” by jessica_mccurdy

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 03:30:30 GMT

TL;DR

In late summer 2023, I realized my mental health was the biggest barrier to achieving my goals. Over the next six months, I made it a priority, working with a therapist on CBT, adjusting medication timing, and developing healthier habits (like meditating and wellness routines). This resulted in a noticeable improvement in my clarity, productivity, and overall well-being, which positively impacted my work and leadership.

This post is part of an effort to post more :)

Background and Context

Late summer 2023: During a performance review, I realized my mental health was my biggest barrier to growth.
- I had been diagnosed with depression years earlier and medication helped significantly, but I was still having breakthrough symptoms.
- It was preventing me from achieving ambitious goals and handling important work decisions (like what my team should prioritize in the following quarter)
- I made improving mental health a top [...]

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Outline:

(00:03) TL;DR

(00:40) Background and Context

(01:38) Nuance and Disclaimer

(02:21) Some ways progress has affected my work

(03:33) What Made a Difference (in my rough guess at level of influence)

(03:44) Therapy (with the right therapist)

(05:22) Changing the time of taking medication

(05:56) Meditation and Habit Tracking

(07:13) 80k podcasts on mental health

(07:33) Physical Routines

(07:37) Exercise

(08:09) Sleep:

(08:40) Final Thoughts

---

First published:
November 21st, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9j35Qj5hAMs9hgAnd/how-i-improved-my-wellbeing

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Support Critical Research on Insect Welfare” by Bob Fischer

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 15:00:31 GMT

We’re far from certain that insects are sentient. But with over a trillion insects farmed annually, the welfare impacts are staggering if they can suffer. Unfortunately, fundamental questions about their well-being remain unexplored. This is where Arthropoda Foundation steps in, actively finding and funding the best opportunities to produce knowledge that can improve the lives of farmed insects.

Current Research Priorities

Humane Slaughter Protocols

Insects are regularly microwaved, baked, and boiled alive. If producers can stun these animals before slaughter, they can reduce significant distress. We’ve found a lab willing to develop and test electrical stunning procedures for black soldier fly larvae, with an eye to creating an inexpensive, readily implementable system that can be adopted by industry partners. ~$67,000.

Stocking Densities and Substrate Research

For many farmed insects, the quality of their lives comes down to stocking densities and the substrate in which they’re reared—which is what [...]

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Outline:

(00:38) Current Research Priorities

(00:42) Humane Slaughter Protocols

(01:11) Stocking Densities and Substrate Research

(01:48) Automated Welfare Assessment

(02:33) Funding Needs

(03:52) Want to learn more about insects?

The original text contained 1 image which was described by AI.

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First published:
November 13th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9fuJgLik6FNtgrDAD/support-critical-research-on-insect-welfare

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“Announcing Sjir Hoeijmakers as the new CEO of Giving What We Can” by Giving What We Can

Sat, 16 Nov 2024 18:00:23 GMT

This is a link post.

Dear Giving What We Can community,

We are writing to share exciting news: on Tuesday the 11th of November, the boards unanimously voted to appoint Sjir Hoeijmakers as the new global CEO of Giving What We Can.

Sjir was appointed after a rigorous recruitment process. The search committee received applicants from a wide pool, ultimately interviewing five final-stage candidates. Sjir excelled in each stage of the process, showing remarkable character, competence, and humility throughout. He has a strong understanding of the effective giving community and has already excelled in temporary roles as Acting and Interim CEO this year. The committee also received feedback from a large number of stakeholders, including the boards, the GWWC team, funders, and partners. Throughout this process, it became clear that Sjir will be a highly capable leader for the organization and help guide GWWC and the team to reach their [...]

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First published:
November 15th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KXycun5WuzKDv6vGL/announcing-sjir-hoeijmakers-as-the-new-ceo-of-giving-what-we

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Why you should allocate more of your donation budget to effective giving organisations” by Luke Moore 🔸

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 15:00:24 GMT

This post is written in my personal capacity, but is based on insights that I’ve gained through my work as Effective Giving Global Coordinator and Incubator at Giving What We Can since I took on the role in June 2023.

Tl;dr

In my view the average reader of the EA Forum should be giving more to meta-charities like effective giving (EG) organisations. EG organisations play a crucial role in directing funds to highly impactful charities, but many are facing significant funding constraints and/or a lack of diversified funding. Supporting these meta-charities can have a multiplier effect on your donations, potentially leading to extraordinary growth in effective giving. Consider allocating a portion of your donation budget to EG organisations this giving season.

Introduction

When I first heard about EA from a TED talk by Peter Singer in 2017, I was inspired by the idea that we could carefully use evidence [...]

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Outline:

(00:21) Tl;dr

(00:57) Introduction

(02:56) Why EG orgs are funding constrained

(05:28) Why should you donate to EG organisations?

(05:38) The multiplier effect

(07:01) Positive indirect impact

(07:43) Potential for significant growth

(08:35) Addressing future funding constraints

(09:08) The impact of additional funding

(10:28) Why you might not want to donate to EG organisations

(11:29) Where to give?

(11:48) Giving What We Can

(14:49) Effektiv Spenden

(16:42) Founders Pledge

(18:28) Ge Effektivt

(20:09) Giving Multiplier

(21:49) The Life You Can Save

(22:46) Other established EG organisations

(25:22) New EG organisations

(28:55) Call to Action

---

First published:
November 8th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fMcpbGRWBtq3QBEyA/why-you-should-allocate-more-of-your-donation-budget-to-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Bad omens for US farmed animal policy work?” by Tyler Johnston

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 04:00:23 GMT

Disclaimer: This is a weak take — mostly based on anecdotes and vibes — but I thought it's worth sharing nonetheless, even if only as a means of soliciting better takes.
Disclaimer #2: I am very appreciative of everyone who is working tirelessly to pursue farmed animal protection via policy, and I want nothing more than to see it succeed! I just suspect it's going to be a longer and more difficult journey than I anticipated a few years ago, and that this is worth having an open and public conversation about.

I fear the policy landscape for farmed animal protection work is looking more and more bleak.

The election results from last night have reinforced this fear, with animal-friendly measures failing across the ballot, a Republican trifecta set to rule for at least two years, RFK Jr. in line to act as appointed czar of HHS/FDA/USDA, etc. [...]

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Outline:

(01:06) Abolitionist ballot measures lost big in 2024.

(03:20) Incrementalist ballot measures — previously some of the movement's biggest wins — may simply be undone.

(04:54) We have opponents on the left and the right.

(06:34) Cultivated meat is under fire. The Trump admin wont make this any better.

(07:34) So what next?

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

The original text contained 2 images which were described by AI.

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First published:
November 6th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rQgeBvPyBgqrej6zc/bad-omens-for-us-farmed-animal-policy-work

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“Testing Framings of EA and Longtermism” by David_Moss, Jamie E

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 23:50:24 GMT

Rethink Priorities has been conducting a range of surveys and experiments aimed at understanding how people respond to different framings of Effective Altruism (EA), Longtermism, and related specific cause areas.

There has been much debate about whether people involved in EA and Longtermism should frame their efforts and outreach in terms of Effective altruism, Longtermism, Existential risk, Existential security, Global priorities research, or by only mentioning specific risks, such as AI safety and Pandemic prevention (examples can be found at the following links: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8). These discussions have taken place almost entirely in the absence of empirical data, even though they concern largely empirical questions.[1]

In this post we report the results of three pilot studies examining responses to different EA-related terms and descriptions. Some initial findings are:

Longtermism appears to be consistently less popular than other EA-related terms and concepts we examined, whether presented just as a [...]

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Outline:

(01:52) Study 1. Cause area framing

(05:13) Demographics

(07:15) Study 2. EA-related concepts with and without descriptions

(10:58) Demographics

(11:31) Study 3. Preferences for concrete causes or more general ideas/movements

(15:04) Demographics

(15:29) Manifold Market Predictions

(16:43) General discussion

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

The original text contained 18 images which were described by AI.

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First published:
November 7th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qagZoGrxbD7YQRYNr/testing-framings-of-ea-and-longtermism

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“EA Animal Welfare Fund: 2024 Review, Changes, and Plans” by KarolinaSarek🔸

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 09:10:25 GMT

Overview

With Marginal Funding Week, we want to share key updates on the EA Animal Welfare Fund (AWF). We'll cover what we've accomplished so far in 2024, our impact this year, recent changes, and where we're headed next - including current constraints to our impact. We think this info will be helpful for anyone considering year-end donations.

Since its founding in 2017, AWF has distributed $23.3M across 347 grants. This year, we’ve distributed $3.7M across 51 grants. We made grants across multiple intervention categories and aimed to impact a variety of species. Our most frequently funded strategic area was welfare campaigns, policy advocacy and research. The most frequently targeted species were egg-laying hens followed by multiple farmed animals, wild animals, and shrimps.

While the impact of many of our 2024 grants is still unclear, our previous grants have made significant progress, reflecting our ability to identify opportunities with [...]

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Outline:

(00:08) Overview

(02:12) 1. Background

(03:43) 2. A year in review

(03:47) Key Numbers and Reach

(04:14) Grant Distribution

(05:27) By intervention type

(06:25) By species

(09:04) Highlighted Grants

(13:36) 3. Organizational updates

(18:47) 4. Future plans

(21:58) 5. Room for more funding

The original text contained 3 images which were described by AI.

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First published:
November 11th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pZhqWRiq9ubaMSnqx/ea-animal-welfare-fund-2024-review-changes-and-plans

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“Consider donating to whoever helped you” by OllieBase

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 17:40:23 GMT

I work for CEA, but this post isn’t intended as a fundraising post for CEA. The main beneficiaries I want to direct readers to are e.g. EA groups and EA communicators who might not have capacity for fundraising. I expect similar arguments apply to e.g. AIS, rationality and animal welfare community-building efforts but I know those spaces less well. There's a version of this post where I pull actual donation numbers and iron out the details of what I’m proposing but this is not that version.

It's difficult for funders to figure out which community-building efforts are successful. The reason your inbox is littered with surveys for every event, retreat and course you take part in is because we want to know if they’re working, and, ultimately, whether we should continue using EA resources to run them. Roughly, things work like this:

Community builders (CBs) help new community [...]

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Outline:

(03:56) Some caveats

(04:39) What next?

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
November 8th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DyTph8eJXDvnqDhXc/consider-donating-to-whoever-helped-you

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Fund Causes Open Phil Underfunds (Instead of Your Most Preferred Causes)” by Ariel Simnegar 🔸

Mon, 11 Nov 2024 11:20:23 GMT

Key Takeaways

Optimizing your giving's effect on "EA's portfolio” implies you should fund the causes your value system thinks are most underfunded by EA's largest allocators (e.g. Open Phil and SFF).
These causes aren't necessarily your value system's most preferred causes. ("Preferred" = the ones you'd allocate the plurality of EA's resources to.)
For the typical EA, this would likely imply donating more to animal welfare, which is currently heavily underfunded under the typical EA's value system.
Opportunities Open Phil is exiting from, including invertebrates, digital minds, and wild animals, may be especially impactful.

Alice's Investing Dilemma: A Thought Experiment

Alice is a conservative investor who prefers the risk-adjusted return of a portfolio of 70% stocks and 30% bonds. Along with 9 others, Alice has been allocated $1M to split between stocks and bonds however she sees fit. The combined $10M portfolio will be held for 10 years, and its [...]

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Outline:

(00:07) Key Takeaways

(00:53) Alices Investing Dilemma: A Thought Experiment

(01:55) In Charity, We Should Optimize The Portfolio of Everyones Actions

(03:09) Theoretical Implications

(03:31) The Portfolio of Everyones Actions vs EAs Portfolio

(04:10) Practical Recommendations

(05:26) EAs Current Resource Allocations

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First published:
November 9th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2G8XfzKyd78JqZpjQ/fund-causes-open-phil-underfunds-instead-of-your-most

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Expectations Scale with Scale – We Should Be More Scope-Sensitive in Our Funding” by Joey 🔸

Fri, 08 Nov 2024 16:20:26 GMT

TLDR: The shortest version of this argument is very simple: your expectations for an organization should be higher where their budget and staff size are higher. In other words, we should have different expectations for a 20-person organization with a $1.5 million budget than a 2-person $150,000 budget organization.

While this seems pretty clear in the abstract, I find that people tend not to update nearly enough on this when they should. For example, I often see people comparing the total research output of two organizations, yet when I ask about it, they will not know the yearly budget or staff size of either. This is a big problem. As a movement, we want to support efficient and effective organizations, not just organizations that are the biggest, most salient or currently the highest funded.

Budgets and staff

When considering how impressive an organization's output is, one [...]

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Outline:

(00:59) Budgets and staff

(02:47) Comparative size

(04:46) Why this matters

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First published:
November 6th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5wXGLbqQ3cchjogB5/expectations-scale-with-scale-we-should-be-more-scope

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Quantifying the Global Burden of Extreme Pain from Cluster Headaches” by Alfredo Parra 🔸

Mon, 04 Nov 2024 09:50:24 GMT

Warning: This post discusses statistics about extreme pain that may be distressing. While cluster headaches are a neglected, high-impact issue, understanding their true burden requires appreciating the intensity of suffering involved. The pain often reaches levels far beyond typical human experience, making subjective accounts a valuable datapoint until we have robust methods for quantifying pain intensity. For further context, links to firsthand accounts are provided in the footnote[1].

You no longer have a headache, or pain located at a particular site: you are literally plunged into the pain, like in a swimming pool. There is only one thing that remains of you: your agitated lucidity and the pain that invades everything, takes everything. There is nothing but pain. At that point, you would give everything, including your head, your own life, to make it stop.

- Yves, cluster headache patient from France (from Rossi et al., 2018)

Key [...]

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Outline:

(01:11) Key takeaways

(03:57) 1. Introduction

(04:00) 1.1. Clinical Features and Pain Comparisons

(07:22) 1.2. Treatment and Prevention

(10:02) 1.3. The Heavy-Tailed Valence Hypothesis and Existing Metrics

(14:49) 1.4. Goal

(16:14) 2. Methods

(17:43) 2.1 Prevalence

(19:17) 2.2 Frequency

(22:21) 2.3 Duration

(23:53) 2.4 Intensity

(25:58) 2.5 Burden Metrics

(29:01) 3. Results

(29:10) 3.1. Global Burden of Cluster Headache Pain

(32:05) 3.2. Reweighting of Extreme Pain

(39:41) 3.3. Ceiling Effects

(43:34) 4. Recommendations and Conclusions

(48:31) Acknowledgements

The original text contained 26 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
November 1st, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/geh2g2nKb7Kkp26ze/quantifying-the-global-burden-of-extreme-pain-from-cluster

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“What I wish I had said about FTX” by AppliedDivinityStudies

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 17:50:24 GMT

The failure rate is not 0

The base rate of failure for startups is not 0: Of the 6000 companies Y Combinator has funded, only ~16 are public. This is the wrong reference class for FTX at a $32b valuation, but even amongst extremely valuable companies, failures are not uncommon:

WeWork had a peak valuation of $47b
Theranos had a peak valuation of $10b
Lucid Motors had a peak valuation of $90b
Virgin Galactic had a peak valuation of $14b
Jull had a peak valuation of $38b
Bolt had a peak valuation of $11b
Magic Leap had a peak valuation of $13b

That is only a handful of cases, but the reference class for startups worth over $10b is also pretty small. Maybe 45 private companies and another ~100 that have gone public. I'm playing pretty fast and loose here because the exact number isn't important, the odds [...]

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Outline:

(00:04) The failure rate is not 0

(03:54) Why does risk matter?

(06:45) Looking back from today

The original text contained 1 image which was described by AI.

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First published:
October 31st, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/f5YfiCrunAHFeDpSQ/what-i-wish-i-had-said-about-ftx

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“Visualizing EA ideas” by Alex Savard 🔸

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 09:10:23 GMT

Summary

The written word dominates EA discourse but visuals have a unique power in communicating ideas that seems quite underleveraged in this community. As a designer and communicator in the space, I wanted to share some of the presentations and visualizations I’ve created over the years in hopes that they might be helpful to others. My goal isn't to present these visuals as "ready-to-use" resources—for various reasons they're not ready (see disclaimers)—but rather as references that hopefully inspire others to create and invest in visual forms of communication.

Effective Giving 101 (2023)

In 2023, when I was director of design at Giving What We Can, we were invited to give a talk at Microsoft about effective giving. We normally don’t dive so deep into the research that undergirds our recommendations but—given the highly-educated, highly-analytical audience at Microsoft—I thought it could be compelling to actually get into the weeds and [...]

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Outline:

(00:16) Summary

(00:50) Effective Giving 101 (2023)

(01:53) Full deck: Doing Good Better (Microsoft 2023)

(02:00) GiveWell's 2020 analysis of AMF

(02:58) Slides: GiveWell's 2020 analysis of AMF

(03:15) Global income illustration

(04:53) Slides: The Global Income Distribution

(05:09) Prioritization in GCR (2024)

(05:56) Parfit's 99% extinction hypothetical

(06:56) Slides: Parfit's 99% v 100%

(07:13) Mapping the GCR landscape

(08:54) Slides: Visualizing: The GCR Landscape

(09:13) Bonus: Effective Giving Strategy Frameworks

(10:20) Vision to Vectors

(10:23) Slides: Vision to Vectors

(10:39) The Pledger Journey

(10:42) Slides: The Pledger Journey

The original text contained 8 images which were described by AI.

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First published:
October 31st, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/GuFxEPcn7rzz4pDhw/visualizing-ea-ideas

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“Reflections and lessons from Effective Ventures” by Zachary Robinson🔸

Tue, 29 Oct 2024 15:20:24 GMT

I became the CEO of EV US in January 2023. I worked alongside the EV US and UK teams, former EV UK CEO Howie Lempel, and current EV UK CEO Rob Gledhill to recover and reform Effective Ventures and improve the robustness of the EA ecosystem in the aftermath of FTX's collapse. Amidst these efforts, I and others learned or fortified lessons that I think aren’t unique to EV and could be valuable to the wider EA community. Being able to look at hard problems, discuss them with candor, and update based on what we learn are values that I admire, and I see them as a positive and necessary mechanism for doing good. I want to act on those values here.

Goals of this post

Provide an update to create communal knowledge: Clarify what reforms have taken place at EV in recent years and the reasoning behind [...]

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Outline:

(00:50) Goals of this post

(01:48) Some high-level notes on FTX-related reflection

(06:04) Scope of this post

(11:53) Summary of reforms and actions taken at EV

(14:54) Background on EV

(18:42) Reforms and other actions taken

(18:46) Hiring CEOs (and other non-board personnel) for EV US and EV UK

(24:00) Changes to EV US and EV UK board

(30:04) FTX-related investigations

(38:43) Instituting financial reforms

(41:23) Improving donor due diligence

(45:36) Adopting a restrictive communications policy

(57:19) Streamlining whistleblowing policies

(59:44) Updating anti-harassment and misconduct policies

(01:03:04) Improving the COI policy

(01:06:22) Clarifying the level of separation between the EV US and EV UK entities

(01:10:44) Initiating EV shut down

(01:15:11) Some of the lessons EA can learn from the EV experience

(01:15:31) Brief summary of these lessons

(01:16:10) The lessons

(01:16:14) Organizational governance and compliance can have serious implications

(01:17:08) It's important to carefully think through and explicitly communicate your organizational risk strategy, and pay attention to it as your organization develops. This is particularly true for a fiscal sponsor

(01:19:10) EA organizations often underrate experience relative to “intelligence” and “value alignment”

(01:22:09) Vetting external counsel is important

(01:23:02) Crisis prep is underrated relative to crisis response

(01:24:43) Invest in capacity building early

(01:26:34) Communicate early (and have the resources to do so)

(01:27:31) Acknowledgments

(01:29:12) Appendix: other content about and reflections on FTX on the EA Forum

(01:29:47) Information

(01:31:24) Reflections

(01:33:18) Investigation-related

(01:33:55) Statements

The original text contained 12 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

The original text contained 1 image which was described by AI.

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First published:
October 28th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AuSah98NtR5qv8zQA/reflections-and-lessons-from-effective-ventures-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“Tomorrow we fight for the future of one billion chickens.” by Molly Archer-Zeff

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 12:40:17 GMT

We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to improve the lives of chickens raised for food in the UK.

Tomorrow, The Humane League UK (THL UK) will be heading to the High Court to challenge the legality of fast-growing breeds of chicken- Frankenchickens. At stake are the lives of one billion animals.

Our small team will be demonstrating outside the courts tomorrow morning. Inside, our legal team, Advocates for Animals, will be arguing that farming Frankenchickens breaches the Welfare of Farmed Animals (England) Regulations 2007.

We are up against huge opposition with The Government, the British Poultry Council, and the National Farmers’ Union representing the interests of the £3 billion poultry industry. This really is a David versus Goliath case.

If you are interested in the legal intricacies of the hearing itself, you can watch a livestream of proceedings here on both Wednesday and Thursday. You can also [...]

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Outline:

(00:05) We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to improve the lives of chickens raised for food in the UK.

(01:17) Frankenchickens

(01:59) THL UKs three-year legal battle

(03:09) The fight continues

(04:14) Our chances of success

(05:44) Support The Humane League UK

(06:01) The Humane League UK

(06:56) Our vision is that by 2050, weve stopped the worst and most widespread abuse of animals raised for food, and they’re treated with far greater compassion.

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First published:
October 22nd, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qCMC4cnWCi7yjcnCZ/tomorrow-we-fight-for-the-future-of-one-billion-chickens

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“Explaining the discrepancies in cost effectiveness ratings: A replication and breakdown of RP’s animal welfare cost effectiveness calculations” by titotal

Fri, 18 Oct 2024 04:00:25 GMT

I'd like to thank Derek Shiller from Rethink priorities for extensive discussions and looking over this post.

Introduction

I've been following the "animal welfare" debate this week on the EA forum, and noticed that a key crux for a lot of people was that calculations showed that animal welfare campaigns (specifically the "caged chicken corporate campaign") was much more cost effective than a human global health development project like the against malaria foundation.

But while most estimates agreed that AW was more effective than GHD, I noticed there was a wide discrepancy in how much more effective it was. Vasco Grilo claimed it was 1500 times better. This report by Laura Duffy of rethink priorities (when you convert from order of magnitude to real numbers in table 1) claimed it was about 60 times better. Whereas if you go the Cross cause comparison website, also by RP, and [...]

The original text contained 7 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
October 14th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qARKFgYhCqmKB2YpF/explaining-the-discrepancies-in-cost-effectiveness-ratings-a

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“RETROSPECTIVE ON EA NIGERIA SUMMIT: OUR SUCCESSES AND LEARNINGS” by EA Nigeria, Daniel Elabi, Adebayo Mubarak, Zakariyau Yusuf

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 16:10:28 GMT

EA Nigeria Summit was the first EA-related conference in Nigeria, and it took place from September 6th to 7th, 2024. The event saw a higher level of interest than we (the organisers) expected. We received applications from individuals across Nigeria and the international community, especially Africans. We accepted 170 applicants for the summit, and a total of 136 participants attended the event.

The summit provided an opportunity for the attendees to connect, network, and share ideas and practices, paving the way for potential collaboration and impactful actions at the cost of USD 179.6 per attendee.

Some Key Specifics

Location - Chida Event Centre, Utako, Abuja, Nigeria.

Applications received - 472, (18 applications were duplicates)

Admitted applicants - 170

Confirmed attendees - 137

Number of speakers - 14

Total Expenses - USD 24,611

Cost per attendee - 179.6 USD

The first EA-aligned conference in Nigeria!

We [...]

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Outline:

(01:03) Some Key Specifics

(01:39) The first EA-aligned conference in Nigeria!

(02:37) Summit Goal and Strategy

(04:19) Attendees and Experience

(07:18) Budgeting and Finances

(10:14) Content

(11:40) Production and Logistics

(12:02) Dealing with Vendors:

(12:28) Securing the Summit Venue:

(13:26) Video Production and Photography

(14:00) Printing

(14:31) Logistics (Summit Day 1 and 2)

(15:19) Communication and Event Tech

(16:26) Some Additional Brief

(17:12) Core Team and Volunteers

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

The original text contained 6 images which were described by AI.

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First published:
October 11th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xyGYuoP8EfXmirdZg/retrospective-on-ea-nigeria-summit-our-successes-and

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“Multiplier Arguments are often flawed” by AGB 🔸

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 21:30:52 GMT

Foreword

Sadly, it looks like the debate week will end without many of the stronger[1] arguments for Global Health being raised, at least at the post level. I don't have time to write them all up, and in many cases they would be better written by someone with more expertise, but one issue is firmly in my comfort zone: the maths!

The point I raise here is closely related to the Two Envelopes Problem, which has been discussed before. I think some of this discussion can come across as 'too technical', which is unfortunate since I think a qualitative understanding of the issue is critical to making good decisions when under substantial uncertainty. In this post I want to try and demystify it.

This post was written quickly, and has a correspondingly high chance of error, for which I apologise. I am confident in the core point, and [...]

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Outline:

(00:05) Foreword

(00:59) Two envelopes: the EA version

(02:59) What just happened?

(04:17) Some implications

(05:27) Global Health vs. Animal Welfare

(07:28) Conclusion

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
October 13th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/atdmkTAnoPMfmHJsX/multiplier-arguments-are-often-flawed

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Criticism is sanctified in EA, but, like any intervention, criticism needs to pay rent” by Holly Elmore ⏸️ 🔸

Fri, 11 Oct 2024 21:20:58 GMT

I really loved this quick take from Lizka, especially this part:

At the same time, trying to actually do anything is really hard.[4] Appreciation for doers is often undersupplied. Being in leadership positions or engaging in public discussions is a valuable service, but opens you up to a lot of (often stressful) criticism, which acts as a disincentive for being public. Psychological safety is important in teams (and communities), so it's unfortunate that critical environments lead more people to feel like they would be judged harshly for potential mistakes. Not all criticism is useful enough to be worth engaging with (or sharing). Responding to criticism can be time-consuming or otherwise costly and isn’t always worth it.[5] Sometimes people who are sharing “criticism” hate the project for reasons that aren’t what's explicitly stated, or just want to vent or build themselves up.[6]

A lot of communities I've been part of-- [...]

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
October 11th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tuSQBGgnoxvsXwXJ3/criticism-is-sanctified-in-ea-but-like-any-intervention

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“The default trajectory for animal welfare means vastly more suffering” by JamesÖz

Fri, 11 Oct 2024 20:30:51 GMT

In summary, there are two important reasons why I believe it's more important to direct additional resources towards animal welfare over global health:

Global health and human welfare are generally improving whilst animal suffering is getting worse at a worrying (and potentially accelerating) rate. For factory farming, the default is it gets worse and worse over the next 50 years. In my view, it's still unclear if we’ll end factory farming and we’re competing with a very powerful incumbent industry to make it happen. I don’t believe the same trajectory is true for global health.
Animal welfare is orders of magnitude more neglected on most important metrics: Philanthropic funding, government funding or great people working on the issue.

These reasons aren’t necessarily all that is required to think it would be better to spend an additional $100M on animal welfare relative to global health (see the 80,000 Hours [...]

The original text contained 10 images which were described by AI.

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First published:
October 11th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/QbRFwPks5nFLK8i2W/the-default-trajectory-for-animal-welfare-means-vastly-more

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“[Trigger warning: violence] Animal vs human welfare: sharing some personal reflections” by Forumite

Fri, 11 Oct 2024 20:30:51 GMT

For many years, I devoted myself to improving human health and wellbeing. But then I shifted to working to prevent suffering for animals. In this post, I will briefly share some considerations that pushed me to make this change.

Violence

The phrase ‘animal welfare’ can sound pretty calm and gentle.

But when we talk about ‘animal welfare’, we are usually talking about preventing direct, brutal, physical *violence* against sentient beings.

Animals in the food system are brutalised, beaten, confined, stabbed, castrated, cut, boiled alive, dragged, gassed, asphyxiated, separated from their mothers/children, violated, skinned.

Imagine being castrated, with no anaesthetic. Having your throat slit while you are still conscious. Violated, and forcibly inseminated. Being crammed into a tiny, tiny space for days on end, where you can’t stretch your limbs, or turn around. Skinned alive.

There is something so…brutal, maximalist, harsh, extreme about the intense physical violence that we [...]

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First published:
October 10th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RZEvk6cBtBg2mpgwS/trigger-warning-violence-animal-vs-human-welfare-sharing

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“What do RP’s tools tell us about giving $100m to AW or GHD?” by Hayley Clatterbuck, arvomm, Bob Fischer, Derek Shiller, David_Moss

Tue, 08 Oct 2024 20:10:49 GMT

Intro

Suppose you have $100M to give away. You are drawn to the many important opportunities to reduce animal suffering or address pressing issues in global health and development. Your choice about how to allocate the funds could depend on considerations like these:

Moral values: How much moral weight do you assign to various non-human species? Are you focused exclusively on hedonic considerations, like reducing suffering? Or do you have other relevant values, such as autonomy?
Cost-effectiveness estimates: Species-discounting aside, how many DALYs/$ do the best projects in the area achieve? How fast do returns diminish in these areas?
Decision-theoretic values: How do you feel about risk-taking? Are you willing to tolerate a substantial probability that projects will fail? What about non-trivial chances of projects backfiring?
Second-order effects: Will giving to one cause set benefit any of your other values? Are there speculative benefits that might flow from [...]

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Outline:

(00:09) Intro

(02:47) Cross-Cause Cost-Effectiveness Model

(02:51) How it works

(04:25) What it says

(06:53) Portfolio Builder Tool

(06:57) How it works

(08:12) What it says

(10:32) Moral Parliament Tool

(10:36) How it works

(11:48) What it says

(12:02) Parliament composition matters

(14:10) Allocation strategy matters

(17:27) Conclusions

The original text contained 5 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

The original text contained 11 images which were described by AI.

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First published:
October 7th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vEwGx9RXnHaMyKhZM/what-do-rp-s-tools-tell-us-about-giving-usd100m-to-aw-or-ghd

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“Announcing my departure from CEA (& sharing assorted notes)” by Lizka

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 18:00:51 GMT

TLDR: I’ve recently started as a “Research Fellow” at Forethought (focusing on how we should prepare for a potential period of explosive growth and related questions).

I left my role on the CEA Online Team, but I still love the Forum (and the Forum/CEA/mod teams) and plan on continuing to be quite active here. I’m also staying on the moderation team as an advisor.

➡️ If you were planning on reaching out to me about something Forum- or Online-related, you should probably reach out to Toby Tremlett or email forum@effectivealtruism.org.

What's in this post?

I had some trouble writing this announcement; I felt like I should post something, but didn’t know what to include or how to organize the post. In the end, I decided to write down and share assorted reflections on my time at CEA, and not really worry about putting everything into a cohesive frame or [...]

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Outline:

(00:44) What's in this post?

(02:17) Briefly: more context on the change

(03:45) A note on EA and CEA

(04:32) Assorted notes from my time at CEA

(04:37) Some things about working at CEA that I probably wouldn’t have predicted

(04:44) 1. Working with a manager and working in a team have been some of the best ways for me to grow.

(05:33) 2. I like CEA's team values and principles a lot more than I expected to. (And I want to import many of them wherever I go.)

(08:39) 3. A huge number of people I worked and interacted with are incredibly generous and compassionate, and this makes a big difference.

(10:40) Some things about my work at CEA that were difficult for me

(10:46) 1. My work was pretty public. This has some benefits, and also some real downsides.

(12:31) 2. Many people seem confused about what CEA does, and seemed to assume incorrect things about me because I was a CEA staff member.

(14:58) 3. My job involved working on or maintaining many different projects, which made it difficult for me to focus on any single thing or make progress on proactive projects.

(16:03) 4. Despite taking little of my time, moderation was quite draining for me.

(18:26) Looking back on my work

(23:08) Thank you!

The original text contained 11 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
October 3rd, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/SPZv8ygwSPtkzo7ta/announcing-my-departure-from-cea-and-sharing-assorted-notes

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“Appreciating Stable Support Roles at EA Orgs” by Amy Labenz

Thu, 03 Oct 2024 16:20:49 GMT

I recently had a conversation with a teammate that made me reflect on a possible cultural issue within the EA community. This teammate had expressed in a few meetings that they wanted to take on various new projects and expand their scope of responsibility. As their manager, I wanted to have Alliance Mentality to support them where possible. However, from my perspective, a slightly more tightly scoped role was probably a bit better for the team: their core responsibilities are vital for the team (and for what it's worth, when I try to do them, I'm much worse at them!).

During our recent one-on-one, realized that we both preferred the more tightly scoped role. More importantly, we uncovered that they had internalized a cultural norm from EA that people needed to be constantly changing or expanding their roles to be doing a good job.

I wanted to write a [...]

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Outline:

(00:58) The Pressure to Change Roles

(01:42) The Value of Steady Hands

(02:38) Shifting the Narrative

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First published:
September 30th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Q3DbyrFjqED9Y5Rz3/appreciating-stable-support-roles-at-ea-orgs

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Announcing Equal Hands — an experiment in democratizing effective giving.” by abrahamrowe

Mon, 30 Sep 2024 16:00:49 GMT

TLDR: Sign up here to join a six-month experiment to democratize effective giving. The experiment establishes a community who agree to allocate charitable gifts proportionally to member votes. You’ll help make EA donations more representative of the community's cause prioritization. Sign up and pledge by October 15th to participate in our first round.

Equal Hands is a 6-month trial in democratizing charitable giving among EA cause areas.

Here's how it works:

You pledge to give a certain amount each month.
Each month that you pledge, vote on the optimal distribution of the donated money across causes (1 vote per person, no matter how much you give).
The total amount of money pledged is split out proportionally to the total of the votes, so that no matter how much you gave, your voice equally influences the final allocation.
To actually make the gifts, you will be assigned a particular [...]

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Outline:

(02:42) Effective giving overly weighs the views of a few decision makers.

(06:13) How will Equal Hands work exactly? An example funding round

(08:58) The Details

(09:01) The process

(10:16) Transparency

(10:36) Improvements

(10:51) FAQ

(10:54) Why would individual people participate?

(11:31) What causes can I vote on?

(13:15) Why not just establish some kind of fund people can donate to and then vote on the allocation of its grants?

(13:42) Why cause areas and not individual charities?

(15:33) Why these specific charities to represent these cause areas and not \[my preferred charity\]?

(16:00) Why do I have to donate a minimum amount to participate?

(16:22) Can I give via another entity to one of the listed charities?

(16:52) Why not quadratic funding / some other hip mechanism?

(17:11) Will I have to donate to causes I don’t care about?

(17:44) What happens if this goes well?

(17:54) How is this governed/funded/run?

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First published:
September 28th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/eDJfRrMveExXmmEpX/announcing-equal-hands-an-experiment-in-democratizing

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“We can protect millions of kids from a global killer — without billions of dollars (Washington Post)” by Aaron Gertler 🔸

Tue, 24 Sep 2024 20:40:28 GMT

This is a link post.

This WaPo piece announces the Partnership for a Lead-Free Future (PLF), a collaboration led by Open Philanthropy, USAID, and UNICEF. It was co-authored by Alexander Berger (Open Phil's CEO) and Samantha Power, head of USAID.

Ten years ago, when residents of Flint, Mich., were exposed to toxic levels of lead in their drinking water, 1 in 20 children in the city had elevated blood lead levels that placed them at risk for heart disease, strokes, cognitive deficits and developmental delays — health effects that residents still grapple with to this day. It was only after activists rallied, organized and advocated relentlessly that national attention focused on Flint, and officials committed nearly half a billion dollars to clean up Flint's water.

Today, there is a lead poisoning crisis raging on a far greater scale — and hardly anyone is talking about it.

[...]

The partnership will [...]

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First published:
September 23rd, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/soeJ4XNnLoyWpiFsK/we-can-protect-millions-of-kids-from-a-global-killer-without

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Announcing the Lead Exposure Action Fund” by Alexander_Berger, Emily Oehlsen

Tue, 24 Sep 2024 07:40:27 GMT

This is a link post.

One of Open Philanthropy's goals for this year is to experiment with collaborating with other funders. Today, we’re excited to announce our biggest collaboration to date: the Lead Exposure Action Fund (LEAF).

Lead exposure in low- and middle-income countries is a devastating but highly neglected issue. The Global Burden of Disease study estimates 1.5 million deaths per year attributable to lead poisoning. Despite this burden, lead poisoning has only received roughly $15 million per year in philanthropic funding until recently. That is less than 1% of the funding that goes towards diseases like tuberculosis or malaria, which are themselves considered neglected. The goal of LEAF is to accelerate progress toward a world free of lead exposure by making grants to support measurement, mitigation, and mainstreaming awareness of the problem.

Our partners have already committed $104 million, and we plan for LEAF to allocate that [...]

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Outline:

(01:54) Why we chose to work on lead

(04:54) What LEAF hopes to achieve

(05:30) The LEAF team

(06:01) An experiment for Open Philanthropy

(06:49) Grantmaking so far

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
September 23rd, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/z5PvTSa54pdxxw72W/announcing-the-lead-exposure-action-fund

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“My top 10 picks from 200 episodes of the 80k podcast” by JWS 🔸

Mon, 16 Sep 2024 22:00:44 GMT

Intro

I think the 80,000 Hours Podcast is a great show. Despite the world of podcasts overflowing with content to choose from, it's reliably been a high-quality production that's been a regular part of my listening habits ever since I discovered it. It was also probably one of the first routes I become more aware of the EA community, which I suspect I might not be alone by.[1]

So, as the podcast numbers ticked up, the vague idea to write up a post shouting out some of my favourite episodes took root. I didn't get far with it from there, and now the unreasonable effectiveness of the 80k podcast production team has forced my hand! So in the post I'm going to link to my 10 favourite episodes, along with some final thoughts at the end.

I hope to share with you some of my favourite episodes, but I [...]

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Outline:

(00:07) Intro

(01:12) My Top 10

(01:16) 10-4

(01:19) 10: #144 – Athena Aktipis on why cancer is actually one of the fundamental phenomena in our universe

(01:54) 9: #175 – Lucia Coulter on preventing lead poisoning for $1.66 per child

(02:26) 8: #139 – Alan Hájek on puzzles and paradoxes in probability and expected value

(03:00) 7: #153 – Elie Hassenfeld on two big picture critiques of GiveWells approach, and six lessons from their recent work

(03:39) 6: #129 – Dr James Tibenderana on the state of the art in malaria control and elimination

(04:15) 5: #185 – Lewis Bollard on the 7 most promising ways to end factory farming, and whether AI is going to be good or bad for animals

(05:00) 4: #67 – David Chalmers on the nature and ethics of consciousness

(05:40) Top 3

(05:43) 3: #43 – Daniel Ellsberg on the creation of nuclear doomsday machines, the institutional insanity that maintains them, and how they could be dismantled

(06:22) 2: #145 – Christopher Brown on why slavery abolition wasnt inevitable

(07:07) 1: #100 – Having a successful career with depression, anxiety and imposter syndrome

(07:51) Final Thoughts

(07:54) Honourable Mentions

(08:10) #52 – Glen Weyl on radical institutional reforms that make capitalism and democracy work better, and how to get them

(08:52) #116 – Luisa Rodriguez on why global catastrophes seem unlikely to kill us all

(09:29) #190 – Eric Schwitzgebel on whether the US is conscious

(09:59) But JWS, where are the AI episodes?

(12:03) Epilogue

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
September 9th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/C8HWX3XsoB3krSkbm/my-top-10-picks-from-200-episodes-of-the-80k-podcast

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Stepping down from GWWC: So long, and thanks for all the shrimp” by Luke Freeman 🔸

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 04:50:44 GMT

This is a link post.

It's a rare privilege to lead an organisation that embodies the very ideals that shaped your life. I’ve been fortunate to have been given that opportunity for the last four years.

My journey with Giving What We Can began long before I became its CEO. Like many members, I started as a curious onlooker, lurking for many years after first googling something along the lines of “what's the best charity?” and slowly being drawn to the idea of effective giving. I vividly remember the day I first hovered over the ‘donate’ button on the Against Malaria Foundation's website after getting my first raise. My heart was racing, wondering if a decent chunk of my small paycheck would truly make a difference… only to go back and read a report on malaria “just one more time.”

Finally, I found the courage to act. I started giving [...]

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First published:
September 10th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RkWWpYCnBgYHtisem/stepping-down-from-gwwc-so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“I have stepped aside from my role as Executive Director because I think it will help more animals” by KirstyHenderson

Wed, 04 Sep 2024 08:20:05 GMT

This is a link post.

Summary

During the last four years, our work for animals in Anima International faced several big challenges.
I took on the role of Executive Director to help cement the foundations of the organization.
Now that we want to build on these foundations to achieve even more impact for animals, we need different skills at the helm.
Anima International leadership has appointed Jakub Stencel as the new Interim Executive Director.
I have moved from the role of Executive Director to that of President.

After four years as Executive Director of Anima International, I pushed for my colleague Jakub Stencel to take over the role at the beginning of July. No, I’m not off chasing new opportunities or planning a quiet retreat. I’m not taking time off to be with my family (possibly my family are breathing a sigh of relief right now) And no [...]

The original text contained 3 images which were described by AI.

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First published:
September 3rd, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/M9XCb4qExjceFGkXx/i-have-stepped-aside-from-my-role-as-executive-director

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“Small simple way to promote effective giving while making people feel good” by DMMF

Sat, 31 Aug 2024 12:50:05 GMT

I'm a big fan of small, underrated acts that can have outsized positive impact (both in terms EA and in life more generally). I'd like to share one such practice I've incorporated into my life this year that brings me joy and I think some others here would enjoy: redirecting money owed to me towards Givewell recommended charities.

Whenever someone owes me money or is trying to solicit my time, instead of asking for direct payment, I request they instead contribute that amount to a GiveWell-recommended charity. This comes up in several contexts:

Friends repaying me miscellaneous expenses
Buyers purchasing items from me (ie selling something used online)
Being solicited for my participation in programs or sales pitches

I appreciate this just sounds like "Isn't this just offsetting your own charitable giving?" But I believe this approach creates additional value beyond the off-set donation:

Exposure Effect: By [...]

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First published:
August 22nd, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rCvaLdjefLoxtfcrv/small-simple-way-to-promote-effective-giving-while-making

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“My article in The Nation — California’s AI Safety Bill Is a Mask-Off Moment for the Industry” by Garrison

Thu, 22 Aug 2024 07:10:18 GMT

This is a link post.

I wrote an article on California AI safety bill SB 1047 for The Nation and the reaction from the AI industry, investors, and the broader tech community. The story was informed by conversations with over a dozen relevant sources and comes shortly before the bill faces a floor vote in the California Assembly.

I think it's useful to understand how industry responds to attempts to regulate AI, and centered my analysis on that topic.

If you're interested in helping share the article, I made a Tweet thread.

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First published:
August 15th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JfzX3oC4ZnotmrFWg/my-article-in-the-nation-california-s-ai-safety-bill-is-a

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“CEA will continue to take a ‘principles-first’ approach to EA” by Zachary Robinson

Tue, 20 Aug 2024 14:50:19 GMT

Introduction

I’m Zach, the new CEO of the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA). As I step into my role, I want to explain the principles that I think make EA special and share how CEA will continue to promote them.

In this post, I will:

Highlight the principles that I think are core to EA, and explain why CEA will continue to promote them above and beyond any single or set of cause area(s).
Explain what being principles-first means in practice for CEA[1].
Explain how encouraging people to act on EA principles can still lead to some prioritization decisions between causes, how CEA has navigated those decisions in the past, and what factors influence those decisions.
Share a little bit about my background and how I’ve personally engaged with these principles.

CEA will continue a “principles-first” approach to EA

In my role at CEA, I embrace an [...]

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Outline:

(00:06) Introduction

(01:04) CEA will continue a “principles-first” approach to EA

(03:33) Why principles-first?

(09:58) What exactly does principles-first mean for CEA?

(10:40) Sometimes we’ll prioritize some causes over others

(12:05) Cause prioritization examples

(14:53) Factors that shape CEA's cause prioritization

(19:50) The role of principles in my path through EA

(23:48) Acknowledgments

The original text contained 16 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
August 20th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jPDByBkEdPt2SF2LL/cea-will-continue-to-take-a-principles-first-approach-to-ea

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“The Tech Industry is the Biggest Blocker to Meaningful AI Safety Regulations” by Garrison

Tue, 20 Aug 2024 14:40:17 GMT

This is a link post.

If you enjoy this, please consider subscribing to my Substack.

My latest reporting went up in The Nation yesterday:

It's about the tech industry's meltdown in response to SB 1047, a California bill that would be the country's first significant attempt to mandate safety measures from developers of AI models more powerful and expensive than any yet known.

Rather than summarize that story, I’ve added context from some past reporting as well as new reporting on two big updates from yesterday: a congressional letter asking Newsom to veto the bill and a slate of amendments.

The real AI divide

After spending months on my January cover story in Jacobin on the AI existential risk debates, one of my strongest conclusions was that the AI ethics crowd (focused on the tech's immediate harms) and the x-risk crowd (focused on speculative, extreme risks) should recognize their shared [...]

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Outline:

(00:56) The real AI divide

(03:18) The congressional letter

(05:58) The turning tides

(09:29) Capitalism vs. democracy

(10:15) Yesterday's amendments to SB 1047

The original text contained 1 image which was described by AI.

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First published:
August 16th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/snto3JZs6HrgvsoJG/the-tech-industry-is-the-biggest-blocker-to-meaningful-ai

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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“This chart is right. Most interventions don’t do much. (Cameroon experience)” by EffectiveHelp - Cameroon

Sat, 17 Aug 2024 17:30:17 GMT

This chart is so right. The local charity environment in Cameroon is probably helping much less people than you imagine. We ran an effectiveness contest that aligns with this research perfectly.

In 2021 we created an EA group in Cameroon. We had multiple seminars covering the basics of Effective Altruism. By the end of 2022, the group got so excited that we created a charity.

“We” are a group of humanitarian/development workers in Cameroon, all currently employed in this field of work. Some of the basic EA principles resonated a lot. Such as the feeling that some activities and projects don’t really help much and that somewhere, sometimes, there is “real impact”.

So we created this charity to help steer organizations towards real impact, and help them become “more effective”. We tried a couple of things:

We offered consultancy services, starting for free, to local charities.

We started a [...]

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
August 16th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/TcMhE3SypnE9oLpoE/this-chart-is-right-most-interventions-don-t-do-much

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“Presenting five new effective giving initiatives” by CE, Ben Williamson

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 11:30:20 GMT

Introduction

In May 2024, Ambitious Impact (AIM) ran a program to incubate new effective giving initiatives (EGIs) in partnership with Giving What We Can. In short, EGIs focus on raising awareness and funneling public and philanthropic donations to the most cost-effective charities worldwide.

In the last few years, several Effective Giving Initiatives, such as Doneer Effectief, Effektiv Spenden, and Giving What We Can, have moved millions in funding to the best charities globally. The success of these and other similar organizations suggests that further initiatives in this space could be highly beneficial, given that many highly effective charities are bottlenecked by access to funding.

This article introduces five new effective giving initiatives incubated through the program we ran earlier this year in their own words. It summarizes their country of operation, near-term plans, targets, and any room for additional seed funding.[1]

Organization Summaries

Ellis Impact

Co-founders [...]

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Outline:

(00:05) Introduction

(01:06) Organization Summaries

(01:09) Ellis Impact

(01:38) Background (why is this a promising country/angle for an EGI?)

(02:47) Near-term plans

(03:21) Targets (reach/giving multiplier/etc.)

(03:45) Room for more funding

(04:58) Benefficienza

(05:25) Background (why is this a promising country/angle for an EGI?)

(06:07) Near-term plans

(06:47) Targets (reach/giving multiplier/etc.)

(07:02) Room for more funding

(07:44) Mieux Donner

(08:11) Background

(09:57) Near-term plans

(11:26) Targets

(11:56) Room for more funding

(12:43) Effectief Geven

(13:14) Background

(14:06) Near-term plans

(14:56) Targets

(15:12) Room for more funding

(15:41) Impactful Giving

(16:06) Background (why is this a promising country/angle for an EGI?)

(17:43) Near-term plans

(18:40) Targets (reach/giving multiplier/etc.)

(19:08) Room for more funding

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
August 13th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qq4KtwJHtCTLPqdy6/presenting-five-new-effective-giving-initiatives

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Announcing the $200k EA Community Choice” by Austin

Wed, 14 Aug 2024 22:20:18 GMT

This is a link post.

Manifund is hosting a $200k funding round for EA community projects, where the grant decisions are made by you. You can direct $100-$800 of funding towards the projects that have helped with your personal journey as an EA. Your choices then decide how $100k in matching will be allocated, via quadratic funding!

Timeline

Phase 1: Project registrations open (Aug 13)
- Project organizers can now create a page for their projects here, to raise funding as part of this EA Community Choice round.
- Community members can sign up for updates here, or recommend projects to sign up here.
Phase 2: Community members receive funds (Aug 20)
- We’ll give everyone $100 to donate; more if you’ve been active in the EA community. Fill out a 2-minute form [...]

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Outline:

(00:35) Timeline

(03:22) What is an EA community project?

(05:23) FAQ

(09:31) Get involved!

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First published:
August 14th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/GgYfqrATFzLAaPdct/announcing-the-usd200k-ea-community-choice

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“FarmKind’s Illusory Offer” by Jeff Kaufman

Wed, 14 Aug 2024 14:00:18 GMT

While the effective altruism movement has changed a lot over time, one of the parts that makes me most disappointed is the steady creep of donation matching. It's not that donation matching is objectively very important, but the early EA movement's principled rejection of a very effective fundraising strategy made it clear that we were committed to helping people understand the real impact of their donations. Over time, as people have specialized into different areas of EA, with community-building and epistemics being different people from fundraising, we've become less robust against the real-world incentives of "donation matching works".

Personally, I would love to see a community-wide norm against EA organizations setting up donation matches. Yes, they bring in money, but at the cost of misleading donors about their impact and unwinding a lot of what we, as a community, are trying to build. [1] To the extent that [...]

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First published:
August 9th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9W2iWyWjfoYaGDZcG/farmkind-s-illusory-offer

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“New video from Ali Abdaal (5.74m YT subscribers): Why I’m giving 10% of my income to charity (forever)” by Giving What We Can

Sun, 11 Aug 2024 21:40:17 GMT

This is a link post.

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First published:
August 9th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sLwP2D6WpLMFxjEK5/new-video-from-ali-abdaal-5-74m-yt-subscribers-why-i-m

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Wild Animal Initiative has urgent need for more funding and more donors” by Cameron Meyer Shorb 🔸

Wed, 07 Aug 2024 21:10:17 GMT

Our room for more funding is bigger and more urgent than ever before. Our organizational strategy will be responsive both to the total amount raised and to how many people donate, so smaller donors will have an especially high impact this year.

Good Ventures recently decided to phase out funding for several areas (GV blog, EA Forum post), including wild animal welfare. That's a pretty big shock to our movement. We don’t know what exactly the impact will be, except that it's complicated. The purpose of this post is to share what we know and how we’re thinking about things — primarily to encourage people to donate to Wild Animal Initiative this year, but also for anyone else who might be interested in the state of the wild animal welfare movement more broadly.

Summary

Track record

Our primary goal is to support the growth of a [...]

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Outline:

(00:53) Summary

(03:44) What we’ve accomplished so far

(03:48) Background

(04:12) Strategy

(05:39) Progress

(11:56) Why we need more funding, especially from smaller donors

(12:02) We always have room to grow, but now we need to make sure we don’t shrink.

(13:11) We raised less last year than we did the year before.

(13:59) We’re losing our biggest donor.

(16:37) Another donor could make up the funds, but not the security.

(18:25) Smaller donors have a bigger role to play.

(20:04) What we’ll do with your donation

(24:15) Conclusion

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
August 6th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/idhTjyNTsyxobijyJ/wild-animal-initiative-has-urgent-need-for-more-funding-and

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“On Owning Our EA Affiliation” by Alix Pham

Mon, 05 Aug 2024 17:50:49 GMT

Someone suggested I name this post "What We Owe The Community": I think it's a great title, but I didn't dare use it...

Views and mistakes my own.

What I believe

I think owning our EA affiliation—how we are inspired by the movement and the community—is net positive for the world and our careers. If more people were more outspoken about their alignment with EA principles and proximity to the EA community, we would all be better off. While there may be legitimate reasons for some individuals to not publicly identify as part of the EA movement, this can create a “free-rider problem”. If too many people choose to passively benefit from EA without openly supporting it, the overall movement and community may suffer from it.

Why I think more people should own their EA affiliation publicly

I understand why one doesn’t, but I’d probably not support it in [...]

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Outline:

(00:15) What I believe

(00:51) Why I think more people should own their EA affiliation publicly

(01:11) The risks

(01:40) A prisoner's dilemma

(02:22) Tipping points

(03:26) On transparency

(05:18) Where I come from

(05:22) Event branding

(06:01) Getting hired

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
August 5th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/TLKFfXJ4gPeXDkBC9/on-owning-our-ea-affiliation

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“FarmKind (a new animal fundraising platform) is live – Please DON’T DONATE” by Aidan Alexander, ThomNorman

Mon, 05 Aug 2024 10:50:49 GMT

TL;DR

FarmKind is a new effective giving platform dedicated to tackling factory farming
We’ve just launched - www.farmkind.giving
There are many ways you can help us if you’re interested - details below

FarmKind's aim

Factory farming is one of the most neglected cause areas relative to the amount of suffering it causes. Globally, Farmed Animal Funders estimates that just $200 million is channeled specifically to this issue,[1] while more than 10 billion land animals (excluding insects) are factory farmed annually in the US alone.[2]

Even when it comes to effective altruism, factory farming is a minority within a minority. We estimate that less than 10% of the funds raised by effective giving organizations go to factory farming.[3]

All this despite the fact that proven interventions in the lives of factory-farmed animals remain arguably some of the most cost-effective ways to prevent suffering that we have yet [...]

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Outline:

(00:08) TL;DR

(00:26) FarmKind's aim

(02:39) Our story so far

(03:29) DON’T donate though us (please)

(04:58) How you can help

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
August 2nd, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/D3Gqv9oiDkbmRgGJe/farmkind-a-new-animal-fundraising-platform-is-live-please

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“Case-control survey of EAGx attendees finds no behavioural or attitudinal changes after six months” by Fods12

Sun, 28 Jul 2024 23:00:41 GMT

Prepared by James Fodor and Miles Tidmarsh
EAGxAustralia 2023 Committee

Abstract

EAGx conferences are an important component of the effective altruism community, and have proven a popular method for engaging EAs and spreading EA ideas around the world. However, to date relatively little publicly available empirical evidence has been collected regarding the long term impact of such conferences on attendees. In this observational study we aimed to assess the extent to which EAGx conferences bring about change by altering EA attitudes or behaviours. To this end, we collected survey responses from attendees of the EAGxAustralia 2023 conference both before and six months after the conference, providing a measure of changes in EA-related attitudes and behaviours over this time. As a control, we also collected responses to the same survey questions from individuals on the EA Australia mailing list who did not attend the 2023 conference. Across 20 numerical measures [...]

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Outline:

(00:17) Abstract

(01:48) Background

(05:40) Methods

(12:39) Results

(12:42) Conference attendees differ from non-attendees

(14:58) EA attitudes and behaviours are highly stable over time

(16:38) Discussion

(24:18) Recommendations

The original text contained 17 images which were described by AI.

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First published:
July 27th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fGAnywCekpgHoaLc5/case-control-survey-of-eagx-attendees-finds-no-behavioural

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“We need an independent investigation into how EA leadership has handled SBF and FTX” by AnonymousEAForumAccount

Fri, 26 Jul 2024 16:10:27 GMT

Summary

Rebecca Kagan believes “EA needs an investigation, done externally and shared publicly, on mistakes made in the EA community's relationship with FTX.” She is far from the only person who has called for an independent investigation, but Kagan's experience and knowledge as a former board member of Effective Ventures makes her perspective particularly relevant.

Explaining her decision to resign from EV's board, Kagan wrote:

“I want to make it clear that I resigned last year due to significant disagreements with the board of EV and EA leadership, particularly concerning their actions leading up to and after the FTX crisis… I believe there were extensive and significant mistakes made which have not been addressed. (In particular, some EA leaders had warning signs about SBF that they ignored, and instead promoted him as a good person, tied the EA community to FTX, and then were uninterested in reforms or investigations [...]

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Outline:

(00:08) Summary

(06:11) Communications from EA leaders have not been forthcoming about important factual matters.

(06:45) Circa ~2017, SBF was one of 80k and CEA's largest donors.

(08:30) SBF served on CEA's board.

(09:00) SBF worked for CEA.

(09:20) Multiple EA leaders and organizations were aware about allegations stemming from the Alameda dispute.

(10:24) Open questions:

(11:37) There are worrisome discrepancies between comments from EA leaders and credible media reports.

(12:01) Will's professed ignorance about inappropriate romantic relationships SBF had while at Alameda directly conflicts with Time's reporting on the subject.

(12:57) Will's characterization of what complaints he heard about SBF related to the Alameda dispute, and when he heard them, conflicts with Time's reporting

(14:52) Nobody in EA leadership has publicly acknowledged the New Yorker's report that many leaders received warnings that SBF was being investigated for criminal behavior four months before FTX's collapse (other than to deny personally having seen said warnings)

(16:27) EA leadership has not acknowledged an internal CEA investigation and/or board assessment conducted relating to Alameda, which both Time and Semafor have reported

(18:00) Open questions:

(20:49) EA leaders have made public claims about post-FTX reforms that could easily be construed as misleading

(22:49) Open questions

The original text contained 14 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
July 24th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/P9phn7uhjiCvaCPDZ/we-need-an-independent-investigation-into-how-ea-leadership

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Warren Buffett changes giving plans (for the worse)” by katriel

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 21:20:28 GMT

This is a link post.

Folks in philanthropy and development definitely know that the Gates Foundation is the largest private player in that realm by far. Until recently it was likely to get even larger, as Warren Buffet had stated that the Foundation would receive the bulk of his assets when he died. A few weeks ago, Buffet announced that he had changed his mind, and was instead going to create a new trust for his assets, to be jointly managed by his children. It's a huge change, but I don't think very many people took note of what it means ("A billionaire is going to create his own foundation rather than giving to an existing one; seems unsurprising."). So I created this chart:

The new Buffet-funded trust is going to be nearly twice as large as the Gates Foundation, and nearly 150% larger than most of the other brand [...]

The original text contained 1 image which was described by AI.

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First published:
July 15th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bqi2M8oayRDvuGQg9/warren-buffett-changes-giving-plans-for-the-worse

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“Rethink Priorities’ Moral Parliament Tool” by Derek Shiller, arvomm, Bob Fischer, Hayley Clatterbuck

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 17:00:28 GMT

Link to tool: https://parliament.rethinkpriorities.org

(1 min) Introductory Video

(6 min) Basic Features Video

Executive Summary

This post introduces Rethink Priorities’ Moral Parliament Tool, which models ways an agent can make decisions about how to allocate goods in light of normative uncertainty.
We treat normative uncertainty as uncertainty over worldviews. A worldview encompasses a set of normative commitments, including first-order moral theories, values, and attitudes toward risk. We represent worldviews as delegates in a moral parliament who decide on an allocation of funds to a diverse array of charitable projects. Users can configure the parliament to represent their own credences in different worldviews and choose among several procedures for finding their best all-things-considered philanthropic allocation.
The relevant procedures are metanormative methods. These methods take worldviews and our credences in them as inputs and produce some action guidance as an output. Some proposed methods have taken inspiration from political or market processes involving agents [...]

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Outline:

(00:24) Executive Summary

(02:18) Introduction

(03:47) How does it work?

(04:21) Worldviews

(08:07) Projects

(10:45) Metanormative parliament

(12:11) The Moral Parliament Tool at work

(12:16) (How) do empirical assumptions matter?

(12:20) Uncertainties about scale

(14:13) How much does scale matter?

(16:10) An example project: The Cassandra Fund

(19:15) What would an EA parliament do?

(19:21) Normative uncertainty among EAs

(21:17) Results

(24:12) Takeaways

(26:40) Getting Started

(27:04) Acknowledgments

The original text contained 9 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

The original text contained 17 images which were described by AI.

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First published:
July 17th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HxphJhSiXBQ74uxJX/rethink-priorities-moral-parliament-tool

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“Destabilization of the United States: The top X-factor EA neglects?” by Yelnats T.J.

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 18:40:08 GMT

Highlights

Destabilization could be the biggest setback for great power conflict, AI, bio-risk, and climate disruption.
Polarization plays a role in nearly every causal pathway leading to destabilization of the United States, and there is no indication polarization will decrease.
The United States fits the pattern of past democracies that have descended into authoritarian regimes in many key aspects.
The most recent empirical research on civil conflicts suggests the United States is in a category that has a 4% annual risk of falling into a civil conflict.
In 2022 (when this was originally written), Mike Berkowitz, ED of Democracy Funders Network and 80,000 Hours guest, believes there is 50% chance American democracy fails in the next 6 years.
For every dollar spent on depolarization efforts, there are probably at least a hundred dollars spent aggravating the culture war.
Destabilization of the United States could wipe out billions of dollars of pledged EA funds.

Note following the [...]

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Outline:

(00:07) Highlights

(01:16) Note following the assassination attempt of former President Trump

(02:45) Preface

(06:10) Acknowledgements

(06:24) Summary

(09:08) Possibility

(10:02) Big picture

(10:06) Authoritarianism

(12:57) Civil conflict

(16:50) Polarization

(20:40) How close we already came (January 6th)

(26:42) A note on the military counter argument

(28:18) Top reasons why the United States wouldn’t destabilize

(29:14) What I would have included in a longer version

(29:51) Conclusion

(31:36) Importance

(31:59) Global ramifications and great power conflict

(33:17) Artificial Intelligence and bio-risk

(33:22) Applicable to both

(34:27) Artificial Intelligence

(34:48) Accelerating climate disruption

(34:52) Authoritarianism

(35:25) Civil conflict

(36:08) Significance

(37:02) Effects on the Effective Altruism movement

(37:06) Talent

(37:29) Funds

(38:15) Plausible scenario

(39:01) Neglectedness

(40:36) Through the lens of polarization

(42:03) Tractability

(44:15) What is needed

(44:18) The broad needs

(44:46) Structural-reform needs\[80\]

(46:03) Needs for stopping polarizing forces

(46:38) Needs for Depolarizing the population

(46:58) Why it's difficult

(47:02) Structural reform

(47:36) Stopping polarizing forces

(49:01) Depolarize the population

(50:36) Where there is traction

(50:40) Ballot initiatives

(51:29) Robust federalism

(51:48) Prescription (what OP/EA could do)

(53:04) Funding and scaling existing efforts

(53:09) Create an operation focused on recruiting more funders and key non-funder partners to this effort

(54:00) Fund ballot initiative efforts and organizations

(56:15) Fund existing depolarization efforts and organizations

(56:51) Fund new organizations to fill gaps through an approach similar to the arrangement between CE and FTX for biosecurity

(57:54) Fund experiments/projects that will give us actionable information

(58:30) Miscellaneous interventions

(58:34) Preempting accelerationist events

(01:00:19) Invest in local journalism

(01:00:51) Promote sincere populist leadership in the Republican apparatus to replace culture warriors

(01:03:49) Invest in mutual aid networks

(01:04:17) Strengthening unions and preparing for a general strike

(01:05:32) My personal favorite

(01:05:36) Left-Right coalitions to run a slate of ballot-initiatives for structural reform

(01:06:49) Uncertainties (why OP/EA should do a medium-level investigation)

(01:08:21) Conclusion/call to action

The original text contained 2 images which were described by AI.

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First published:
July 15th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/kmx3rKh2K4ANwMqpW/destabilization-of-the-united-states-the-top-x-factor-ea

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“Against Aschenbrenner: How ‘Situational Awareness’ constructs a narrative that undermines safety and threatens humanity” by GideonF

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 11:50:08 GMT

Summary/Introduction

Aschenbrenner's ‘Situational Awareness’ (Aschenbrenner, 2024) promotes a dangerous narrative of national securitisation. This narrative is not, despite what Aschenbrenner suggests, descriptive, but rather, it is performative, constructing a particular notion of security that makes the dangerous world Aschenbrenner describes more likely to happen.

This piece draws on the work of Nathan A. Sears (2023), who argues that the failure to sufficiently eliminate plausible existential threats throughout the 20th century emerges from a ‘national securitisation’ narrative winning out over a ‘humanity macrosecuritization narrative’. National securitisation privileges extraordinary measures to defend the nation, often centred around military force and logics of deterrence/balance of power and defence. Humanity macrosecuritization suggests the object of security is to defend all of humanity, not just the nation, and often invokes logics of collaboration, mutual restraint and constraints on sovereignty. Sears uses a number of examples to show that when issues are constructed as issues [...]

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Outline:

(00:08) Summary/Introduction

(03:03) Section 1- What is securitisation

(07:39) Section 2: Sears 2023 - The macrosecuritization of Existential Threats to humanity

(16:25) Section 3 - How does this relate to Aschenbrenner's ‘Situational Awareness’?

(19:49) Section 4 - Why Aschenbrenners narrative is dangerous and the role of expert communities

(29:35) Section 5- The possibility of a moratorium, military conflict and collaboration

(36:51) Conclusion

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First published:
July 15th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/H6xEhur9Lbbv9dhBC/against-aschenbrenner-how-situational-awareness-constructs-a

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“The Precipice Revisited” by Toby_Ord

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 13:20:14 GMT

I'm often asked about how the existential risk landscape has changed in the years since I wrote The Precipice. Earlier this year, I gave a talk on exactly that, and I want to share it here.

Here's a video of the talk and a full transcript.

In the years since I wrote The Precipice, the question I’m asked most is how the risks have changed. It's now almost four years since the book came out, but the text has to be locked down a long time earlier, so we are really coming up on about five years of changes to the risk landscape.

I’m going to dive into four of the biggest risks — climate change, nuclear, pandemics, and AI — to show how they’ve changed. Now a lot has happened over those years, and I don’t want this to just be recapping the news in fast-forward. But [...]

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Outline:

(01:30) Climate Change

(01:58) Carbon Emissions

(03:18) Climate Sensitivity

(06:43) Nuclear

(06:46) Heightened Chance of Onset

(08:16) Likely New Arms Race

(09:54) Funding Collapse

(10:53) Pandemics

(10:56) Covid

(16:03) Protective technologies

(18:59) AI in Biotech

(20:32) AI

(20:50) RL agents ⇒ language models

(24:59) Racing

(27:05) Governance

(30:14) Conclusions

The original text contained 7 images which were described by AI.

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First published:
July 12th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/iKLLSYHvnhgcpoBxH/the-precipice-revisited

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“Most smart and skilled people are outside of the EA/rationalist community: an analysis” by titotal

Sat, 13 Jul 2024 18:50:14 GMT

This is a link post.

Introduction:

The (highly interrelated) effective altruist and Rationalist communities are very small on a global scale. Therefore, in general, most intelligence, skill and expertise is outside of the community, not within it.

I don’t think many people will disagree with this statement. But sometimes it's worth reminding people of the obvious, and also it is worth quantifying and visualizing the obvious, to get a proper feel for the scale of the difference. I think some people are acting like they have absorbed this point, and some people definitely are not.

In this post, I will try and estimate the size of these communities. I will compare how many smart people are in the community vs outside the community. I will do the same for people in a few professions, and then I will go into controversial mode and try and give some advice that I [...]

The original text contained 7 images which were described by AI.

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First published:
July 12th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Bz4McBt62p63Zkjzb/most-smart-and-skilled-people-are-outside-of-the-ea

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“Reliable Sources: The Story of David Gerard” by TracingWoodgrains

Thu, 11 Jul 2024 21:50:18 GMT

This is a linkpost for https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wikipedia-admin, posted in full here given its relevance to this community. Gerard has been one of the longest-standing malicious critics of the rationalist and EA communities and has done remarkable amounts of work to shape their public images behind the scenes.

Note: I am closer to this story than to many of my others. As always, I write aiming to provide a thorough and honest picture, but this should be read as the view of a close onlooker who has known about much within this story for years and has strong opinions about the matter, not a disinterested observer coming across something foreign and new. If you’re curious about the backstory, I encourage you to read my companion article after this one.

Introduction: Reliable Sources

Wikipedia administrator David Gerard cares a great deal about Reliable Sources. For the past half-decade, he has torn [...]

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Outline:

(00:55) Introduction: Reliable Sources

(06:00) Gerard's Standards for Reliable Sources

(13:48) Who Is David Gerard?

(16:49) The Early Romantic Years

(27:52) Gerard's fling with LessWrong in the twilight of the old internet

(37:44) The bitter end

(45:19) The Vindictive Ex

(49:53) LessWrong

(01:04:08) Effective Altruism

(01:07:47) Scott Alexander

(01:16:14) Conclusion

(01:21:49) Companion article: A Young Mormon Discovers Online Rationality

The original text contained 24 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

The original text contained 13 images which were described by AI.

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First published:
July 10th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/D8GmTE9jvJg44GTAg/reliable-sources-the-story-of-david-gerard

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

“We’ve renamed the Giving What We Can Pledge” by Alana HF, Giving What We Can

Thu, 11 Jul 2024 14:00:49 GMT

This is a link post.

The Giving What We Can Pledge is now the 🔸10% Pledge! We cover the why (along with our near-term plans and how you can help!) below.

TL;DR:

The name change will help us grow awareness of the pledge by reducing brand confusion and facilitating partnerships.
We see it as an important part of reaching our goal of 10,000 pledgers by the end of 2024.
You can help by adding the orange diamond emoji to your social profiles 🔸 if you’ve taken the 10% Pledge! (or a small blue diamond 🔹 emoji if you’ve taken the Trial Pledge) as described below.

Full post:

For the better part of a year, Giving What We Can has been thinking more deliberately about how our brand choices could accelerate or hinder progress towards our mission of making giving effectively and significantly a cultural [...]

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Outline:

(02:24) What will this help us achieve?

(03:34) How can you help?

(04:53) More about our new partnerships

(06:12) What's staying the same?

(06:53) Questions?

(07:07) A big thanks

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

The original text contained 3 images which were described by AI.

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First published:
July 1st, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uZzXRyAwkDHLfu94W/we-ve-renamed-the-giving-what-we-can-pledge

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“80,000 hours should remove OpenAI from the Job Board (and similar EA orgs should do similarly)” by Raemon

Thu, 11 Jul 2024 14:00:49 GMT

I haven't shared this post with other relevant parties – my experience has been that private discussion of this sort of thing is more paralyzing than helpful. I might change my mind in the resulting discussion, but, I prefer that discussion to be public.

I think 80,000 hours should remove OpenAI from its job board, and similar EA job placement services should do the same.

(I personally believe 80k shouldn't advertise Anthropic jobs either, but I think the case for that is somewhat less clear)

I think OpenAI has demonstrated a level of manipulativeness, recklessness, and failure to prioritize meaningful existential safety work, that makes me think EA orgs should not be going out of their way to give them free resources. (It might make sense for some individuals to work there, but this shouldn't be a thing 80k or other orgs are systematically funneling talent into)

There [...]

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Outline:

(04:41) FAQ / Appendix

(04:51) Q: It seems that, like it or not, OpenAI is a place transformative AI research is likely to happen, and having good people work there is important.

(05:02) Isnt it better to have alignment researchers working there, than not? Are you sure youre not running afoul of misguided purity instincts?

(07:06) Q: What about jobs like security research engineer?.

(07:12) That seems straightforwardly good for OpenAI to have competent people for, and probably doesnt require a good Safety Culture to pay off?

(08:09) Q: What about offering a path towards good standing? to OpenAI?

(10:44) Q: What if we left up job postings, but with an explicit disclaimer linking to a post saying why people should be skeptical?

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First published:
July 3rd, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DjCXPkGDisS6oj6Ga/80-000-hours-should-remove-openai-from-the-job-board-and

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“AMA: Beast Philanthropy’s Darren Margolias” by Beast Philanthropy, GiveDirectly

Tue, 09 Jul 2024 21:00:07 GMT

From Darren Margolias: I'm the Executive Director of Beast Philanthropy, the charity founded by the world's most popular YouTuber MrBeast.

We recently collaborated with GiveDirectly on the video below. You can read background the project from our LinkedIn here and here (plus GiveDirectly's blog)

On Thursday, July 18th I'll be recording a video AMA with CEA's Emma Richter. Her questions will come from you, and we'll post the video and transcript here afterwards.

Please post your questions as comments to this post and upvote the questions you’d like me to answer most. Emma and I will do our best to get to as many as we can.

Feel free to ask anything you'd like to know about Beast Philanthropy's process, projects, and goals!

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First published:
July 9th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7QfKaF2bnCbuREJNx/ama-beast-philanthropy-s-darren-margolias

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Do What You Can (A Poem)” by ElliotTep

Thu, 04 Jul 2024 14:50:27 GMT

Audio is here if you prefer. Hope you like it.

I got something to offer, all I ask is your time.
And forgiveness for the form: a cheesy rhyme.
You’re skeptical? Makes sense. But I know your type's vice.
You strike me as a purveyor, of do-gooder advice.

And it's pretty damn good, I don't mean to boast,
This advice always fits. Well…sort of. Almost!
Listen good, take your time, to ensure I'm understood,
As I tell you how to do the utmost good.

But first let's all travel, to that fateful day.
When you first got involved, with that thing called EA.
Maybe a colleague, a classmate, or old childhood friend,
Solemnly broke the news, of how this world will end.

Or perhaps it was fanfic, of a boy with a wand,
career tips, free pizza, or a child in a pond.
Well, you found the [...]

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First published:
July 1st, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rd8JBxJHC68ErsRLW/do-what-you-can-a-poem

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Center for Effective Aid Policy has shut down” by MathiasKB🔸

Tue, 02 Jul 2024 19:40:30 GMT

May 2024 marked the last month of the Center for Effective Aid Policy. This post serves as the public post-mortem. I have strived for it to be interesting to the average forum reader, who may not know much about the cause area.

For professionals in development, we have a few internal private write ups which we may be more interesting, such as an overview of development asks we tried[1], their strengths and weaknesses, and our experience advocating for them.

Our mission

Our mission was to improve the cost-effectiveness of development assistance through policy advocacy. Governments spend billions on projects to help the world's poorest, few of them cost-effective.

For example, one could propose the use of cash-benchmarking to the ministry or push through a political motion to increase the proportion of spending going to the Least Developed Countries.

If one could make even a small part of this very [...]

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Outline:

(00:34) Our mission

(01:14) How far did we get?

(01:18) The first months

(02:13) Things pick up

(03:33) The decision to shut down

(04:47) Why changing aid is difficult

(04:51) Development is a competitive market

(06:17) Political champions are few and far between

(07:43) Decreasing budgets limit maneuverability

(08:38) Was our execution sufficient?

(09:47) Insufficient founder-fit

(09:51) We lacked development experience

(10:49) We came to struggle with morale

(12:19) Should others try this intervention?

(15:36) Thank you to everyone who helped

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
July 2nd, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/emBSDADvCnSwtL2kS/center-for-effective-aid-policy-has-shut-down

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“How can we get the world to talk about factory farming?” by LewisBollard

Tue, 02 Jul 2024 19:10:58 GMT

This is a link post.

Silence favors the status quo, which doesn’t favor animals

It's easy to ignore factory farming. Inflation sparks public debates about the economy. Natural disasters spur news stories on climate change. Advances in artificial intelligence prompt discussion of its risks. But abuses on factory farms go ignored.

An analysis by my colleague Emma Buckland found that, since 2010, global English-language print and online news coverage of factory farming has only grown in line with other reporting on agriculture (see graph below). By contrast, coverage of climate change has grown two to three times faster. Google News lists 0.02 - 0.4% as many articles in the last week on factory farming as on [...]

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First published:
June 27th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/opb3JH4DfAMKqy3Rs/how-can-we-get-the-world-to-talk-about-factory-farming

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Animal Welfare Fund: Payout recommendations from May 2022 to March 2024” by Linch, kierangreig, KarolinaSarek, Zoë Sigle, Neil_Dullaghan

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 11:50:26 GMT

This payout report covers the Animal Welfare Fund's grantmaking from May 1 2022 to March 31st 2024 (23 months). It follows the previous March-April 2022 payout report.

Since the previous report was written, the Animal Welfare Fund made a conscious decision to deprioritize public reports so that fund managers can have more time and capacity to work on high-quality evaluations. However, now that I (Linch) am working for EA Funds full-time, I’ve attempted to consolidate and streamline the report writing process, so that hopefully regular reports can be written again without unduly using up limited fund manager time.

Total funding recommended: $7,079,301
Total funding paid out: $6,943,301
Number of grants paid out: 109
Acceptance rate (excluding desk rejections): 111/409 = 27.1%
Acceptance rate (including desk rejections): 111/685 = 16.2%
Report authors: Linchuan Zhang (primary author), Kieran Greig (fund chair), Karolina Sarek, Zoë Sigle, Neil Dullaghan

16 of [...]

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Outline:

(00:10) Introduction

(01:51) Highlighted Grants

(17:35) Other writings

(21:00) Other Grants We Made During This Time Period

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First published:
June 26th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7xYeFpnfAw2QwPz4a/animal-welfare-fund-payout-recommendations-from-may-2022-to

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Detecting Genetically Engineered Viruses With Metagenomic Sequencing” by Jeff Kaufman

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 11:40:26 GMT

This is a link post.

This represents work from several people at the NAO. Thanks especially to Dan Rice for implementing the duplicate junction detection, and to @Will Bradshaw and @mike_mclaren for editorial feedback.

Summary

If someone were to intentionally cause a stealth pandemic today, one of the ways they might do it is by modifying an existing virus. Over the past few months we’ve been working on building a computational pipeline that could flag evidence of this kind of genetic engineering, and we now have an initial pipeline working end to end. When given 35B read pairs of wastewater sequencing data it raises 14 alerts for manual review, 13 of which are quickly dismissible false positives and one is a known genetically engineered sequence derived from HIV. While it's hard to get a good estimate before actually going and doing it, our best guess is that if this system [...]

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Outline:

(00:22) Summary

(01:15) System Design

(02:36) Evaluation

(02:50) Simulation

(05:28) Real World Evaluation

(08:29) System Sensitivity

(11:34) Future Work

The original text contained 1 image which was described by AI.

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First published:
June 27th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/da6iKGxco8hjwH4nv/detecting-genetically-engineered-viruses-with-metagenomic

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

“Announcing The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why” by jeffsebo

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 08:00:26 GMT

Hi all, just a short post to let you know that my next book, The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why, is now available for preorder!

This is the publisher's description: "Today, human exceptionalism is the norm. Despite occasional nods to animal welfare, we focus on humanity, often neglecting the welfare of a vast number of beings. In The Moral Circle, philosopher Jeff Sebo challenges us to include all potentially significant beings in our moral community, with transformative implications for our lives and societies. As the dominant species, humanity must ask: which nonhumans matter, how much do they matter, and what do we owe them in a world reshaped by human activity and technology? The Moral Circle explores provocative case studies, such as lawsuits over captive elephants and debates over factory-farmed insects, and compels us to consider future ethical quandaries, such as whether to send microbes to [...]

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First published:
June 25th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KirBKwNHeujEwAmQZ/announcing-the-moral-circle-who-matters-what-matters-and-why

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Distancing EA from rationality is foolish” by Jan_Kulveit

Fri, 28 Jun 2024 15:50:26 GMT

Recently, I've noticed a growing tendency within EA to dissociate from Rationality. Good Ventures have stopped funding efforts connected with the rationality community and rationality, and there are increasing calls for EAs to distance themselves.

This trend concerns me, and I believe it's good to make a distinction when considering this split.

We need to differentiate between 'capital R' Rationality and 'small r' rationality. By 'capital R' Rationality, I mean the actual Rationalist community, centered around Berkeley: A package deal that includes ideas about self-correcting lenses and systematized winning, but also extensive jargon, cultural norms like polyamory, a high-decoupling culture, and familiarity with specific memes (ranging from 'Death with Dignity' to 'came in fluffer').

On the other hand, 'small r' rationality is a more general concept. It encompasses the idea of using reason and evidence to form conclusions, scout mindset, and empiricism. It also includes a quest [...]

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
June 25th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2pYGbvYsKfDC2WnxL/distancing-ea-from-rationality-is-foolish

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Ten minutes to speak up for ~4.5 million caged chickens” by Ben Stevenson

Thu, 27 Jun 2024 02:30:39 GMT

(You can read this post as a Google Doc. You might find this easier to share with animal-sympathetic non-EAs. Also: I work at Rethink Priorities, but I'm writing in a personal capacity.)

A few weeks ago, I shared some suggested responses for a Defra consultation on welfare labelling. I was really pleased to hear that many EAs and animal rights advocates wrote in to support the proposal. I’m now sharing a similar opportunity: ~ten minutes of your time to speak up for ~4.5 million caged chickens.

If you want to help, you have less than 48 hours to get this done!

What's the public consultation?

The Scottish government is running a public consultation on their proposal to ban cages for layer hens. Agriculture is a devolved power so Holyrood have responsibility for Scottish animal welfare.

Let's be clear: cage-free chickens have dramatically better lives than caged chickens. Liberating caged [...]

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Outline:

(00:46) What's the public consultation?

(03:42) How you can help

(04:39) Will your response influence decision-makers?

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
June 24th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mooBq4A3Hd8ttTyAY/ten-minutes-to-speak-up-for-4-5-million-caged-chickens

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Kaya Guides Pilot Results” by RachelAbbott

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 19:10:39 GMT

Summary.

Who We Are: Kaya Guides runs a self-help course on WhatsApp to reduce depression at scale in low and middle-income countries. We help young adults with moderate to severe depression. Kaya currently operates in India. We are the world's first nonprofit implementer of Step-by-Step, the World Health Organization's digital guided self-help program, which was proven effective in two RCTs.

Pilot: We ran a pilot with 103 participants in India to assess the feasibility of implementing our program on WhatsApp with our target demographic and to generate early indicators of its effectiveness.

Results: 72% of program completers experienced depression reduction of 50% or greater. 36% were depression-free. 92% moved down at least a classification in severity (i.e. they shifted from severe to moderately severe, moderately severe to moderate, etc). The average reduction in score was 10 points on the 27-point PHQ-9 depression questionnaire.

Context: To offer a few [...]

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Outline:

(04:44) Part 1. About the Kaya Guides Program

(04:49) What is Kaya Guides and what do we do?

(05:13) How the program works

(05:35) Evidence base

(06:11) Why guided self-help is effective

(06:50) Why this work matters

(07:52) Program design

(08:46) Target participant profile

(09:14) Impact measurement

(10:00) Part 2. Pilot Impact and Cost-Effectiveness

(10:18) Impacts on depression

(11:01) Comparison

(12:10) Effect Size Estimate

(14:35) Takeaway

(15:02) Cost-Effectiveness

(15:29) Pilot Cost-Effectiveness

(17:15) 2025 Projected Cost-Effectiveness

(19:15) Program Impacts According to Participants

(22:50) Part 3. Recruitment

(22:55) Quick Stats

(24:20) Participant Profile

(25:38) Part 4. Retention

(27:45) Part 5. Participant Feedback

(31:19) What's Next

(32:05) Support Us

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First published:
June 16th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6NaRJpSn2zfRSnGYN/kaya-guides-pilot-results

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Are our Top Charities saving the same lives each year?” by GiveWell

Sun, 23 Jun 2024 08:10:05 GMT

This is a link post.

Author: Adam Salisbury, Senior Research Associate

In a nutshell

We’ve had a longstanding concern that some of our top charity programs, including insecticide-treated nets, seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC), and vitamin A supplementation (VAS), may have less impact than we've estimated due to “repetitive saving.” These programs provide health interventions to the same children under 5 years old annually or every 3 years. Our cost-effectiveness models currently assume that different lives are saved each year from these interventions. We think it's possible the programs are actually saving the same, high-risk children over and over. In a worst-case scenario, this could mean the programs are saving 80% fewer cumulative lives than we thought.

Based on a shallow review of empirical evidence and talking to experts, our best guess is that we're only overstating the total lives saved by these programs by around 10%, because:

Under-5 deaths [...]

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Outline:

(00:12) In a nutshell

(02:46) What's the issue?

(06:44) What did we find?

(11:53) How could we be wrong?

(14:31) What's the issue?

(17:35) Why we don’t think this is a big concern

(18:22) Driver 1: Skewness of mortality risk

(20:42) Driver 2: Persistence of the at-risk population

(25:12) Modeling these drivers

(34:08) Sensitivity checks

(35:35) Outside the model checks

(37:34) How could we be wrong?

(40:28) Are we returning children to normal life expectancy?

(42:34) Driver 1: Skewness of mortality risk across the life cycle

(43:43) Driver 2: Persistence of the at-risk population

(48:13) Moral difficulties raised by the life expectancy question

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First published:
June 18th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jNAFTJWpKK89pisaQ/are-our-top-charities-saving-the-same-lives-each-year

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Why so many ‘racists’ at Manifest?” by Austin

Tue, 18 Jun 2024 06:30:53 GMT

Manifest 2024 is a festival that we organized last weekend in Berkeley. By most accounts, it was a great success. On our feedback form, the average response to “would you recommend to a friend” was a 9.0/10. Reviewers said nice things like “one of the best weekends of my life” and “dinners and meetings and conversations with people building local cultures so achingly beautiful they feel almost like dreams” and “I’ve always found tribalism mysterious, but perhaps that was just because I hadn’t yet found my tribe.”

Arnold Brooks running a session on Aristotle's Metaphysics. More photos of Manifest here.

However, a recent post on The Guardian and review on the EA Forum highlight an uncomfortable fact: we invited a handful of controversial speakers to Manifest, whom these authors call out as “racist”. Why did we invite these folks?

First: our sessions and guests were mostly not controversial — [...]

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Outline:

(01:01) First: our sessions and guests were mostly not controversial — despite what you may have heard

(03:03) Okay, but there sure seemed to be a lot of controversial ones…

(06:03) Bringing people together with prediction markets

(07:31) Anyways, controversy bad

(08:57) Aside: Is Manifest an Effective Altruism event?

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First published:
June 18th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/34pz6ni3muwPnenLS/why-so-many-racists-at-manifest

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Help Fund Insect Welfare Science” by Bob Fischer, Daniela R. Waldhorn, abrahamrowe

Sat, 15 Jun 2024 16:10:49 GMT

The Arthropoda Foundation

Tens of trillions of insects are used or killed by humans across dozens of industries. Despite being the most numerous animal species reared by animal industries, we know next to nothing about what's good or bad for these animals. And right now, funding for this work is scarce. Traditional science funders won’t pay for it; and within EA, the focus is on advocacy, not research. So, welfare science needs your help.

We’re launching the Arthropoda Foundation, a fund to ensure that insect welfare science gets the essential resources it needs to provide decision-relevant answers to pressing questions. Every dollar we raise will be granted to research projects that can’t be funded any other way.

We’re in a critical moment for this work. Over the last year, field-building efforts have accelerated, setting up academic labs that can tackle key studies. However, funding for these studies is [...]

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Outline:

(00:10) The Arthropoda Foundation

(01:17) Why do we need a fund?

(02:55) Team

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First published:
June 14th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2NsS7gjccJAKMf4co/help-fund-insect-welfare-science

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Maybe let the non-EA world train you” by ElliotT

Sat, 15 Jun 2024 11:10:49 GMT

This post is for EAs at the start of their careers who are considering which organisations to apply to, and their next steps in general.

Conclusion up front: It can be really hard to get that first job out of university. If you don’t get your top picks, your less exciting backup options can still be great for having a highly impactful career. If those first few years of work experience aren’t your best pick, they will still be useful as a place where you can ‘learn how to job’, save some money, and then pivot or grow from there.

The main reasons are:

The EA job market can be grim. Securing a job at an EA organisation out of university is highly competitive, often resulting in failing to get a job, or chaotic job experiences due to the nascent nature of many EA orgs. An alternative [...]

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Outline:

(01:58) What's the problem? Three failure modes of trying to get an EA job

(06:15) Maybe let the non-EA world train you

(08:50) Let's get specific. Some of my story

(11:45) Caveats

(12:58) Wrapping up

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First published:
June 14th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZvXBSs9Nz3dKBKcAo/maybe-let-the-non-ea-world-train-you

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Maybe Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust is powerless” by Zach Stein-Perlman

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 11:40:49 GMT

Crossposted from AI Lab Watch. Subscribe on Substack.

Introduction.

Anthropic has an unconventional governance mechanism: an independent "Long-Term Benefit Trust" elects some of its board. Anthropic sometimes emphasizes that the Trust is an experiment, but mostly points to it to argue that Anthropic will be able to promote safety and benefit-sharing over profit.[1]

But the Trust's details have not been published and some information Anthropic has shared is concerning. In particular, Anthropic's stockholders can apparently overrule, modify, or abrogate the Trust, and the details are unclear.

Anthropic has not publicly demonstrated that the Trust would be able to actually do anything that stockholders don't like.

The facts

There are three sources of public information on the Trust:

The Long-Term Benefit Trust (Anthropic 2023)
Anthropic Long-Term Benefit Trust (Morley et al. 2023)
The $1 billion gamble to ensure AI doesn't destroy humanity (Vox: Matthews 2023)

They say there's [...]

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Outline:

(00:53) The facts

(02:51) Conclusion

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
May 27th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JARcd9wKraDeuaFu5/maybe-anthropic-s-long-term-benefit-trust-is-powerless

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Summary of Situational Awareness - The Decade Ahead” by OscarD🔸

Wed, 12 Jun 2024 13:10:50 GMT

Original by Leopold Aschenbrenner, this summary is not commissioned or endorsed by him.

Short Summary

Extrapolating existing trends in compute, spending, algorithmic progress, and energy needs implies AGI (remote jobs being completely automatable) by ~2027.
AGI will greatly accelerate AI research itself, leading to vastly superhuman intelligences being created ~1 year after AGI.
Superintelligence will confer a decisive strategic advantage militarily by massively accelerating all spheres of science and technology.
Electricity use will be a bigger bottleneck on scaling datacentres than investment, but is still doable domestically in the US by using natural gas.
AI safety efforts in the US will be mostly irrelevant if other actors steal the model weights of an AGI. US AGI research must employ vastly better cybersecurity, to protect both model weights and algorithmic secrets.
Aligning superhuman AI systems is a difficult technical challenge, but probably doable, and we must devote lots of [...]

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Outline:

(00:13) Short Summary

(02:16) 1. From GPT-4 to AGI: Counting the OOMs

(02:24) Past AI progress

(05:38) Training data limitations

(06:42) Trend extrapolations

(07:58) The modal year of AGI is soon

(09:30) 2. From AGI to Superintelligence: the Intelligence Explosion

(09:37) The basic intelligence explosion case

(10:47) Objections and responses

(14:07) The power of superintelligence

(16:29) III The Challenges

(16:32) IIIa. Racing to the Trillion-Dollar Cluster

(21:12) IIIb. Lock Down the Labs: Security for AGI

(21:20) The power of espionage

(22:24) Securing model weights

(24:01) Protecting algorithmic insights

(24:56) Necessary steps for improved security

(26:50) IIIc. Superalignment

(29:41) IIId. The Free World Must Prevail

(32:41) 4. The Project

(35:12) 5. Parting Thoughts

(36:17) Responses to Situational Awareness

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
June 8th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zmRTWsYZ4ifQKrX26/summary-of-situational-awareness-the-decade-ahead

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

“I doubled the world record cycling without hands for AMF” by Vincent van der Holst

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 18:50:38 GMT

A couple weeks ago I announced I was going to try and break the world record cycling without hands for AMF. That post also explains why I wanted to break that record. Last Friday we broke that record and raised nearly €10.000 for AMF. Here's what happened on friday. You can still donate here.

What was the old record?

Canadian Robert John Murray rode the old record of 130.29 kilometers in 5:37 hours in Calgary on June 12, 2023. His average speed was 23.2 kilometers per hour. See here the Guinness World Records page.

I managed to double the record and these were my stats.

How did the record attempt itself go?

On Friday, June 7, I started the record attempt on the closed cycling course of WV Amsterdam just after 6 am. I got up at half past four and immediately drank a [...]

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First published:
June 11th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5ru7nEtC6mufuBXbk/i-doubled-the-world-record-cycling-without-hands-for-amf

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Announcing a $6,000,000 endowment for NYU Mind, Ethics, and Policy” by Sofia_Fogel

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 12:00:09 GMT

The NYU Mind, Ethics, and Policy Program will soon become the NYU Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy (CMEP), our future secured by a generous $6,000,000 endowment. The CMEP Endowment Fund was established in May 2024 with a $5,000,000 gift from The Navigation Fund and a $1,000,000 gift from Polaris Ventures. We now welcome contributions from other supporters too, with deep gratitude to our founding supporters.

Since our launch in Fall 2022, the NYU Mind, Ethics, and Policy Program has stood at the forefront of academic inquiry into the nature and intrinsic value of nonhuman minds. CMEP will continue this work, seeking to advance understanding of the consciousness, sentience, sapience, moral status, legal status, and political status of animals and AI systems via research, outreach, and field building in science, philosophy, and policy.

You can read the press release about the endowment here. Thanks to everyone who [...]

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First published:
May 31st, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/eu5ykCAKLtPTyb8eM/announcing-a-usd6-000-000-endowment-for-nyu-mind-ethics-and

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“I bet Greg Colbourn 10 k€ that AI will not kill us all by the end of 2027” by Vasco Grilo

Wed, 05 Jun 2024 09:00:08 GMT

Agreement

78 % of my donations so far have gone to the Long-Term Future Fund[1] (LTFF), which mainly supports AI safety interventions. However, I have become increasingly sceptical about the value of existential risk mitigation, and currently think the best interventions are in the area of animal welfare[2]. As a result, I realised it made sense for me to arrange a bet with someone very worried about AI in order to increase my donations to animal welfare interventions. Gregory Colbourn (Greg) was the 1st person I thought of. He said:

I think AGI [artificial general intelligence] is 0-5 years away and p(doom|AGI) is ~90%

I doubt doom in the sense of human extinction is anywhere as likely as suggested by the above. I guess the annual extinction risk over the next 10 years is 10^-7, so I proposed a bet to Greg similar to the end-of-the-world bet between [...]

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Outline:

(00:07) Agreement

(03:53) Impact

(05:18) Acknowledgements

The original text contained 5 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
June 4th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/GfGxaPBAMGcYjv8Xd/i-bet-greg-colbourn-10-keur-that-ai-will-not-kill-us-all-by

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Review of Past Grants: The $100.000 Grant for a Video Game?” by Nicolae

Tue, 04 Jun 2024 17:50:08 GMT

Since 2017, EA Funds has been providing grants across four distinct cause areas. While there are payout reports available, there is a lack of reports detailing the outcomes of these grants, so I delved out of curiosity into the Grants Database to review some of the proposals that received funding and evaluate their outcomes.

Some of the findings were quite unexpected, particularly for the Long-Term Future Fund and the EA Infrastructure Fund.

The case involving a $100.000 grant for a video game

In July 2022, EA approved a $100,000 grant to Lone Pine Games, LLC, for developing and marketing a video game designed to explain the Stop Button Problem to the public and STEM professionals.

Outcomes from looking into Lone Pine Games, LLC:

After almost two years, there are no online mentions of such a game being developed by this company, except for the note on the [...]

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First published:
June 3rd, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7Dp9phDw28h3dbAns/review-of-past-grants-the-usd100-000-grant-for-a-video-game

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“A Scar Worth Bearing: My Improbable Story of Kidney Donation” by Elizabeth Klugh

Sun, 02 Jun 2024 19:40:32 GMT

TL;DR: I donated my kidney and you can too. If that's too scary, consider blood donation, the bone marrow registry, post-mortem organ donation, or other living donations (birth tissue, liver donation).

Kidney donation sucks. It's scary, painful, disruptive, scarring. My friends and family urged me not to; words were exchanged, tears were shed. My risk of preeclampsia tripled, that of end stage renal disease multiplied by five. I had to turn down two job offers while prepping for donation.

It is easy to read philosophical arguments in favor of donation, agree with them, and put the book back on the shelf. But it is different when your friend needs a kidney: Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Eighteen months ago, at 28-years-old, my friend Alan started losing weight. He developed a distinctive butterfly-shaped rash and became too weak to eat. On February [...]

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First published:
May 30th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xiDKb3XvJxKiwNevJ/a-scar-worth-bearing-my-improbable-story-of-kidney-donation

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Introducing Ansh: A Charity Entrepreneurship Incubated Charity” by Supriya

Sun, 02 Jun 2024 15:20:32 GMT

Executive Summary

Ansh, a 1-year-old Charity Entrepreneurship incubated charity, has been delivering an evidence-based, scientifically proven intervention called Kangaroo Care to low birth weight and premature babies in 2 government hospitals in India since January 2024. Ansh estimates that their programs are saving, on average, 4 lives a month per facility and a total of 98 lives per year. The cost of one life saved is approximately $2077 (current costs, not a potential estimate). Ansh is now replicating the programs in two additional hospitals, doubling their impact before the end of this year.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), neonatal conditions[1] are among the top 3 causes of death worldwide[2]. This makes neonatal mortality one of the largest-scale causes of suffering and death today. In 2022, 2.3 million babies died in the first 28 days of life (i.e. the newborn/neonatal period) (World Health Organisation, 2024). Let's compare [...]

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Outline:

(00:06) Executive Summary

(02:33) I. The Problem and Solution

(04:29) II. Introducing Ansh

(08:36) III. Our Impact To Date

(09:02) Baseline Neonatal Mortality

(10:49) Lives Saved

(12:56) Cost-Effectiveness

(15:36) IV. Our Plans For The Future

(16:04) (1) KC Improvements

(18:48) (2) Scale Up

(20:34) V. Acknowledgments and Partnerships

The original text contained 12 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
May 29th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hTEaKau8D4Ah3NPcu/introducing-ansh-a-charity-entrepreneurship-incubated

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Against a Happiness Ceiling: Replicating Killingsworth & Kahneman (2022)” by charlieh943

Thu, 30 May 2024 15:00:33 GMT

Epistemic Status: somewhat confident: I may have made coding mistakes. R code is here if you feel like checking.

Introduction:

In their 2022 article, Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Kahneman looked to reconcile the results from two of their papers. Kahneman (2010) had reported that above a certain income level ($75,000 USD), extra income had no association with increases in individual happiness. Killingsworth (2021) suggested that it did.

Kahneman and Killingsworth (henceforth KK) claimed they had resolved this conflict by (correctly) hypothesizing that:

1) There is an unhappy minority, whose unhappiness diminishes with rising income up to a threshold, then shows no further progress (i.e., Kahnemann's leveling off);

2) In the happier majority, happiness continues to rise with income even in the high range of incomes (i.e., Kllingsworth continued log-linear finding)

(More info on this discussion can be found in Spencer Greenberg's thoroughly enjoyable blog post. Spencer [...]

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Outline:

(00:18) Introduction:

(03:04) Summary of Findings

(04:07) Results

(05:07) Median Regressions

(05:21) Figure 1

(06:16) Regressions at Various Percentiles

(06:55) Figure 2

(08:38) Implications

(10:50) Table 1: Happiness at Different Percentiles (above, KK; below, me)

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
May 28th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/A5voYMFhPkWTrGkuJ/against-a-happiness-ceiling-replicating-killingsworth-and

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“89%of cage-free egg commitments with deadlines of 2023 or earlier have been fulfilled” by ASuchy

Wed, 29 May 2024 17:10:44 GMT

This is a link post.

The report concludes that the cage-free fulfillment rate is maintaining its momentum at 89%. The producer, retailer, and manufacturer industries are some of the most cage-free forward sectors when it comes to fulfillment. Some major companies across sectors that fulfilled their commitments in 2023 (or years ahead of schedule) include Hershey (Global), Woolworths (South Africa), Famous Brands (Africa), Scandic Hotels (Europe), Monolog Coffee (Indonesia), Special Dog (Brazil), Azzuri Group (Europe), McDonald's (US), TGI Fridays (US), and The Cheesecake Factory (US).

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First published:
May 24th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/SG38cPw5C7wLXAeFn/89-of-cage-free-egg-commitments-with-deadlines-of-2023-or

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Articles about recent OpenAI departures” by bruce

Fri, 24 May 2024 23:20:49 GMT

This is a link post.

A brief overview of recent OpenAI departures (Ilya Sutskever, Jan Leike, Daniel Kokotajlo, Leopold Aschenbrenner, Pavel Izmailov, William Saunders, Ryan Lowe Cullen O'Keefe[1]). Will add other relevant media pieces below as I come across them.

Some quotes perhaps worth highlighting:

Even when the team was functioning at full capacity, that “dedicated investment” was home to a tiny fraction of OpenAI's researchers and was promised only 20 percent of its computing power — perhaps the most important resource at an AI company. Now, that computing power may be siphoned off to other OpenAI teams, and it's unclear if there’ll be much focus on avoiding catastrophic risk from future AI models.

-Jan suggesting that compute for safety may have been deprioritised even despite the 20% commitment. (Wired claims that OpenAI confirms that their "superalignment team is no more").

“I joined with substantial hope that OpenAI [...]

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
May 17th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ckYw5FZFrejETuyjN/articles-about-recent-openai-departures

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“I’m attempting a world record to raise money for AMF” by Vincent van der Holst

Fri, 24 May 2024 20:50:49 GMT

TL;DR It's time for an absurd challenge. On June 7th around 11:00, I'm going to (try to) break the world record for cycling without hands! 🚴🏻‍♂️ For more than 100km, I am raising money for the The Against Malaria Foundation (100% donated, costs covered by my company and myself) with the help of The Life You Can Save. Pledge your donation per kilometer or fixed amount here (tax deductibility possible in most countries, email me on vin@boas.co).

The full story

I'm Vin from Amsterdam, and I'm doing a world record attempt for cycling without hands for charity on the 7th of June. I am donating 100% to The Against Malaria Foundation, with the goal of saving at least one life (5.000 USD). You can participate and push me to go further by joining here.

It's going too far to say that my bike saved my life, but at [...]

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First published:
May 20th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/cj2Qauvc3tQRyXuBW/i-m-attempting-a-world-record-to-raise-money-for-amf

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“5 things you’ve got wrong about the Giving What We Can Pledge” by Alana HF, Giving What We Can

Thu, 23 May 2024 20:30:49 GMT

How well do you know the details of the Giving What We Can Pledge? A surprising number of people we’ve spoken to — including many who know a lot about effective giving — shared some or all of these pledge misconceptions.

Misconception #1: If you sign the pledge, you have to donate at least 10% of your income each year.

The Giving What We Can Pledge is a public commitment to donate at least 10% of your lifetime income to the organisations that can most effectively use it to improve the lives of others. Giving 10% of your income each year is a good rule of thumb for most people, as it helps them stay on track with their lifetime pledge. However, there are certainly cases where it doesn’t make sense to give annually. Provided you continue reporting your income[1] on your personal pledge dashboard, the “Overall Progress” bar [...]

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Outline:

(00:20) Misconception #1: If you sign the pledge, you have to donate at least 10% of your income each year.

(02:18) Misconception #2: Only the charities on the Giving What We Can Platform count towards your pledge

(03:25) Misconception #3: The pledge is a legal document

(04:43) Misconception #4: There's no good reason to sign the pledge if you’re already donating 10% or more

(09:22) Misconception #5: There's only one pledge

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
May 15th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Y5QKkt9PFhqvG7CEn/5-things-you-ve-got-wrong-about-the-giving-what-we-can

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“The Charity Commission has concluded its inquiry into Effective Ventures Foundation UK” by Rob Gledhill

Wed, 22 May 2024 11:00:49 GMT

The Charity Commission for England and Wales has concluded its statutory inquiry into Effective Ventures Foundation UK (EVF UK), which was originally launched in 2023 following the collapse of FTX. The full report on the inquiry can be found here, and the Commission's press release on the inquiry can be found here. The inquiry's scope was to examine:

The extent of any risk to EVF's assets.
The extent to which the trustees were complying with their legal obligations to protect the charity's property
The governance and administration of the charity by the trustees.[1]

We are pleased that “the inquiry found that the trustees took appropriate steps to protect the charity's funds and complied with their legal duties acting diligently and quickly following the collapse of FTX.” The Commission's report notes the full cooperation of EVF's trustees and that they “sought to act in the charity's best interests.”

Although [...]

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
May 22nd, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gGadLX9Dc7XPqLhZc/the-charity-commission-has-concluded-its-inquiry-into

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Announcing UK Voters for Animals!” by eleanor mcaree, James Özden, Holly Baines, Alina Salmen, Max Taylor, vicky_cox, Mandy Carter

Tue, 21 May 2024 17:50:49 GMT

We’re excited to announce a new volunteer-run organisation, UK Voters For Animals, dedicated to mobilising UK voters to win key legislative changes for farmed animals. Our goal is to recruit and train voters to meet with MPs and prospective MPs to build political support for our key asks. Due to the upcoming general election, we think this is a crucial time to apply pressure on politicians.

If you want to use your political power to win change for farmed animals, sign up to get involved here. Please share with anyone who may be interested – we’re looking to find people in all 650 constituencies around the UK so no small feat!

We think people in the EA community would be a great fit for helping out with this work because they are often thoughtful, pragmatic, and impact-focused. The minimum commitment required is attending a training, and participating in [...]

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First published:
May 14th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/BmWuycesbhnXhmy5D/announcing-uk-voters-for-animals

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“What’s Going on With OpenAI’s Messaging?” by Ozzie Gooen

Tue, 21 May 2024 12:40:50 GMT

This is a quickly-written opinion piece, of what I understand about OpenAI. I first posted it to Facebook, where it had some discussion.

Some arguments that OpenAI is making, simultaneously:

OpenAI will likely reach and own transformative AI (useful for attracting talent to work there).
OpenAI cares a lot about safety (good for public PR and government regulations).
OpenAI isn’t making anything dangerous and is unlikely to do so in the future (good for public PR and government regulations).
OpenAI doesn’t need to spend many resources on safety, and implementing safe AI won’t put it at any competitive disadvantage (important for investors who own most of the company).
Transformative AI will be incredibly valuable for all of humanity in the long term (for public PR and developers).
People at OpenAI have thought long and hard about what will happen, and it will be fine.
We can’t [...]

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First published:
May 21st, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9iLgAbu9KtpLupitk/what-s-going-on-with-openai-s-messaging

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“GDP per capita in 2050” by Hauke Hillebrandt

Tue, 21 May 2024 02:50:49 GMT

Latest Draft Here

Abstract.

Here, I present GDP (per capita) forecasts of major economies until 2050. Since GDP per capita is the best generalized predictor of many important variables, such as welfare, GDP forecasts can give us a more concrete picture of what the world might look like in just 27 years. The key claim here is: even if AI does not cause transformative growth, our business-as-usual near-future is still surprisingly different from today.

Results

In recent history, we've seen unprecedented economic growth and rises in living standards.

Consider this graph:[1]

How will living standards improve as GDP per capita (GDP/cap) rises? Here, I show data that projects GDP/cap until 2050. Forecasting GDP per capita is a crucial undertaking as it strongly correlates with welfare indicators like consumption, leisure, inequality, and mortality. These forecasts make the future more concrete and give us a better sense [...]

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Outline:

(00:39) Results

(02:45) Discussion

(05:40) Values and Culture

(09:01) Growth could be much faster

(11:49) Implications for AI

(16:57) Will growth slow?

(19:56) Methods

(22:05) Persistence of growth

(23:26) Future Research

(29:05) Appendix: Further reading

(29:09) The World in 2050

(30:55) Economics

(30:59) GDP as a proxy for welfare

(31:03) AI

(36:32) Forecasting

(36:35) Fiction

(36:38) Appendix: Causal Model Between Growth, Liberal Democracy, Human Capital, Peace, and X-Risk

(36:59) Economic Growth causes…

(37:47) Democracy causes...

(40:02) Human capital causes…

(40:44) Peace and stability causes...

The original text contained 79 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
May 6th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ubZjxQocGqeZJJXE9/gdp-per-capita-in-2050

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Call for Attorneys for OpenAI Employees and Ex-Employees” by Vilfredo’s Ghost

Sun, 19 May 2024 06:00:22 GMT

I am a lawyer. I am not licensed in California, or Delaware, or any of the states that likely govern OpenAI's employment contracts. So take what I am about to say with a grain of salt, as commentary rather than legal advice. But I am begging any California-licensed attorneys reading this to look into it in more detail. California may have idiosyncratic laws that completely destroy my analysis, which is based solely on general principles of contract law and not any research or analysis of state-specific statutes or cases. I also have not seen the actual contracts and am relying on media reports. But.

I think the OpenAI anti-whistleblower agreement is completely unenforceable, with two caveats. Common law contract principles generally don't permit surprises, and don't allow new terms unless some mutual promise is made in return for those new terms. A valid contract requires a "meeting of [...]

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First published:
May 18th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AJAhePexStoEhAwto/call-for-attorneys-for-openai-employees-and-ex-employees

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Marisa, the Co-Founder of EA Anywhere, Has Passed Away” by carrickflynn

Sat, 18 May 2024 09:00:22 GMT

(Apologies for errors or sloppiness in this post, it was written quickly and emotionally.)

Marisa committed suicide earlier this month. She suffered for years from a cruel mental illness, but that will not be legacy–her legacy will be the enormous amount of suffering she alleviated for others. In her short life she worked with Rethink Charity, the Legal Priorities Project, co-founded EA Anywhere, and volunteered with many more impactful organizations. Looking to further scale her impact she completed most of a Master of Public Policy degree at Georgetown.

Marisa was relentless. Even among the impressive cohort of young EAs, she had a diligence and work ethic that amazed and inspired. She got things done. She was also wickedly funny. Even while suffering deeply, she could make me cry with laughter.

Epidemiologically, suicide is contagious within communities. Marisa's does not have to be. Everyone reading this is only one comment [...]

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First published:
May 17th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/cPFBJ8YkkzS9niBuo/marisa-the-co-founder-of-ea-anywhere-has-passed-away

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Presenting nine new charities - a record for the AIM (CE) Incubation Program” by CE

Wed, 15 May 2024 00:10:50 GMT

We are thrilled to introduce nine new charities launched through our February-March 2024 Incubation Program. This is an AIM record with an average of five charities launched per round in the previous years. We are also proud to announce that thanks to very generous donors from the Seed Network Funding Circle, these new organizations have secured over $1 million in funding! This is a significant milestone for AIM as an organization. We are very grateful for the support of our funders, mentors, and, most of all, the talented applicants who decided to pursue entrepreneurial careers in the nonprofit sector.

We are committed to ongoing support for these new initiatives through mentorship, operational assistance, free co-working space in London, and access to an ever-expanding entrepreneurial network of funders, advisors, interns, and fellow charity founders.

This article provides a brief introduction to our new organizations. You will find more information [...]

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Outline:

(02:25) Centre for Aquaculture Progress

(06:01) Notify Health

(09:53) Learning Alliance

(15:06) Novah

(20:11) Access to Medicines Initiative (AMI)

(23:59) FarmKind

(28:40) Ark Philanthropy

---

First published:
May 14th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tDQm4Z5aQytRE2RKn/presenting-nine-new-charities-a-record-for-the-aim-ce

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Probably Good launched a new job board!” by Probably Good

Sun, 12 May 2024 12:10:51 GMT

We’re excited to share a new addition to our site: an impact-focused job board!

We’ve considered launching a job board for some time, so we’re happy to add this feature to the Probably Good site. The job board aims to:

Help people find more promising job opportunities, including in cause areas that aren’t as thoroughly covered by other impact-focused boards such as 80,000 Hours and Animal Advocacy Careers.
Direct our audience to concrete opportunities that meet a high standard of impact.
Reduce friction for people on our site to take the first step towards a career change, by providing opportunities to apply for or just exposing them to new options.

As Animal Advocacy Careers have highlighted before, job boards are often the primary gateway to career advice sites, and so we hope the job board will also extend our content's reach and general impact.

Why we’re launching a job [...]

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Outline:

(00:59) Why we’re launching a job board

(02:34) How you can help

(03:09) Final Notes

---

First published:
May 6th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZPB87ayzzwAoxycvN/probably-good-launched-a-new-job-board

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Why I’m doing PauseAI” by Joseph Miller

Thu, 09 May 2024 11:50:51 GMT

GPT-5 training is probably starting around now. It seems very unlikely that GPT-5 will cause the end of the world. But it's hard to be sure. I would guess that GPT-5 is more likely to kill me than an asteroid, a supervolcano, a plane crash or a brain tumor. We can predict fairly well what the cross-entropy loss will be, but pretty much nothing else.

Maybe we will suddenly discover that the difference between GPT-4 and superhuman level is actually quite small. Maybe GPT-5 will be extremely good at interpretability, such that it can recursively self improve by rewriting its own weights.

Hopefully model evaluations can catch catastrophic risks before wide deployment, but again, it's hard to be sure. GPT-5 could plausibly be devious enough so circumvent all of our black-box testing. Or it may be that it's too late as soon as the model has been trained. These [...]

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Outline:

(01:10) How do we do better for GPT-6?

(02:02) Plan B: Mass protests against AI

(03:06) No innovation required

(04:36) The discomfort of doing something weird

(05:53) Preparing for the moment

---

First published:
April 30th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/J8sw7o5mWbGFaBW4o/why-i-m-doing-pauseai

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Updates on the EA catastrophic risk landscape” by Benjamin_Todd

Tue, 07 May 2024 18:00:14 GMT

Around the end of Feb 2024 I attended the Summit on Existential Risk and EAG: Bay Area (GCRs), during which I did 25+ one-on-ones about the needs and gaps in the EA-adjacent catastrophic risk landscape, and how they’ve changed.

The meetings were mostly with senior managers or researchers in the field who I think are worth listening to (unfortunately I can’t share names). Below is how I’d summarise the main themes in what was said.

If you have different impressions of the landscape, I’d be keen to hear them.

There's been a big increase in the number of people working on AI safety, partly driven by a reallocation of effort (e.g. Rethink Priorities starting an AI policy think tank); and partly driven by new people entering the field after its newfound prominence.
Allocation in the landscape seems more efficient than in the past – it's harder to identify [...]

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First published:
May 6th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YDjH6ACPZq889tqeJ/updates-on-the-ea-catastrophic-risk-landscape

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“My Lament to EA” by kta

Mon, 06 May 2024 08:00:14 GMT

I am dealing with repetitive strain injury and don’t foresee being able to really respond to any comments.

I’m a little hesitant to post this, but I thought I should be vulnerable. Honestly, I'm relieved that I finally get to share my voice. I know some people may want me to discuss this privately – but that might not be helpful to me, as I know some issues have been tried to be silenced by the very people who were meant to help. And to be honest, the fear of criticizing EA is something I have disliked about EA – I’ve been behind the scenes enough to know that despite being well-intentioned, criticizing EA (especially openly) can privately get you excluded from opportunities and circles, often even silently. This is an internal battle I’ve had with EA for a while (years). Still, I thought by sharing my experiences I [...]

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Outline:

(00:55) Appreciation and disillusionment

(03:30) Specific challenges

(03:33) When it has been uncomfortable for diversity and inclusion

(04:33) When it primarily became about prestige or funding

(07:13) When professional social dynamics were unhealthy

(09:46) When empathy is deprioritized and logic/consequentialism/utilitarianism becomes toxic

(13:38) Parting ways

---

First published:
May 3rd, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3GjstAyhH9cDeNar4/my-lament-to-ea

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Émile P. Torres’s history of dishonesty and harassment” by anonymous-for-obvious-reasons

Wed, 01 May 2024 18:30:14 GMT

This is a cross-post and you can see the original here, written in 2022. I am not the original author, but I thought it was good for more EAs to know about this.

I am posting anonymously for obvious reasons, but I am a longstanding EA who is concerned about Torres's effects on our community.

An incomplete summary

Introduction.

This post compiles evidence that Émile P. Torres, a philosophy student at Leibniz Universität Hannover in Germany, has a long pattern of concerning behavior, which includes gross distortion and falsification, persistent harassment, and the creation of fake identities.

Note: Since Torres has recently claimed that they have been the target of threats from anonymous accounts, I would like to state that I condemn any threatening behavior in the strongest terms possible, and that I have never contacted Torres or posted anything about Torres other than in this Substack [...]

---

Outline:

(00:25) An incomplete summary

(01:16) Stalking and harassment

(01:20) Peter Boghossian

(11:48) Helen Pluckrose

(19:02) Demonstrable falsehoods and gross distortions

(19:07) “Forcible” removal

(24:04) “Researcher at CSER”

(27:30) Giving What We Can

(31:20) Brief Digression on Effective Altruism

(33:53) More falsehoods and distortions

(33:57) Hilary Greaves

(38:25) Andreas Mogensen

(41:16) Nick Beckstead

(45:29) Tyler Cowen

(48:50) Olle Häggström

(56:44) Sockpuppetry

(57:01) “Alex Williams”

(01:03:57) Conclusion

---

First published:
May 1st, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yAHcPNZzx35i25xML/emile-p-torres-s-history-of-dishonesty-and-harassment

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Joining the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace” by Holden Karnofsky

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 18:20:15 GMT

Effective today, I’ve left Open Philanthropy and joined the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace[1] as a Visiting Scholar. At Carnegie, I will analyze and write about topics relevant to AI risk reduction. In the short term, I will focus on (a) what AI capabilities might increase the risk of a global catastrophe; (b) how we can catch early warning signs of these capabilities; and (c) what protective measures (for example, strong information security) are important for safely handling such capabilities. This is a continuation of the work I’ve been doing over the last ~year.

I want to be explicit about why I’m leaving Open Philanthropy. It's because my work no longer involves significant involvement in grantmaking, and given that I’ve overseen grantmaking historically, it's a significant problem for there to be confusion on this point. Philanthropy comes with particular power dynamics that I’d like to move away from, and [...]

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
April 29th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7gzgwgwefwBku2cnL/joining-the-carnegie-endowment-for-international-peace

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Priors and Prejudice” by MathiasKB

Fri, 26 Apr 2024 16:10:14 GMT

Imagine an alternate version of the Effective Altruism movement, whose early influences came from socialist intellectual communities such as the Fabian Society, as opposed to the rationalist diaspora. Let's name this hypothetical movement the Effective Samaritans.

Like the EA movement of today, they believe in doing as much good as possible, whatever this means. They began by evaluating existing charities, reading every RCT to find the very best ways of helping.

But many effective samaritans were starting to wonder. Is this randomista approach really the most prudent? After all, Scandinavia didn’t become wealthy and equitable through marginal charity. Societal transformation comes from uprooting oppressive power structures.

The Scandinavian societal model which lifted the working class, brought weekends, universal suffrage, maternity leave, education, and universal healthcare can be traced back all the way to 1870's where the union and social democratic movements got their start.

In many developing countries [...]

---

Outline:

(00:03) I

(05:39) II

(10:19) III

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
April 22nd, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/PKotuzY8yzGSNKRpH/priors-and-prejudice

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Announcing The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness” by Sofia_Fogel

Wed, 24 Apr 2024 07:50:14 GMT

The last ten years have witnessed rapid advances in the science of animal cognition and behavior. Striking results have hinted at surprisingly rich inner lives in a wide range of animals, driving renewed debate about animal consciousness.

To highlight these advances, the NYU Mind, Ethics and Policy Program and NYU Wild Animal Welfare Program co-hosted a conference on the emerging science of animal consciousness on Friday April 19 at New York University. This conference also served as the launch event for The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness.

This short statement, signed by leading scientists who research a wide range of taxa, holds that all vertebrates (including reptiles, amphibians, and fishes) and many invertebrates (including cephalopod mollusks, decapod crustaceans, and insects) have a realistic chance of being conscious, and that their welfare merits consideration.

We now welcome signatures from others as well. If you have relevant [...]

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First published:
April 21st, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Pqkf5N7LkHfd7rRBf/announcing-the-new-york-declaration-on-animal-consciousness

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “Motivation gaps: Why so much EA criticism is hostile and lazy” by titotal

Tue, 23 Apr 2024 15:30:13 GMT

Disclaimer: While I criticize several EA critics in this article, I am myself on the EA-skeptical side of things (especially on AI risk).

Introduction.

I am a proud critic of effective altruism, and in particular a critic of AI existential risk, but I have to admit that a lot of the critcism of EA is hostile, or lazy, and is extremely unlikely to convince a believer.

Take this recent Leif Weinar time article as an example. I liked a few of the object level critiques, but many of the points were twisted, and the overall point was hopelessly muddled (are they trying to say that voluntourism is the solution here?). As people have noted, the piece was needlessly hostile to EA (and incredibly hostile to Will Macaskill in particular). And he's far from the only prominent hater. Emille Torres views EA as a threat to humanity. Timnit Gebru sees [...]

---

Outline:

(02:21) No door to door atheists

(04:51) What went wrong here?

(08:40) Motivation gaps in AI x-risk

(10:59) EA gap analysis

(15:12) Counter-motivations

(25:49) You can’t rely on ingroup criticism

(29:10) How to respond to motivation gaps

---

First published:
April 22nd, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CfBNdStftKGc863o6/motivation-gaps-why-so-much-ea-criticism-is-hostile-and-lazy

Linkpost URL:
https://titotal.substack.com/p/motivation-gaps-why-so-much-ea-criticism

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“How good it is to donate and how hard it is to get a job” by Elijah Persson-Gordon

Tue, 23 Apr 2024 06:40:14 GMT

Summary

In this post, I hope to inspire other Effective Altruists to focus more on donation and commiserate with those who have been disappointed in their ability to get an altruistic job.
First, I argue that the impact of having a job that helps others is complicated. In this section, I discuss annual donation statistics of people in the Effective Altruism community donate, which I find quite low.
In the rest of the post, I describe my recent job search, my experience substituting at public schools, and my expenses.

Having a job that helps others might be overemphasized

Doing a job that helps others seems like a good thing to do. Weirdly, it's not as simple as that.
- While some job vacancies last for years, other fields are very competitive and have many qualified applicants for most position listings.
  - In the latter case, if you [...]

---

Outline:

(00:05) Summary

(00:42) Having a job that helps others might be overemphasized

(02:08) Donations are an amazing opportunity, and I think they are underemphasized

(03:42) I used to really want an animal welfare-related job. Then I wanted to donate more. Now I am a substitute at a public school

(06:13) I live frugally and donate

(08:07) I have been disappointed in my ability to find a job that would allow me to donate more

(09:52) Its okay

(10:25) Additional reading

---

First published:
April 16th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/G9ocwYA2LpLqC4vmq/how-good-it-is-to-donate-and-how-hard-it-is-to-get-a-job

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

“Personal reflections on FTX” by William_MacAskill

Thu, 18 Apr 2024 14:00:15 GMT

The two podcasts where I discuss FTX are now out:

Making Sense with Sam Harris
Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg

The Sam Harris podcast is more aimed at a general audience; the Spencer Greenberg podcast is more aimed at people already familiar with EA. (I’ve also done another podcast with Chris Anderson from TED that will come out next month, but FTX is a fairly small part of that conversation.)

In this post, I’ll gather together some things I talk about across these podcasts — this includes updates and lessons, and responses to some questions that have been raised on the Forum recently. I’d recommend listening to the podcasts first, but these comments can be read on their own, too. I cover a variety of different topics, so I’ll cover each topic in separate comments underneath this post.

---

First published:
April 18th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/A2vBJGEbKDpuKveHk/personal-reflections-on-ftx

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “Future of Humanity Institute 2005-2024: Final Report” by Pablo

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 18:50:28 GMT

Anders Sandberg has written a “final report” released simultaneously with the announcement of FHI's closure. The abstract and an excerpt follow.

Normally manifestos are written first, and then hopefully stimulate actors to implement their vision. This document is the reverse: an epitaph summarizing what the Future of Humanity Institute was, what we did and why, what we learned, and what we think comes next. It can be seen as an oral history of FHI from some of its members. It will not be unbiased, nor complete, but hopefully a useful historical source. I have received input from other people who worked at FHI, but it is my perspective and others would no doubt place somewhat different emphasis on the various strands of FHI work.

What we did well

One of the most important insights from the successes of FHI is to have a long-term perspective on one's research. While [...]

---

Outline:

(00:57) What we did well

(03:48) Where we failed

(05:06) So, you want to start another FHI?

---

First published:
April 17th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uK27pds7J36asqJPt/future-of-humanity-institute-2005-2024-final-report

Linkpost URL:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ml8d3ubi3ippxs4yon63n/FHI-Final-Report.pdf?rlkey=2c94czhgagy27d9don7pvbc26&dl=0

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“AIM’s new guide to launching a high-impact non-profit policy organization” by CE, weeatquince

Mon, 15 Apr 2024 13:40:14 GMT

Author: Sam Hilton, AIM Director of Research

In March 2021 I received an odd letter. It was from a guy I didn't know, David Quarrey, the UK's National Security Advisor. The letter thanked me for providing external expertise to the UK government's Integrated Review, which had been published that morning. It turns out that the Integrated Review has made a public commitment to "review our approach to risk assessment" ... "including how we account for interdependencies, cascading and compound risks". This is something I'd been advocating for over the previous few months by writing a policy paper and engaging with politicians and civil servants. It's hard to know how much my input changed government policy but I couldn’t find much evidence of others advocating for this. I had set myself a 10-year goal to "have played a role in making the UK a leader in long-term resilience to extreme [...]

---

First published:
April 2nd, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RmZWjTLNTg4hby7pz/aim-s-new-guide-to-launching-a-high-impact-non-profit-policy

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Understanding FTX’s crimes” by FTXwatcher

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 19:00:18 GMT

In the aftermath of SBF's convinction, there have been a few posts trying to make sense of FTX. Some people are trying to figure out what happened, and some people are interested in trying to find clever defenses.

I'm in a much more boring position: I am confident SBF is the fraud the world believes him to be. I hope this post can provide reasoning transparency on why I think this, and perhaps serve as an easy link for others who feel similarly but don't want to get bogged down in a point-by-point.

Posted anonymously as some protection against future employers Googling [1].

I have divided this post into a summary of the major crimes and my basis for believing they occurred, an 'FAQ' dealing with some common misapprehensions I've seen on this forum and elsewhere, and an appendix explaining some crypto exchange basics / jargon for those [...]

---

Outline:

(00:56) Crimes

(00:59) Misappropriation of Funds

(01:51) Detail

(14:47) Lying to lenders

(17:21) Lying to FTXs investors

(18:28) Lying to Banks

(19:02) Detail

(21:53) Bribing a Chinese official

(23:55) Falsified revenue

(25:07) Falsified Insurance Fund

(26:20) FAQ

(26:23) Didnt SBF only know about the hole in June 2022?

(30:16) Didnt customers know their funds might be lent out?

(32:37) Werent FTX and Alameda total messes? Intent matters; isnt it possible that this all got lost in the chaos?

(35:13) Isnt FTX going to make all Customers whole? So there wasnt ever a hole?

(35:47) FTX cashed out customers at bankruptcy prices

(36:32) The assets those customers money had bought did well

(37:12) Had FTX stayed afloat, things would be very different

(38:58) Appendix

(39:02) How crypto exchanges work

(39:06) Spot Trading

(40:54) Margin Trading

The original text contained 7 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
April 11th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qyN8M6zh6pnh8fmjR/understanding-ftx-s-crimes

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“The Rationale-Shaped Hole At The Heart Of Forecasting” by dschwarz, FutureSearch, Lawrence Phillips, hnykda, Peter Mühlbacher

Mon, 08 Apr 2024 12:30:18 GMT

Thanks to Eli Lifland, Molly Hickman, Değer Turan, and Evan Miyazono for reviewing drafts of this post. The opinions expressed here are my own.

Summary:

Forecasters produce reasons and models that are often more valuable than the final forecasts
Most of this value is being lost due to the historical practice & incentives of forecasting, and the difficulty of crowds to “adversarially collaborate”
FutureSearch is a forecasting system with legible reasons and models at its core (examples at the end)

The Curious Case of the Missing Reasoning

Ben Landau-Taylor of Bismarck Analysis wrote a piece on March 6 called “Probability Is Not A Substitute For Reasoning”, citing a piece where he writes:

There has been a great deal of research on what criteria must be met for forecasting aggregations to be useful, and as Karger, Atanasov, and Tetlock argue, predictions of events such as the arrival of AGI [...]

---

Outline:

(00:40) The Curious Case of the Missing Reasoning

(05:06) Those Who Seek Rationales, And Those Who Do Not

(07:21) So What Do Elite Forecasters Actually Know?

(10:30) The Rationale-Shaped Hole At The Heart Of Forecasting

(11:51) Facts: Cite Your Sources

(12:07) Reasons: So You Think You Can Persuade With Words

(14:25) Models: So You Think You Can Model the World

(17:56) There Is No Microeconomics of AGI

(19:39) 700 AI questions you say? Aren’t We In the Age of AI Forecasters?

(21:33) Towards “Towards Rationality Engines”

(23:10) Sample Forecasts With Reasons and Models

---

First published:
April 2nd, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qMP7LcCBFBEtuA3kL/the-rationale-shaped-hole-at-the-heart-of-forecasting

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“UK moves toward mandatory animal welfare labelling” by AdamC

Sun, 07 Apr 2024 13:20:18 GMT

Here in the UK, the government is consulting on mandatory animal welfare labelling (closing 7 May 2024). People may wish to respond if they want to express their support or share thoughts and evidence that could shape the outcomes.

I think such labelling has the potential to significantly improve animal welfare, not just through changing individual choices but by encouraging companies to stop selling the lowest welfare tiers entirely, and through raising labelling standards over time. Higher standards will probably also mean higher prices, lower consumption and 'fairer' competition with alternative proteins. What happens in the UK may also influence future reforms in the EU and elsewhere.

To summarise the proposals:

Mandatory labelling would apply to chicken, eggs and pig products (with the suggestion that beef, lamb and dairy could follow later)
At least initially, this would not apply to restaurants etc., but to food from retailers like [...]

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First published:
March 29th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/h5Syjytgbg7fL6CJ5/uk-moves-toward-mandatory-animal-welfare-labelling

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Why hasn’t EA done an SBF investigation and postmortem?” by RobBensinger

Wed, 03 Apr 2024 14:00:35 GMT

Is anyone in the world being paid to do an independent investigation of how EA handled Sam Bankman-Fried, with respect to "did we screw up" and "is there stuff we should do differently going forward"?

Last I heard, literally nobody was doing this and at least some EA leaders were mostly just hoping that SBF gets memoryholed — but maybe I'm out of the loop?

My understanding is that Effective Ventures completed a narrow investigation into this topic in mid-2023, purely looking at legal risk to EV and not at all trying to do a general postmortem for EA or any group of EAs. Is that correct, and have things changed since then?

I saw that Will MacAskill is planning to appear on some podcasts soon to speak about SBF, which seems like great news to mee. If I recall correctly, Will previously said that he was going to [...]

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First published:
April 1st, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/PAG3DJtoZeGtz488f/why-hasn-t-ea-done-an-sbf-investigation-and-postmortem

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Quick Update on Leaving the Board of EV” by Rebecca Kagan

Wed, 03 Apr 2024 02:50:35 GMT

A brief and belated update: When I resigned from the board of EV US last year, I was planning on writing about that decision. But I ultimately decided against doing that for a variety of reasons, including that it was very costly to me, and I believed it wouldn’t make a difference. However, I want to make it clear that I resigned last year due to significant disagreements with the board of EV and EA leadership, particularly concerning their actions leading up to and after the FTX crisis.

While I certainly support the boards’ decision to pay back the FTX estate, spin out the projects as separate organizations, and essentially disband EV, I continue to be worried that the EA community is not on track to learn the relevant lessons from its relationship with FTX. Two things that I think would help (though I am not planning to work [...]

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
April 3rd, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dtHZqi4fSQKor6TYY/quick-update-on-leaving-the-board-of-ev

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Announcing Mandatory Draft Amnesty Day (April 2nd)” by Toby Tremlett🔹

Tue, 02 Apr 2024 07:10:35 GMT

Following the success of Draft Amnesty Week, the Forum team have decided to take things a bit further.

April 2nd 2024 will be Mandatory Amnesty Day (aka MAD).

At 09:00 UTC, all draft posts on your Forum account will be posted live on the Forum.

All the posts in this section on your profile page deserve to be seen.

If you have used our Google Docs import feature, all posts we detect on your Google account will also be posted.

Shrek is now the de facto mascot of Draft Amnesty.

If, for some reason, you have objections, please get in touch with the Forum team here.

We look forward to seeing all your draft posts!

---

First published:
April 1st, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/72cKFaXd2B7Bis2kv/announcing-mandatory-draft-amnesty-day-april-2nd

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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“Announcement: We are rebranding to Shrimpactful Animal Advocacy” by Hive, Aaron Boddy🔸, Constance Li, SofiaBalderson

Mon, 01 Apr 2024 21:40:36 GMT

Impactful Animal Advocacy is thrilled to announce that after careful consideration and complex moral calculations, we have decided to rebrand to Shrimpactful Animal Advocacy.

Why shrimp, you ask? Well, we've crunched the numbers and determined that improving the welfare of shrimp is one of the highest-impact opportunities in the animal advocacy space.

Source: https://foodimpacts.org/

In light of this strong evidence, Shrimpactful Animal Advocacy will be laser-focusing all of our efforts and resources on ending the suffering of our shrimpy friends.

This includes revamping our programs to focus on our new mission. You'll soon be able to sign up for our revised Shrimpactful Animal Advocacy newsletter, attend our upcoming "Shrimp-osium" events, visit our Shrimp Hub resource center, and join our Shrimp Slack community to connect with fellow Shrimpactful Advocates.

We call on all other organizations to join us in this:

Mercy for Animals [...]

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
April 1st, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ed5Jiuk3sCYTXHfFD/announcement-we-are-rebranding-to-shrimpactful-animal

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

“Excerpts From The EA Talmud” by Scott Alexander

Mon, 01 Apr 2024 20:30:36 GMT

(aka "surely we have enough Jews here that at least one person finds this funny")

MISHNA: Rabbi Ord says that the three permissible cause areas are global health and development, animal welfare, and long-termism. Why are these the three permissible cause areas? Because any charity outside of these cause areas is a violation of bal tashchit, the prohibition against wasting resources.

GEMARA: And why not four categories, because global health and development are two separate categories? Rabbi bar bar Hana answers: Is not global health valuable only because it later leads to development? Therefore, consider them the same category.

Rav Yehuda objects. He tells the story of a student who asked Rabbi Yohanan why there should not be a fourth category, meta-effective-altruism. Rabbi Yohanan answered: this is covered under long-termism, because it pays off in the long-term when the meta-charity causes effective altruists to have more resources. But if [...]

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First published:
April 1st, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/363kggkFJHz5ys5T7/excerpts-from-the-ea-talmud

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“EA is now scandal-constrained” by Guy Raveh

Mon, 01 Apr 2024 16:10:35 GMT

It's been at least a few months since the last proper EA scandals, and we're now desperately trying to squeeze headlines out of the past ones.

On the contrary, a few scandals have been wrapped up:

SBF was sentenced to 25 years in prison
The investigation regarding Owen Cotton-Barratt presented its findings
Whytham Abbey is being sold

Indeed, even OpenPhil's involvement in the Whytham Abbey sale shows they're now less willing to fund new scandals.

Therefore it seems to me that EA is now neither funding- nor talent-constrained, but rather scandal-constrained.

This cannot go on. We've all become accustomed to a neverending stream od scandals, and if that stream dwindles, we might find ourselves bored to death - or worse, the world might stop talking about EA all the time.

I therefore raise a few ideas for discussion - feel free to add your own:

EA Funds [...]

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First published:
April 1st, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/F47vckGK5kHZirtGS/ea-is-now-scandal-constrained

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“The Centre for Effective Altruism is spinning out of the Centre for Effective Altruism” by OllieBase

Mon, 01 Apr 2024 14:50:36 GMT

The Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA), an effective altruism (EA) project which recently spun out of Effective Ventures (EV) is spinning out of the newly established Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA).

The current CEO of CEA (the Centre for Effective Altruism), Zach Robinson, CEO of CEA and Effective Ventures (CEOCEV), will be taking the position of Chief Executive Administrator (CEA) for CEA (CEA), as the venture spins out of CEA (CEA).

The cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) for this new effective venture suggested that this venture will be high-EV (see: EA). CEA's CEA's CEA ventures that the new spun-out CEA venture's effectiveness is cost-effective in every available scenario (CEAS).

CEA's new strategy, See EA will take effect:

See: Gain a better understanding of where the community is, who is part of it and where it could go
EA: Effective altruism. No need to complicate things.

To provide some clarity on [...]

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First published:
April 1st, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WgneAKfjRJkYsTs3p/the-centre-for-effective-altruism-is-spinning-out-of-the

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “Introducing Open Asteroid Impact” by Linch, Austin

Mon, 01 Apr 2024 13:30:36 GMT

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

Hillary Clinton, who is still alive

I'm proud and excited to announce the founding of my new startup, Open Asteroid Impact, where we redirect asteroids towards Earth for the benefit of humanity. Our mission is to have as high an impact as possible.

Below, I've copied over the one-pager I've sent potential investors and early employees:

Name: Open Asteroid Impact

Launch Date: April 1 2024

Website: openasteroidimpact.org

Mission: To have as high an impact as possible

Pitch: We are an asteroid mining company. When most people think about asteroid mining, they think of getting all the mining equipment to space and carefully mining and refining ore in space, before bringing the ore back down in a controlled landing. But humanity has zero experience in Zero-G mining in the vacuum of space. This is obviously very inefficient. Instead, it's much [...]

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First published:
April 1st, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RHGfmJfj3jvLw2mq4/introducing-open-asteroid-impact

Linkpost URL:
https://openasteroidimpact.org/

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “Open Philanthropy: Our Progress in 2023 and Plans for 2024” by Alexander_Berger

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 06:20:36 GMT

Like many organizations, Open Philanthropy has had multiple founding moments. Depending on how you count, we will be either seven, ten, or thirteen years old this year. Regardless of when you start the clock, it's possible that we’ve changed more in the last two years than over our full prior history. We’ve more than doubled the size of our team (to ~110), nearly doubled our annual giving (to >$750M), and added five new program areas.

As our track record and volume of giving have grown, we are seeing more of our impact in the world. Across our focus areas, our funding played a (sometimes modest) role in some of 2023's most important developments:

We were among the supporters of the clinical trials that led to the World Health Organization (WHO) officially recommending the R21 malaria vaccine. This is the second malaria vaccine recommended by WHO, which expects it [...]

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First published:
March 27th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/couP8n3BTrpFA5YDJ/open-philanthropy-our-progress-in-2023-and-plans-for-2024-1

Linkpost URL:
https://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/our-progress-in-2023-and-plans-for-2024/

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Announcement on the future of Wytham Abbey” by Rob Gledhill

Sat, 30 Mar 2024 04:10:36 GMT

The Wytham Abbey Project is closing. After input from the Abbey's major donors, the EV board took a decision to sell the property. This project's runway will run out at the end of April. After this time, the project will cease operations, and EV UK will oversee the sale of the property. The Wytham Abbey team have been good custodians of the venue during the time they ran this project, and EV UK will continue to look after this property as we prepare to sell. The proceeds of the sale, after the cost of sale is covered, will be allocated to high-impact charities.

A statement from the Wytham Project can be found here.

---

First published:
March 25th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yggjKEeehsnmMYnZd/announcement-on-the-future-of-wytham-abbey

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Killing the moths” by Bella

Mon, 25 Mar 2024 16:21:07 GMT

This post was partly inspired by, and shares some themes with, this Joe Carlsmith post. My post (unsurprisingly) expresses fewer concepts with less clarity and resonance, but is hopefully of some value regardless.

Content warning: description of animal death.

I live in a small, one-bedroom flat in central London. Sometime in the summer of 2023, I started noticing moths around my flat.

I didn’t pay much attention to it, since they seemed pretty harmless: they obviously weren’t food moths, since they were localised in my bedroom, and they didn’t seem to be chewing holes in any of my clothes — months went by and no holes appeared. [1] The larvae only seemed to be in my carpet.

Eventually, their numbers started increasing, so I decided to do something about it.

I Googled humane and nonlethal ways to deal with moth infestations, but found nothing. There were lots of sources [...]

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
March 25th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Ax5PwjqtrunQJgjsA/killing-the-moths

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Unflattering aspects of Effective Altruism” by NunoSempere

Mon, 25 Mar 2024 13:30:37 GMT

I've been writing a few posts critical of EA over at my blog. They might be of interest to people here:

Unflattering aspects of Effective Altruism
Alternative Visions of Effective Altruism
Auftragstaktik
Hurdles of using forecasting as a tool for making sense of AI progress
Brief thoughts on CEA's stewardship of the EA Forum
Why are we not harder, better, faster, stronger?
...and there are a few smaller pieces on my blog as well.

I appreciate comments and perspectives anywhere, but prefer them over at the individual posts at my blog, since I have a large number of disagreements with the EA Forum's approach to moderation, curation, aesthetics or cost-effectiveness.

---

First published:
March 15th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/coWvsGuJPyiqBdrhC/unflattering-aspects-of-effective-altruism

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Updates on Community Health Survey Results” by David_Moss, Jamie Elsey, Willem Sleegers

Mon, 25 Mar 2024 10:00:09 GMT

Satisfaction with the EA community

Reported satisfaction, from 1 (Very dissatisfied) to 10 (Very satisfied), in December 2023/January 2024 was lower than when we last measured it shortly after the FTX crisis at the end of 2022 (6.77 vs. 6.99, respectively).
However, December 2023/January 2024 satisfaction ratings were higher than what people recalled their satisfaction being “shortly after the FTX collapse” (and their recalled level of satisfaction was lower than what we measured their satisfaction as being at the end of 2022).
We think it's plausible that satisfaction reached a nadir at some point later than December 2022, but may have improved since that point, while still being lower than pre-FTX.

Reasons for dissatisfaction with EA:

A number of factors were cited a similar number of times by respondents as Very important reasons for dissatisfaction, among those who provided a reason: Cause prioritization (22%), Leadership (20%), Justice, Equity, Inclusion and [...]

---

Outline:

(04:15) Community satisfaction over time

(08:12) Reasons for dissatisfaction with the EA community

(13:07) Changes in EA engagement

(14:00) Changes in EA-related behaviors

(15:57) Perception of issues in the EA community

(16:14) Leadership vacuum

(16:46) Desire for more community change following FTX

(17:13) Trust in EA-related organizations

(18:53) Appendix

(18:56) Effect sizes for satisfaction over time

(20:12) Email vs non-email referrers

(21:30) Acknowledgments

The original text contained 7 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
March 20th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/aF6nh4LW6sSbgMLzL/updates-on-community-health-survey-results

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“The current limiting factor for new charities” by CE, Joey🔸

Thu, 21 Mar 2024 06:50:10 GMT

TLDR: we think the limiting factor for new charities has shifted from founder talent to early stage funding being the top limiting factor.

We have historically written about limiting factors and how they affect our thinking about the highest impact areas. For new charities, over the past 4-5 years, fairly consistently, the limiting factor has been people; specifically, the fairly rare founder profile that we look for and think has the best chance at founding a field-leading charity. However, we think over the last 12 months this picture has changed in some important ways:

Firstly, we have started founding more charities: After founding ~5 charities a year in 2021 and 2022 we founded 8 charities in 2023 and we think there are good odds we will be able to found ~10-12 charities in 2024. This is a pretty large change. We have not changed our standards for [...]

---

First published:
March 19th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AXhC4JhWFfsjBB4CA/the-current-limiting-factor-for-new-charities

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“The Lack of EA in US Private Foundations” by Kyle Smith

Thu, 21 Mar 2024 05:20:10 GMT

I've written before about trying to bring US private foundations into EA as major funders. I got some helpful feedback and haven't really pursued it further. I study US private foundations as a researcher and recently conducted a qualitative data collection of staff at 20 very large US private foundations ($100m+ assets). The subject of the study isn't directly EA related (focused mostly on how they use accounting/effectiveness information and accountability), but it got me thinking a lot!

Some interesting observations that I am going to explore further, in future forum posts (if y'all think it's interesting) and future research papers:

Trust-based philanthropy (TBP), a funder movement that's only been around since 2020, has had a HUGE impact on very large private foundations. All 20 indicated that they had already/were in the process of integrating TBP into their grantmaking. I can't emphasize enough how influential TBP has been. [...]

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First published:
March 15th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Pnv6PRyeCPZknsbEw/the-lack-of-ea-in-us-private-foundations

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“The Scale of Fetal Suffering in Late-Term Abortions” by Ariel Simnegar

Wed, 20 Mar 2024 17:40:10 GMT

This is a draft amnesty post.

Summary.

It seems plausible that fetuses can suffer from 12 weeks of age, and quite reasonable that then can suffer from 24 weeks of age.
Some late-term abortion procedures seem that they might cause a fetus excruciating suffering.
Over 35,000 of these procedures occur each year in the US alone.
Further research would be desired on interventions to reduce this suffering, such as mandating fetal anesthesia for late-term abortions.

Background

Most people agree that a fetus has the capacity to suffer at some point. If a fetus has the capacity to suffer, then we ought to reduce that suffering when possible. Fetal anesthesia is standard practice for fetal surgery,[1] but I am unaware of it ever being used during late-term abortions. If the fetus can suffer, these procedures likely cause the fetus extreme pain.

I think the cultural environment EAs usually [...]

---

Outline:

(00:40) Background

(01:28) Surgical Abortion Procedures

(01:34) LI (Labor Induction)

(02:18) DandE (Dilation and Evacuation)

(02:38) When Can a Fetus Suffer?

(03:46) Scale in US and UK

(03:50) 2021 UK

(04:05) 2020 USA

(05:02) Interventions

The original text contained 11 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
March 17th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vhKZ7hyzmcrWuBwDL/the-scale-of-fetal-suffering-in-late-term-abortions

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“EA ‘Worldviews’ Need Rethinking” by Richard Y Chappell

Tue, 19 Mar 2024 05:40:37 GMT

I like Open Phil's worldview diversification. But I don't think their current roster of worldviews does a good job of justifying their current practice. In this post, I'll suggest a reconceptualization that may seem radical in theory but is conservative in practice. Something along these lines strikes me as necessary to justify giving substantial support to paradigmatic Global Health & Development charities in the face of competition from both Longtermist/x-risk and Animal Welfare competitor causes.

Current Orthodoxy

I take it that Open Philanthropy's current "cause buckets" or candidate worldviews are typically conceived of as follows:

neartermist - incl. animal welfare
neartermist - human-only
longtermism / x-risk

We're told that how to weigh these cause areas against each other "hinge[s] on very debatable, uncertain questions." (True enough!) But my impression is that EAs often take the relevant questions to be something like, should we be speciesist? and should we [...]

---

Outline:

(00:35) Current Orthodoxy

(01:17) The Problem

(02:43) A Proposed Solution

(04:26) Implications

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
March 18th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dmEwQZSbPsYhFay2G/ea-worldviews-need-rethinking

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“We Did It! - Victory for Octopus in Washington State” by Tessa @ ALI

Mon, 18 Mar 2024 11:00:48 GMT

In 2022, Aquatic Life Institute (ALI) led the charge in Banding Together to Ban Octopus Farming. In 2024, we are ecstatic to see these efforts come to fruition in Washington State.

This landmark achievement underscores our collective commitment to rejecting the introduction of additional animals into the seafood system and positions Washington State as a true pioneer in aquatic animal welfare legislation. In light of this success, ALI is joining forces with various organizations to advocate for similar bans across the United States and utilizing these monumental examples as leverage in continuous European endeavors.

2022

Aquatic Life Institute (ALI) and members of the Aquatic Animal Alliance (AAA) comment on the Environmental Impact of Nueva Pescanova before the Government of the Canary Islands: General Directorate of Fisheries and the General Directorate for the Fight against Climate Change and the Environment.

Allowing this industrial octopus farm to operate [...]

---

Outline:

(00:45) 2022

(01:44) 2023

(03:37) 2024

(04:50) March 14, 2024

---

First published:
March 15th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AD8QchabkrygXkdgm/we-did-it-victory-for-octopus-in-washington-state

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Maternal Health Initiative is Shutting Down” by Ben Williamson, Sarah Eustis-Guthrie

Sat, 16 Mar 2024 10:00:37 GMT

Maternal Health Initiative (MHI) was founded out of Charity Entrepreneurship (AIM)'s 2022 Incubation Program and has since piloted two interventions integrating postpartum (post-birth) contraceptive counselling into routine care appointments in Ghana. We concluded this pilot work in December 2023.

A stronger understanding of the context and impact of postpartum family planning work, on the back of our pilot results, has led us to conclude that our intervention is not among the most cost-effective interventions available. We’ve therefore decided to shut down and redirect our funding to other organisations.

This article summarises MHI's work, our assessment of the value of postpartum family planning programming, and our decision to shut down MHI as an organisation in light of our results. We also share some lessons learned. An in-depth report expanding on the same themes is available on our website.

We encourage you to skip to the sections that are [...]

---

Outline:

(01:40) Why we chose to pursue postpartum family planning

(01:45) Why family planning?

(02:28) Why postpartum (post-birth)?

(03:49) MHI: An overview of our work

(06:16) Pilot: Design

(08:54) Pilot: Results

(08:58) Sample Population

(09:36) Implementation

(10:19) Changes in Contraceptive Uptake

(11:13) Conclusions From Our Pilot Results

(13:13) Why We No Longer Believe Postpartum Family Planning Is Among The Most Cost-Effective Interventions

(13:35) Evidence of Limited Effects on Unintended Pregnancies

(16:06) The Prevalence and Impact of Postpartum Insusceptibility

(17:07) Short-Spaced Pregnancies

(17:48) Theory of Change

(18:14) Other Factors

(18:28) Broader Thoughts on Family Planning

(18:45) Concerns

(20:43) Reasons We Still Believe In The Importance Of Family Planning Work

(22:53) Choosing to Shut Down

(23:43) Considering a Pivot

(26:47) Proceeding to Shut Down

(27:38) Lessons

(33:39) Conclusions

---

First published:
March 15th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MWSwSXNmsSBaEKtKw/maternal-health-initiative-is-shutting-down

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “New video: You’re richer than you realise” by GraceAdams, Giving What We Can

Wed, 13 Mar 2024 22:30:25 GMT

This might be one of the best pieces of introductory content to the concepts of effective giving that GWWC has produced in recent years!

I hit the streets of London to engage with everyday people about their views on charity, giving back, and where they thought they stood on the global income scale.

This video was made to engage people with some of the core concepts of income inequality and charity effectiveness in the hope of getting more people interested in giving effectively.

If you enjoy it - I'd really appreciate a like, comment or share on YouTube to help us reach more people!

There's a blog post and transcript of the video available too.

Big thanks to Suzy Sheperd for directing and editing this project and to Julian Jamison and Habiba Banu for being interviewed!

---

First published:
March 13th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tX2MqRfZtz7TqYCQi/new-video-you-re-richer-than-you-realise

Linkpost URL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekIRVhbpiQw

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “Results from an Adversarial Collaboration on AI Risk (FRI)” by Forecasting Research Institute, Jhrosenberg, AvitalM, Molly Hickman, rosehadshar

Tue, 12 Mar 2024 18:40:24 GMT

Authors of linked report: Josh Rosenberg, Ezra Karger, Avital Morris, Molly Hickman, Rose Hadshar, Zachary Jacobs, Philip Tetlock[1]

Today, the Forecasting Research Institute (FRI) released “Roots of Disagreement on AI Risk: Exploring the Potential and Pitfalls of Adversarial Collaboration,” which discusses the results of an adversarial collaboration focused on forecasting risks from AI.

In this post, we provide a brief overview of the methods, findings, and directions for further research. For much more analysis and discussion, see the full report: https://forecastingresearch.org/s/AIcollaboration.pdf

Abstract.

We brought together generalist forecasters and domain experts (n=22) who disagreed about the risk AI poses to humanity in the next century. The “concerned” participants (all of whom were domain experts) predicted a 20% chance of an AI-caused existential catastrophe by 2100, while the “skeptical” group (mainly “superforecasters”) predicted a 0.12% chance. Participants worked together to find the strongest near-term cruxes: forecasting questions resolving by 2030 that [...]

---

Outline:

(02:13) Extended Executive Summary

(02:44) Methods

(03:53) Results: What drives (and doesn’t drive) disagreement over AI risk

(04:32) Hypothesis #1 - Disagreements about AI risk persist due to lack of engagement among participants, low quality of participants, or because the skeptic and concerned groups did not understand each others arguments

(05:11) Hypothesis #2 - Disagreements about AI risk are explained by different short-term expectations (e.g. about AI capabilities, AI policy, or other factors that could be observed by 2030)

(07:53) Hypothesis #3 - Disagreements about AI risk are explained by different long-term expectations

(10:35) Hypothesis #4 - These groups have fundamental worldview disagreements that go beyond the discussion about AI

(11:31) Results: Forecasting methodology

(12:15) Broader scientific implications

(13:09) Directions for further research

The original text contained 10 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
March 11th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/orhjaZ3AJMHzDzckZ/results-from-an-adversarial-collaboration-on-ai-risk-fri

Linkpost URL:
https://forecastingresearch.org/s/AIcollaboration.pdf

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“This is why we can’t have nice laws” by LewisBollard

Wed, 28 Feb 2024 18:44:18 GMT

How factory farmers block progress — and what we can do about it

Most people agree that farmed animals deserve better legal protections: 84% of Europeans, 61-80% of Americans, 70% of Brazilians, 51-66% of Chinese, and 52% of Indians agree with some version of that statement. Yet almost all farmed animals globally still lack even the most basic protections.

America has about five times more vegetarians than farmers — and many more omnivores who care about farm animals. Yet the farmers wield much more political power. Fully 89% of Europeans think it's important that animals not be kept in individual cages. Yet the European Commission just implicitly sided with the 8% who don’t by shelving [...]

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First published:
February 28th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/BvXkG3PLfdmvoECFb/this-is-why-we-can-t-have-nice-laws

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“How we started our own EA charity (and why we decided to wrap up)” by KvPelt🔹, Ren Ryba

Mon, 26 Feb 2024 08:28:05 GMT

This post shares our journey in starting an Effective Altruism (EA) charity/project focused on Mediterranean fish welfare, the challenges we faced, our key learnings, and the reasons behind our decision to conclude the project. Actual research results are published in a Literature review and article.

Key points

The key points of this post are summarized as follows:

We launched a project with the goal of enhancing fish welfare in Mediterranean aquaculture.
We chose to limit our project to gathering information and decided against continuing our advocacy efforts after our initial six months.
Our strategy, which focused on farmer-friendly outreach, was not effective in engaging farmers.
The rationale behind our decision is the recognition that existing organizations are already performing excellent work, and we believe that funders should support these established organizations instead of starting a new one.
The support and resources from the Effective Altruism (EA) and [...]

---

Outline:

(00:27) Key points

(01:48) Personal/Project background

(03:01) Why work on Mediterranean fish welfare?

(07:07) Project plans and initial work

(11:03) Initial work

(13:47) Farmer outreach

(20:45) Wrapping up the project

(22:30) Other takeaways from starting a project

(24:48) Resources for launching a new charity

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
February 26th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/z59wybc56FCAysrAe/how-we-started-our-own-ea-charity-and-why-we-decided-to-wrap

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

[Linkpost] “‘No-one in my org puts money in their pension’” by tobyj

Fri, 16 Feb 2024 15:04:18 GMT

Epistemic status: the stories here are all as true as possible from memory, but my memory is so so.

An AI made this

This is going to be big

It's late Summer 2017. I am on a walk in the Mendip Hills. It's warm and sunny and the air feels fresh. With me are around 20 other people from the Effective Altruism London community. We’ve travelled west for a retreat to discuss how to help others more effectively with our donations and careers. As we cross cow field after cow field, I get talking to one of the people from the group I don’t know yet. He seems smart, and cheerful. He tells me that he is an AI researcher at Google DeepMind. He explains how he is thinking about how to make sure that any powerful AI system actually does what we want it to. I ask him if [...]

---

Outline:

(00:16) This is going to be big

(01:21) This is going to be bad

(02:44) It's a long way off though

(03:50) This is fine

(05:10) It's probably something else in your life

(06:15) No-one in my org puts money in their pension

(07:16) Doom-vibes

(08:45) Maths might help

(10:28) A problem shared is…

(12:36) Hope

---

First published:
February 16th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YScdhSQBhkxpfcF3t/no-one-in-my-org-puts-money-in-their-pension

Linkpost URL:
https://seekingtobejolly.substack.com/p/no-one-in-my-org-puts-money-in-their

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “Social science research we’d like to see on global health and wellbeing [Open Philanthropy]” by Open Philanthropy, Aaron Gertler 🔸

Thu, 15 Feb 2024 00:28:56 GMT

This is a link post.

Open Philanthropy strives to help others as much as we can with the resources available to us. To find the best opportunities to help others, we rely heavily on scientific and social scientific research.

In some cases, we would find it helpful to have more research in order to evaluate a particular grant or cause area. Below, we’ve listed a set of social scientific questions for which we are actively seeking more evidence.[1] We believe the answers to these questions have the potential to impact our grantmaking. (See also our list of research topics for animal welfare.)

If you know of any research that touches on these questions, we would welcome hearing from you. At this point, we are not actively making grants to further investigate these questions. It is possible we may do so in the future, though, so if you plan to research [...]

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Outline:

(01:05) Land Use Reform

(06:09) Health

(16:20) Migration

(18:08) Education

(20:19) Science and Metascience

(30:31) Global Development

(32:47) Other

The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
February 15th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3Y7c7MXf3BzgruTWv/social-science-research-we-d-like-to-see-on-global-health

Linkpost URL:
https://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/social-science-research-topics-for-global-health-and-wellbeing/

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “My cover story in Jacobin on AI capitalism and the x-risk debates” by Garrison

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 23:34:38 GMT

Google cofounder Larry Page thinks superintelligent AI is “just the next step in evolution.” In fact, Page, who's worth about $120 billion, has reportedly argued that efforts to prevent AI-driven extinction and protect human consciousness are “speciesist” and “sentimental nonsense.”

In July, former Google DeepMind senior scientist Richard Sutton — one of the pioneers of reinforcement learning, a major subfield of AI — said that the technology “could displace us from existence,” and that “we should not resist succession.” In a 2015 talk, Sutton said, suppose “everything fails” and AI “kill[s] us all”; he asked, “Is it so bad that humans are not the final form of intelligent life in the universe?”

This is how I begin the cover story for Jacobin's winter issue on AI. Some very influential people openly welcome an AI-driven future, even if humans aren’t part of it.

Whether you're new to the topic [...]

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First published:
February 12th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pRAjLTQxWJJkygWwK/my-cover-story-in-jacobin-on-ai-capitalism-and-the-x-risk

Linkpost URL:
https://jacobin.com/2024/01/can-humanity-survive-ai

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“On being an EA for decades” by Michelle_Hutchinson

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 21:24:27 GMT

A friend sent me on a lovely trip down memory lane last week. She forwarded me an email chain from 12 years ago in which we all pretended we left the EA community, and explained why. We were partly thinking through what might cause us to drift in order that we could do something to make that less likely, and partly joking around. It was a really nice reminder of how uncertain things felt back then, and how far we’ve come.

Although the emails hadn’t led us to take any specific actions, almost everyone on the thread was still devoting their time to helping others as much as they can. We’re also, for the most part, still supporting each other in doing so. Of the 10 or so people on there, for example, Niel Bowerman is now my boss - CEO of 80k. Will MacAskill and Toby Ord [...]

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
February 12th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zEMvHK9Qa4pczWbJg/on-being-an-ea-for-decades

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Things to check about a job or internship” by Julia_Wise

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 20:21:07 GMT

A lot of great projects have started in informal ways: a startup in someone's garage, or a scrappy project run by volunteers. Sometimes people jump into these and are happy they did so.

But I’ve also seen people caught off-guard by arrangements that weren’t what they expected, especially early in their careers. I’ve been there, when I was a new graduate interning at a religious center that came with room, board, and $200 a month. I remember my horror when my dentist checkup cost most of a month's income, or when I found out that my nine-month internship came with zero vacation days. It was an overall positive experience for me (after we worked out the vacation thing), but it's better to go in clear-eyed.

First, I’ve listed a bunch of things to consider. These are drawn from several different situations I’ve heard about, both inside and outside EA. [...]

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Outline:

(01:15) Things to consider

(08:26) Advice from a few EAs

---

First published:
February 12th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RXFcmrf7E5fLhb43e/things-to-check-about-a-job-or-internship

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“My Donations 2023 - Marcus Abramovitch” by MarcusAbramovitch

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 19:35:09 GMT

Summary

$8003.98 Charity Entrepreneurship

$5000 Insect Institute

$5000 Shrimp Welfare Project

$5000 Rethink Priorities

$5000 Animal Ethics

$1000 Wild Animal Initiative

Background

I think it's good to keep track of and explain donations. It creates a record to get better over time and gives others insights into how you donate.

I officially made $45000 in 2023. I earned some investment income from some other sources though this is hard to quantify. I also had some savings from previous years so don’t come away from this thinking that I gave such a substantial portion of my income. That said, I am still giving away a significant portion of my income this year. I think this is a good thing and hopefully, I can serve as an example to others to give away a significant portion of their income, even if it isn’t that high.

In total, I am giving [...]

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First published:
February 11th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EkKYqeAy3ArupKuYn/my-donations-2023-marcus-abramovitch

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “Sam Altman’s Chip Ambitions Undercut OpenAI’s Safety Strategy” by Garrison

Sat, 10 Feb 2024 19:53:10 GMT

If you enjoy this, please consider subscribing to my Substack.

Sam Altman has said he thinks that developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) could lead to human extinction, but OpenAI is trying to build it ASAP. Why?

The common story for how AI could overpower humanity involves an “intelligence explosion,” where an AI system becomes smart enough to further improve its capabilities, bootstrapping its way to superintelligence. Even without any kind of recursive self-improvement, some AI safety advocates argue that a large enough number of copies of a genuinely human-level AI system could pose serious problems for humanity. (I discuss this idea in more detail in my recent Jacobin cover story.)

Some people think the transition from human-level AI to superintelligence could happen in a matter of months, weeks, days, or even hours. The faster the takeoff, the more dangerous, the thinking goes.

Sam Altman, circa February 2023, agrees [...]

---

First published:
February 10th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vBjSyNNnmNtJvmdAg/sam-altman-s-chip-ambitions-undercut-openai-s-safety

Linkpost URL:
https://garrisonlovely.substack.com/p/sam-altmans-chip-ambitions-undercut

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Mathilde Danès (1994-2024)” by Elisa Autric, update

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 23:34:00 GMT

It is with great sadness that we share with you the passing of our fellow community member and beloved friend Mathilde Danès, at age 29.

A dedicated EA, animal advocate, and children's rights supporter, Mathilde had discovered the effective altruism community in 2016-2017, and the farm animal advocacy movement not long after. In 2018, she co-founded a local EA chapter in Lille, where she then lived. Other notable accomplishments of hers, among the many altruistic actions she took, include catering for several animal advocacy and EA events in France between 2020 and 2023, as well as co-organizing the 2022 edition of the Estivales de la question animale, an annual French-speaking effective animal advocacy summit.

With steadfast sentientist and antinatalist beliefs, she was particularly dedicated to the idea of reducing suffering whenever possible. Over the course of her advocacy years, she strived to live her life in accordance with [...]

---

First published:
February 8th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CeCKGfDzYsrvhJPFa/mathilde-danes-1994-2024

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Tragic Beliefs” by Toby Tremlett🔹

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 17:41:31 GMT

I'm posting this as part of the Forum's Benjamin Lay Day celebration — consider writing a reflection of your own! The “official dates” for this reflection are February 8 - 15 (but you can write about this topic whenever you want).

I've cross-posted this to my substack, Raising Dust, where I sometimes write less EA Forum-y content.

TL;DR:

Tragic beliefs are beliefs that make the world seem worse, and give us partial responsibility for it. These are beliefs such as: “insect suffering matters” or “people dying of preventable diseases could be saved by my donations”.
Sometimes, to do good, we need to accept tragic beliefs.
We need to find ways to stay open to these beliefs in a healthy way. I outline two approaches, pragmatism and righteousness, which help, but can both be carried to excess.

Why I ignored insects for so long

I’ve been trying not to [...]

---

Outline:

(00:37) Why I ignored insects for so long

(03:06) What is a tragic belief?

(03:46) How can we open ourselves up to tragic beliefs?

(04:00) Opportunity framing, or pragmatism

(06:02) The joy in righteousness

The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
February 8th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dy5h9Ly8osZEiFkru/tragic-beliefs

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Ambitious Impact (AIM) - a new brand for Charity Entrepreneurship and our extended ecosystem!” by CE, Joey

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 17:09:08 GMT

TLDR: Given Charity Entrepreneurship's recent scaling, we are changing our brand to call our extended ecosystem “Ambitious Impact (AIM).” Our new AIM umbrella brand will include the classic CE program as well as recent additional programs connected to grantmaking, research, and effective giving. We are also planning to launch new programs soon. We feel AIM being able to create onramps for other career paths (similar to what we have done for nonprofit entrepreneurship) is the most plausible way of doubling our impact.

A quick history of Charity Entrepreneurship

Inspired by the early success of a few nonprofits identified by evaluators such as GiveWell, we decided to take a systematic approach to researching and then launching new impact-focused nonprofits (Charity Science Health, Fortify Health).
After some initial successes, Charity Entrepreneurship was started in 2018 as a formal Incubation Program to get more field-leading charities started.
31 projects were founded [...]

---

Outline:

(00:43) A quick history of Charity Entrepreneurship

(02:00) What will AIM look like going forward

(03:25) Why we are launching AIM

---

First published:
February 8th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/cpuFnLtppbsLKcbbq/ambitious-impact-aim-a-new-brand-for-charity

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Celebrating Benjamin Lay (died on this day 265 years ago)” by Lizka

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 14:33:43 GMT

Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lay died exactly 265 years ago today (on February 8, 1759). I’m using the anniversary of his death to reflect on his life and invite you to join me by sharing your thoughts sometime this week.

Lay was a radical anti-slavery advocate and an important figure in the Quaker abolitionist movement. He's been described as a moral weirdo; besides viewing slavery as a great sin, he opposed the death penalty, was vegetarian, believed that men and women were equal in the eyes of God, and more. He didn’t hide his views and was known for his “guerrilla theater” protests, which included splashing fake blood on slave-owners and forcing people to step over him as they exited a meeting. Expulsion from various communities, ridicule for his beliefs or appearance (he had dwarfism), and the offended sensibilities of those around him didn’t seem to seriously slow him down.

[...]

---

Outline:

(01:37) Protests against slavery: shocking people into awareness

(05:55) Life

(10:57) Role in the broader abolition movement

(13:10) Concluding notes

The original text contained 13 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
February 8th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dM93vHvLTgpk8pLSX/celebrating-benjamin-lay-died-on-this-day-265-years-ago

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“GWWC Pledge featured in new book from Head of TED, Chris Anderson” by Giving What We Can

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 21:34:01 GMT

Chris Anderson, Head of TED, has just released a new book called Infectious Generosity, which has a whole chapter that encourages readers to take the Giving What We Can Pledge! He has also taken the Giving What We Can Pledge with the new wealth option to give the greater of 10% of income or 2.5% of wealth each year.

This inspiring book is a guide to making Infectious Generosity become a global movement to build a hopeful future. Chris offers a playbook for how to embark on our own generous acts and to use the Internet to give them self-replicating, potentially world-changing, impact.

Here's a quick excerpt from the book:

“The more I’ve thought about generosity, the impact it can have, and the joy it can bring, the more determined I’ve become that it be an absolute core part of my identity.

Jacqueline's work as a [...]

---

First published:
January 25th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/FWbaqM5PaFfrfAxaS/gwwc-pledge-featured-in-new-book-from-head-of-ted-chris

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Rates of Criminality Amongst Giving Pledge Signatories” by Ben_West

Mon, 22 Jan 2024 17:43:08 GMT

I investigate the rates of criminal misconduct amongst people who have taken The Giving Pledge (roughly: ~200 [non-EA] billionaires who have pledged to give most of their money to charity).

I find that rates are fairly high:

25% of signatories have been accused of financial misconduct, and 10% convicted[1]
4% of signatories have spent at least one day in prison
Overall, 41% of signatories have had at least one allegation of substantial misconduct (financial, sexual, or otherwise)

I estimate that Giving Pledgers are not less likely, and possibly more likely, to commit financial crimes than YCombinator entrepreneurs.

I am unable to find evidence of The Giving Pledge doing anything to limit the risk of criminal behavior amongst its members.

I conclude that the rate of criminal behavior amongst major philanthropists is high, which means that we should not expect altruism to substantially lower the risks compared to that of [...]

---

Outline:

(01:22) Methodology

(02:01) How well do convictions correspond with immoral behavior?

(03:56) Some Representative Cases

(04:08) Are Giving Pledge signatories less likely to commit financial crimes?

(06:05) Giving Pledge's Response to Criminal Behavior

(07:08) PR Impacts

(08:15) Implications for EA

The original text contained 9 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
January 22nd, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/d8nW46LrTkCWdjiYd/rates-of-criminality-amongst-giving-pledge-signatories

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“EA Wins 2023” by Shakeel Hashim

Mon, 15 Jan 2024 09:47:19 GMT

Crossposted from Twitter.

As the year comes to an end, we want to highlight and celebrate some of the incredible achievements from in and around the effective altruism ecosystem this year.

1. A new malaria vaccine

The World Health Organization recommended its second-ever malaria vaccine this year: R21/Matrix-M, designed to protect babies and young children from malaria. The drug's recently concluded Phase III trial, which was co-funded by Open Philanthropy, found that the vaccine was between 68-75% effective at targeting the disease, which kills around 600,000 people (mainly children) each year.

The work didn’t stop there, though. Following advocacy from many people — including Zacharia Kafuko of 1 Day Sooner — the WHO quickly prequalified the vaccine, laying the groundwork for an expedited deployment and potentially saving hundreds of thousands of children's lives. 1 Day Sooner is now working to raise money to expedite the deployment further.

2. The [...]

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First published:
December 31st, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8P2GZFLnv8HW9ozLB/ea-wins-2023

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Survey of 2,778 AI authors: six parts in pictures” by Katja_Grace

Sun, 14 Jan 2024 20:16:25 GMT

Crossposted from AI Impacts blog

The 2023 Expert Survey on Progress in AI is out, this time with 2778 participants from six top AI venues (up from about 700 and two in the 2022 ESPAI), making it probably the biggest ever survey of AI researchers.

People answered in October, an eventful fourteen months after the 2022 survey, which had mostly identical questions for comparison.

Here is the preprint. And here are six interesting bits in pictures (with figure numbers matching paper, for ease of learning more):

1. Expected time to human-level performance dropped 1-5 decades since the 2022 survey. As always, our questions about ‘high level machine intelligence’ (HLMI) and ‘full automation of labor’ (FAOL) got very different answers, and individuals disagreed a lot (shown as thin lines below), but the aggregate forecasts for both sets of questions dropped sharply. For context, between 2016 and 2022 surveys, the forecast [...]

---

First published:
January 6th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/M9MSe4KHNv4HNf44f/survey-of-2-778-ai-authors-six-parts-in-pictures

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Zach Robinson will be CEA’s next CEO” by Ben_West, Eli Rose, ClaireZabel, lincolnq, Michelle_Hutchinson, MaxDalton, Oscar Howie

Sun, 14 Jan 2024 01:32:13 GMT

We, on behalf of the EV US and EV UK boards, are very glad to share that Zach Robinson has been selected as the new CEO of the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA).

We can personally attest to his exceptional leadership, judgement, and dedication from having worked with him at Effective Ventures US. These experiences are part of why we unanimously agreed with the hiring committee's recommendation to offer him the position.[1] We think Zach has the skills and the drive to lead CEA's very important work.

We are grateful to the search committee (Max Dalton, Claire Zabel, and Michelle Hutchinson) for their thorough process in making the recommendation. They considered hundreds of potential internal and external candidates, including through dozens of blinded work tests. For further details on the search process, please see this Forum post.

As we look forward, we are excited about CEA's future with [...]

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
December 28th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/R6qu7LhcLKLob7t9r/zach-robinson-will-be-cea-s-next-ceo

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Double the donation: EA inadequacy found?” by Neil Warren

Sat, 13 Jan 2024 17:13:28 GMT

I'm only 30% sure [Edit Jan 7: 90% sure] that this is actually an inadequacy made by those whose job it is to maximize donations but I’ve noticed that none of the donations pages of GiveWell, Giving What We Can, Horizon Institute, or METR have this little tab in them that MIRI has (just scroll down after following the link):

This little tool comes from doublethedonation.com.

I was looking for charities to donate to, and I’m grateful I stumbled upon the MIRI donation page because otherwise I would not have known that Google would literally double my donation. None of the other donation pages except MIRI had this little “does your company do employer matching?” box. WHY.

I would wager other tech companies have similar programs, and that a good chunk of EA donations come from employees of those tech companies, and that thousands of dollars a year [...]

---

First published:
January 5th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fbTE2cBtnxCqemWNp/double-the-donation-ea-inadequacy-found

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Economic Growth - Donation suggestions and ideas” by DavidNash

Fri, 12 Jan 2024 19:31:36 GMT

There was a recent post about economic growth & effective altruism by Karthik Tadepalli. He pointed out that a lot of people agree that economic growth is important, but it hasn't really led to many suggestions for specific interventions.

I thought it would be good to get the ball rolling[1] by asking a few people what they think are good donation opportunities in this area, or if not, do they think this area is neglected when you have governments, development banks, investors etc all focused on growth.

I'm hoping there will be more in depth research into this in 2024 to see whether there are opportunities for smaller/medium funders, and how competitive it is with the best global health interventions.

I have fleshed out a few of the shorter responses with more details on what the suggested organisation does.

Shruti Rajagopalan (Mercatus Center):

XKDR Forum - Founded by [...]

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
January 8th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/oTuNw6MqXxhDK3Mdz/economic-growth-donation-suggestions-and-ideas

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Are Far-UVC Interventions Overhyped? [Founders Pledge]” by christian.r, Rosie_Bettle

Fri, 12 Jan 2024 19:21:31 GMT

Much attention recently has focused on far-UVC light, part of the spectrum of germicidal UV (GUV), and its promise for pandemic prevention. In the following medium investigation, we examine different kinds of GUV, their strengths, weaknesses, and crucial considerations in the real-world deployment of these interventions.

Throughout the report, we emphasize four points that we believe have been lost in some public discussions of far-UVC:

A great deal of uncertainty remains around far-UVC interventions, to the point that we remain uncertain over the relative cost-effectiveness, all things considered, of far-UVC light versus conventional (~254nm) GUV in many settings.
Cost-effectiveness depends on deployment context, including the dimensions of rooms, installation type (upper-room, full-room, etc.) assumptions about the mixing of air, etc. Combined with certain physical facts about air and light (e.g. the inverse square law), this complicates strong claims about far-UVC's promise.
GUV of any kind will not [...]

---

Outline:

(02:39) Medium Investigation: Germicidal Ultraviolet Light and Disease Transmission Reduction

(10:30) Key Terms and Abbreviations

(13:12) Importance: Why Biological Indoor Air Quality Matters

(17:23) Current status of indoor air quality in the US

(20:22) What is GUV?

(22:49) Full-Room Systems

(23:45) Far-UVC Light

(24:41) Upper-Room GUV

(25:27) In-Duct GUV

(26:42) Benefits of GUV as a biosecurity intervention

(30:24) What do we know about the safety of far-UVC light?

(31:14) Primary Concerns: Skin and Eye Damage

(36:13) Additional Safety Concerns

(36:17) Ozone Production

(37:28) Indoor Air Pollution

(41:08) Skin Microbiome

(42:12) Overall view on safety

(44:10) Additional Risks

(44:14) Public Reaction Considerations

(47:17) Dual-Use Potential and Security Risks

(50:18) Resistance risks

(52:01) Damage to Plastics and Other Materials

(54:47) Comparing Different Types of GUV

(56:08) Is far-UVC technology overhyped?

(59:42) The Complexity of Comparing Different GUV Systems and Wavelengths

(01:04:41) Efficacy

(01:07:35) The Challenges of Studying Real-World GUV Effectiveness

(01:16:53) Safety

(01:17:02) Skin/Eye Effects

(01:18:39) Indoor Air Pollution

(01:19:06) Cost

(01:21:31) Limits to real-world use

(01:23:30) Additional benefits

(01:24:07) Overall View

(01:26:06) Neglectedness

(01:32:11) What Could a Philanthropist Do?

(01:33:29) Grantmaking under Uncertainty: Impact Multipliers for GUV

(01:36:52) Placing Wavelength-Agnostic Bets

(01:41:28) Leveraging Societal Resources Via Advocacy

(01:42:42) Prioritizing shaping RandD incentives over funding specific RandD

(01:44:14) Focusing on high-income countries first

(01:45:37) Focusing on good information over rapid deployment

(01:50:32) Potential funding pathways

(01:55:48) Conclusions and Next Steps

(01:57:03) About Founders Pledge

The original text contained 157 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
January 9th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EZZveBtxoZJjSighP/are-far-uvc-interventions-overhyped-founders-pledge

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Podcast AMA] Rob Mather, Founder and CEO of the Against Malaria Foundation

Mon, 08 Jan 2024 14:46:04 GMT

This podcast is an Ask Me Anything with Rob Mather, Founder and CEO of the Against Malaria Foundation, hosted by Toby Tremlett, the EA Forum’s Content Manager.

If you’re interested in Effective Altruism, you’ve probably heard of Rob Mather’s charity, the Against Malaria Foundation. For almost two decades, they’ve been doing crucial work to protect people, especially children, from Malaria.

To date, around 450 million people have been protected with malaria bed nets from this charity. Once all of their currently funded nets have been distributed, AMF estimates it will have prevented 185,000 deaths. And it’s not just AMF saying this, they’ve been a GiveWell Top Charity since 2009.

Listen to this episode to find out more about how Rob ended up starting one of the most effective global health charities, Rob’s tips for running a charity, how AMF’s work integrates with other NGOs that work on Malaria, and much more.

The original AMA post, which features Forum user’s questions for Rob, more information about AMF, and a link to a transcript for this episode, can be found here.

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rWRSvRxAco2bLoXKr/podcast-transcript-ama-founder-and-ceo-of-the-against

Published for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“MIRI 2024 Mission and Strategy Update” by Malo

Fri, 05 Jan 2024 01:11:45 GMT

As we announced back in October, I have taken on the senior leadership role at MIRI as its CEO. It's a big pair of shoes to fill, and an awesome responsibility that I’m honored to take on.

There have been several changes at MIRI since our 2020 strategic update, so let's get into it.[1]

The short version:

We think it's very unlikely that the AI alignment field will be able to make progress quickly enough to prevent human extinction and the loss of the future's potential value, that we expect will result from loss of control to smarter-than-human AI systems.

However, developments this past year like the release of ChatGPT seem to have shifted the Overton window in a lot of groups. There's been a lot more discussion of extinction risk from AI, including among policymakers, and the discussion quality seems greatly improved.

This provides a glimmer of hope. [...]

---

Outline:

(03:27) MIRI's mission

(05:47) MIRI in 2021–2022

(10:10) New developments in 2023

(13:03) Looking forward

The original text contained 7 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
January 5th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Lvd2DFaHKfuveaCyQ/miri-2024-mission-and-strategy-update

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “Practically A Book Review: Appendix to ‘Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims’” by Rafael Harth

Wed, 03 Jan 2024 23:16:47 GMT

A summary of the Nonlinear situation from a third-person perspective, by Ozy Brennan. I find it to be thoughtful, well-written, and well-researched enough to be part of the conversation. It was also posted on LessWrong.

Edit: full text included below (with permission from the author). I had to reformat a lot so assume all formatting errors are done by me.

About a week ago, I became one of a small, elite group—people who have read every single goddamn word of Nonlinear's Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims. I read the appendix. I read the appendixes to the appendix. I have spent more time thinking about whether a complete stranger got a vegan burger than any person should.

If you just want to make up your own mind, I suggest reading The General Situation and referring to Dramatis Personae when you get confused who is who. If you like drama [...]

---

Outline:

(02:00) How We Got Here

(03:46) Dramatis Personae

(05:20) Ben's Credibility

(07:39) Kat Woods's Credibility

(11:30) The General Situation

(12:59) Enmeshment

(17:44) Finances

(23:22) Isolation

(25:17) The Drug Situation

(27:34) Specific Situations

(27:37) The Vegan Burger Situation

(29:21) The Driving Situation

(31:21) Speculation About Drugs

(32:42) Alice's Credibility

(36:09) The Saga of Alice's Incubated Organization

(41:58) The Saga of Emerson Spartz's Previous Business Life

(45:14) Could Nonlinear Employ People?

(48:50) Takeaways

The original text contained 16 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
January 3rd, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RdiQ3n8cFJBxHRnwu/practically-a-book-review-appendix-to-nonlinear-s-evidence-1

Linkpost URL:
https://thingofthings.substack.com/p/practically-a-book-review-appendix

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Altruism sharpens altruism” by Joey 🔸

Tue, 26 Dec 2023 13:38:02 GMT

I think many EAs have a unique view about how one altruistic action affects the next altruistic action, something like altruism follows a power law in terms of its impact, and altruistic acts take time/energy/willpower; thus, it's better to conserve your resources for these topmost important altruistic actions (e.g., career choice) and not sweat it for the other actions.

However, I think this is a pretty simplified and incorrect model that leads to the wrong choices being taken. I wholeheartedly agree that certain actions constitute a huge % of your impact. In my case, I do expect my career/job (currently running Charity Entrepreneurship) will be more than 90% of my lifetime impact. But I have a different view on what this means for altruism outside of career choices. I think that being altruistic in other actions not only does not decrease my altruism on the big choices but actually [...]

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First published:
December 26th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DBcDZJhTDgig9QNHR/altruism-sharpens-altruism

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “A year of wins for farmed animals” by Vasco Grilo

Sun, 24 Dec 2023 12:19:10 GMT

This is a crosspost for A year of wins for farmed animals, published by Lewis Bollard on 14 December 2023 in Open Philanthropy farm animal welfare research newsletter.

It's been a tough year for farmed animals. The European Union shelved the world's most ambitious farm animal welfare reform proposal, plant-based meat sales sagged, and the media panned cultivated meat while Italy banned it. But advocates for factory farmed animals still won major gains — here are ten of the biggest:

1. Wins for the winged. Advocates won 130 new corporate pledges to eliminate cages for hens or the worst abuses of broiler chickens. This progress has now expanded well beyond the West: recent wins include cage-free pledges from the largest Asian restaurant company and the largest Indonesian retailer. That's mostly thanks to the work of the 100+ member groups of the Open Wing Alliance, who now campaign across 67 [...]

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First published:
December 24th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/aiXyEvheFdwsEoPeC/a-year-of-wins-for-farmed-animals

Linkpost URL:
https://farmanimalwelfare.substack.com/p/a-year-of-wins-for-farmed-animals

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Winners in the Forum’s Donation Election (2023)” by Lizka

Sun, 24 Dec 2023 01:55:57 GMT

TL;DR: We ran a Donation Election in which 341 Forum users[1] voted on how we should allocate the Donation Election Fund ($34,856[2]). The winners are:

Rethink Priorities - $12,847.75
Charity Entrepreneurship: Incubated Charities Fund - $11,351.11
Animal Welfare Fund (EA Funds) - $10,657.07

This post shares more information about the results:

Comments from voters about their votes: patterns include referencing organizations' marginal funding posts, updating towards the neglectedness of animal welfare, appreciating strong track records, etc.
Voting patterns: most people voted for 2-4 candidates (at least one of which was one of the three winners), usually in multiple cause areas
Cause area stats: similar numbers of points went to cross-cause, animal welfare, risk/future-oriented, and global health candidates (ranked in that order)
All candidate results, including raw point[3] totals: the Long-Term Future Fund initially placed second by raw point totals
Concluding thoughts & other charities

You can [...]

The original text contained 10 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
December 24th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7D83kwkyaHLQSo6JT/winners-in-the-forum-s-donation-election-2023

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “Attention on AI X-Risk Likely Hasn’t Distracted from Current Harms from AI” by Erich_Grunewald

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 17:25:49 GMT

This is a link post.

Summary

In the past year, public fora have seen growing concern about existential risk (henceforth, x-risk) from AI. The thought is that we could see transformative AI in the coming years or decades, that it may be hard to ensure that such systems act with humanity's best interests in mind and that those highly advanced AIs may be able to overpower us if they aimed to do so, or otherwise that such systems may be catastrophically misused. Some have reacted by arguing that concerns about x-risk distract from current harms from AI, like algorithmic bias, job displacement and labour issues, environmental impact and so on. And in opposition to those voices, others have argued that attention on x-risk does not draw resources and attention away from current harms -- that both concerns can coexist peacefully.

The claim that x-risk distracts from current harms [...]

---

Outline:

(00:09) Summary

(02:21) The Argument

(09:50) Evidence

(11:07) AI Policy

(15:01) Search Interest

(20:21) Twitter/X Followers

(21:38) Funding

(23:06) Climate Change

(26:33) Maybe the Real Disagreement Is about How Big the Risks Are

The original text contained 9 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
December 21st, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hXzB72kfdAk6PTzio/attention-on-existential-risk-from-ai-likely-hasn-t

Linkpost URL:
https://www.erichgrunewald.com/posts/attention-on-existential-risk-from-ai-likely-hasnt-distracted-from-current-harms-from-ai/

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

“The privilege of native English speakers in reaching high-status, influential positions in EA” by Alix Pham

Wed, 20 Dec 2023 21:08:01 GMT

Huge thanks to Konrad Seifert, Marcel Steimke, Ysaline Bourgine, Milena Canzler, Alex Rahl-Kaplan, Marieke de Visscher, and Guillaume Vorreux for the valuable feedback provided on drafts of this post, and to many others for the conversations that lead to me writing it.

Views & mistakes are my own.

TL;DR

Being a non-native English speaker makes one sound less convincing. However, poor inclusion of non-native English speakers means missed perspectives in decision-making. Hence, it's a vicious circle where lack of diversity persists: native English culture prevails at the thought leadership level and neglects other cultures by failing to acknowledge that it is inherently harder to stand out as a non-native English speaker.

Why I am writing this

I’m co-directing EA Switzerland (I’m originally from France), and I’ve been thinking about the following points for some time. I’ve been invited to speak at the Panel on Community Building at EAG Boston [...]

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Outline:

(00:25) TL;DR

(00:52) Why I am writing this

(01:38) An unconscious bias against non-native English speakers

(02:00) Non-native English speakers sound less convincing

(03:43) Poor inclusion of non-native English speakers means missed perspectives

(04:30) Native English speakers are overrepresented in EA's thought leadership: a vicious circle

(05:47) What can we do about it?

(05:50) Some prompts

(06:35) Let's talk about this

The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
December 20th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/F7qzoWhiCTK8KpuTM/the-privilege-of-native-english-speakers-in-reaching-high

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Effective Aspersions: How the Nonlinear Investigation Went Wrong” by TracingWoodgrains

Tue, 19 Dec 2023 12:00:42 GMT

The New York Times

Picture a scene: the New York Times is releasing an article on Effective Altruism (EA) with an express goal to dig up every piece of negative information they can find. They contact Émile Torres, David Gerard, and Timnit Gebru, collect evidence about Sam Bankman-Fried, the OpenAI board blowup, and Pasek's Doom, start calling Astral Codex Ten (ACX) readers to ask them about rumors they'd heard about affinity between Effective Altruists, neoreactionaries, and something called TESCREAL. They spend hundreds of hours over six months on interviews and evidence collection, paying Émile and Timnit for their time and effort. The phrase "HBD" is muttered, but it's nobody's birthday.

A few days before publication, they present key claims to the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA), who furiously tell them that many of the claims are provably false and ask for a brief delay to demonstrate the falsehood of [...]

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Outline:

(00:06) The New York Times

(03:08) A Word of Introduction

(07:35) The Story So Far: A Recap

(11:08) Avoidable, Unambiguous Falsehoods in Sharing Information About Nonlinear

(21:32) These Issues Were Known and Knowable By Lightcone and the Community. The EA/LW Community Dismissed Them

(27:03) Better processes are both possible and necessary

(38:44) On Lawsuits

(47:15) First Principles, Duty, and Harm

(50:43) What of Nonlinear?

The original text contained 16 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
December 19th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bwtpBFQXKaGxuic6Q/effective-aspersions-how-the-nonlinear-investigation-went

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“GWWC is spinning out of EV” by Luke Freeman

Wed, 13 Dec 2023 22:06:50 GMT

Giving What We Can (GWWC) is embarking on an exciting new chapter: after years of support, we will be spinning out of the Effective Ventures Foundation UK and US (collectively referred to as “EV”), our parent charities in the US and UK respectively, to become an independent organisation.

Rest assured that our core mission, commitments, and focus on effective giving remain unchanged. We believe this transition will allow us to better serve our community and to achieve our mission more effectively. Below, you'll find all the details you need, including what is changing, what isn't, and how you can get involved.

A heartfelt thanks

First and foremost, we owe a very big thank you to the team at EV. Their support over the years has helped us to grow and have a meaningful impact in the world. We could not be more grateful for their support.

A big thank [...]

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Outline:

(00:41) A heartfelt thanks

(01:08) Why spin out?

(02:36) The details

(02:55) Whats changing

(04:03) Whats not changing

(04:51) How you can help

(05:09) Have more questions?

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First published:
December 13th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ngoqSAbcdYhhNgBza/gwwc-is-spinning-out-of-ev

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“EV updates: FTX settlement and the future of EV” by Zachary Robinson

Wed, 13 Dec 2023 21:25:35 GMT

We’re announcing two updates today that we believe will strengthen the effective altruism ecosystem.

FTX updates

First, we’re pleased to say that both Effective Ventures UK and Effective Ventures US have agreed to settlements with the FTX bankruptcy estate. As part of these settlements, EV US and EV UK (which I’ll collectively refer to as “EV”) have between them paid the estate $26,786,503, an amount equal to 100% of the funds the entities received from FTX and the FTX Foundation (which I’ll collectively refer to as “FTX”) in 2022. All of this money was either originally received from FTX or allocated to pay the settlement with the knowledge and support of their original donor. This means that EV's projects can continue to fundraise with confidence that donations won’t be used to cover the cost of this settlement. We strongly condemn fraud and the actions underlying Sam Bankman-Fried's conviction.

Also [...]

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Outline:

(00:12) FTX updates

(02:59) Future of EV

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First published:
December 13th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HjsfHwqasyQMWRzZN/ev-updates-ftx-settlement-and-the-future-of-ev

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims” by Kat Woods

Tue, 12 Dec 2023 13:16:13 GMT

Recently, Ben Pace wrote a well-intentioned blog post mostly based on complaints from 2 (of 21) Nonlinear employees who 1) wanted more money, 2) felt socially isolated, and 3) felt persecuted/oppressed.

Of relevance, one has accused the majority of her previous employers, and 28 people of abuse - that we know of.

She has accused multiple people of threatening to kill her and literally accused an ex-employer of murder. Within three weeks of joining us, she had accused five separate people of abuse: not paying her what was promised, controlling her romantic life, hiring stalkers, and other forms of persecution.

We have empathy for her. Initially, we believed her too. We spent weeks helping her get her “nefarious employer to finally pay her” and commiserated with her over how badly they mistreated her.

Then she started accusing us of strange things.

You’ve seen Ben's evidence, which [...]

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Outline:

(02:20) Short summary overview table

(04:04) This post is long, so if you read just one illustrative story, read this one

(08:37) What is going on? Why did they say so many misleading things? How did Ben get so much wrong?

(12:14) Ben admitted in his post that he was warned in private by multiple of his own sources that Alice was untrustworthy and told outright lies. One credible person told Ben Alice makes things up.

(20:35) Alice has similarities to Kathy Forth, who, according to Scott Alexander, was “a very disturbed person” who, multiple people told him, “had a habit of accusing men she met of sexual harassment. They all agreed she wasnt malicious, just delusional.” As a community, we do not have good mechanisms in place to protect people from false accusations.

(23:41) Why didn’t Ben do basic fact-checking to see if their claims were true? I mean, multiple people warned him?

(24:42) Longer summary table

(26:14) To many EAs, this would have been a dream job

(37:13) Sharing Information on Ben Pace

(47:07) So how do we learn from this to make our community better? How can we make EA antifragile?

(51:22) Conclusion: a story with no villains

(57:16) If you are disturbed by what happened here, here are some ways you can help

(58:53) Acknowledgments

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First published:
December 12th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/H4DYehKLxZ5NpQdBC/nonlinear-s-evidence-debunking-false-and-misleading-claims

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“PEPFAR, one of the most life-saving global health programs, is at risk” by salonium

Sun, 10 Dec 2023 20:38:15 GMT

Summary:

International funding and coordination to tackle HIV/AIDS and support health systems in lower- and middle-income countries, is at risk of not being renewed by US Congress, due to demands that it should be linked to new abortion-related restrictions in recipient countries.

This program is estimated to have saved over 20 million lives since it was launched by the Bush Administration in 2003, and even now averts over a million HIV/AIDS deaths annually.

Since it has also helped support health systems in LMICs, and tackle malaria and tuberculosis, its impact is likely greater than this.

In my view this is the most important risk to global health we face today, and I think it isn't getting enough attention.

If anyone is interested in research, writing or advocacy on this issue, please do so. Or please get in touch if you are interested in jointly working on this [...]

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First published:
December 10th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gF4nLBpjgFe6XTMrM/pepfar-one-of-the-most-life-saving-global-health-programs-is

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Early findings from the world’s largest UBI study” by GiveDirectly

Wed, 06 Dec 2023 22:10:22 GMT

Summary of findings 2 years in:

A monthly universal basic income (UBI) empowered recipients and did not create idleness. They invested, became more entrepreneurial, and earned more. The common concern of “laziness” never materialized, as recipients did not work less nor drink more.
Both a large lump sum and a long-term UBI proved highly effective. The lump sum enabled big investments and the guarantee of 12 years of UBI encouraged savings and risk-taking.
A short-term UBI was the least impactful of the designs but still effective. On nearly all important economic measures, a 2-year-only UBI performed less well than giving cash as a large lump sum or guaranteeing a long-term UBI, despite each group having received roughly the same total amount of money at this point. However, it still had a positive impact on most measures.
Governments should consider changing how they deliver cash aid. Short-term monthly payments [...]

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Outline:

(02:37) A monthly UBI made people in poverty more productive, not less

(03:57) Giving $500 as a lump sum improved economic outcomes more than giving it out over 24 months

(06:27) The promise of a long-term UBI encouraged saving and investment

(07:43) This research should inform how cash is given to people in extreme poverty

(10:28) Study design

The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
December 6th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DBx98atdYFM3yKR9C/early-findings-from-the-world-s-largest-ubi-study

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“EA thoughts from Israel-Hamas war” by ezrah

Wed, 06 Dec 2023 08:53:33 GMT

I'm Ezra, CEO of EA Israel, but am writing this in a personal capacity. My goal in writing this is to give the community a sense of what someone from a decent-sized local EA group is going through during a time of national crisis. I'll try to keep the post relatively apolitical, but since this is such a charged topic, I'm not sure I'll succeed. I will say that I’m quite nervous about the responses to the post, since the forum can sometimes lean towards criticism. Ideally, I’d want people who are reading this to do so with a sense of compassion, while keeping in mind that this is a difficult time and difficult topic to post or share experiences about. I also don't want the comments to be a discussion of the war per se, but of the experiences of an EA during the war. Finally, I'm sure that [...]

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Outline:

(01:25) So what have I been doing since the outbreak of the war?

(04:09) How has my experience changed the way I think about EA concepts?

(04:35) Donation recommendations

(05:39) Important aspects of suffering arent captured by usual metrics

(06:17) Theres even more moral uncertainty

(07:39) Caring about people far away can go wrong if the topic is trending

(08:44) Models of complex situations can be overly simplistic and harmful

(11:24) Optimisation is irrelevant

(12:59) Ambition to improve the world

(14:06) The importance of peace

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
December 6th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/iXv6zjbAfwrpQy37B/ea-thoughts-from-israel-hamas-war

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“EA Infrastructure Fund’s Plan to Focus on Principles-First EA” by Linch, calebp, Tom Barnes

Wed, 06 Dec 2023 03:25:13 GMT

Summary.

EA Infrastructure Fund (EAIF)[1] has historically had a somewhat scattershot focus within “EA meta.” This makes it difficult for us to know what to optimize for or for donors to evaluate our performance
We propose that we switch towards focusing our grantmaking on Principles-First EA[2]
This includes supporting:
- research that aids prioritization across different cause areas
- projects that build communities focused on impartial, scope sensitive and ambitious altruism
- infrastructure, especially epistemic infrastructure, to support these aims
We hope that the tighter focus area will make it easier for donors and community members to evaluate the EA Infrastructure Fund, and decide for themselves whether EAIF is a good fit to donate to or otherwise support
Our tentative plan is to collect feedback from the community, donors, and stakeholders until the end of this year. Early 2024 will focus on refining our approach and helping ease transition for grantees. We'll begin piloting our new vision in Q2 2024.

Introduction and background [...]

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Outline:

(01:17) Introduction and background context

(04:29) Proposal

(05:10) Examples of projects under the new EAIF's purview

(06:01) Examples of projects that are outside of the updated scope

(06:46) Why focus on Principles-First EA?

(08:43) Potential Metrics

(10:05) Potential Alternatives for Donors and Grantees

(10:52) Tentative Timeline

(11:46) Appendices

(11:53) Examples of projects that I (Caleb) would be excited for this fund to support

(13:00) Scope Assessment of Hypothetical EAIF Applications

(15:53) Key Considerations

The original text contained 5 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
December 6th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/FnNJfgLgsHdjuMvzH/ea-infrastructure-fund-s-plan-to-focus-on-principles-first

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Effective Giving Incubation - apply to CE & GWWC’s new program!” by CE, Giving What We Can, Jacintha Baas, Federico Speziali, Luke Moore

Tue, 05 Dec 2023 16:09:07 GMT

Charity Entrepreneurship in collaboration with Giving What We Can is opening a new program to launch 4-6 new Effective Giving Initiatives (EGIs) in 2024. We expect them to raise millions in counterfactual funding for highly impactful charities, even in their first few years.

[Applications are open now]

In recent years Doneer Effectief, Effektiv Spenden & Giving What We Can have moved huge sums of money ($1.4m, $35m and $330m, respectively) to the best charities globally. We aim to build on their experience and success by launching new EGIs in highly promising locations. These initiatives can be fully independent or run in collaboration with existing organizations, depending on what is most impactful. We’ll provide the training, the blueprints, and the all-important seed funding.

This 8-week full-time, fully cost-covered program will run online from April 15 to June 7, 2024, with 2 weeks in person in London. We encourage individuals from all countries [...]

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Outline:

(01:31) Who is this program for?

(02:35) Why do we think this is promising?

(04:17) Our top recommended target countries

(05:25) Should you apply?

(06:43) Application process

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First published:
December 5th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ME4ihqRojjuhprejm/effective-giving-incubation-apply-to-ce-and-gwwc-s-new

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“What do we really know about growth in LMICs? (Part 1: sectoral transformation)” by Karthik Tadepalli

Sat, 02 Dec 2023 17:04:42 GMT

To EAs, "development economics" evokes the image of RCTs on psychotherapy or deworming. That is, after all, the closest interaction between EA and development economists. However, this characterization has prompted some pushback, in the form of the argument that all global health interventions pale in comparison to the Holy Grail: increasing economic growth in poor countries. After all, growth increases basically every measure of wellbeing on a far larger scale than any charity intervention, so it's obviously more important than any micro-intervention. Even a tiny chance of boosting growth in a large developing country will have massive expected value, more than all the GiveWell charities you can fund.

The argument is compelling[1] and well-received - so why haven't "growth interventions" gone anywhere? I think the EA understanding of growth is just too abstract to yield really useful interventions that EA organizations could lobby for or implement directly. We need specific [...]

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Outline:

(02:31) Sectoral Transformation

(03:21) 1. Agricultural productivity growth can drive sectoral transformation... or hurt it.

(08:44) 2. Education leads people to move out of agriculture (but with some negative spillovers).

(10:39) 3. Barriers to reallocation are surprisingly small; people select into sectors based on their skills.

(12:36) 4. Most sectoral transformation today comes from people moving into services, not manufacturing.

The original text contained 5 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
December 2nd, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/H7rjCEmhcWscZsEnE/what-do-we-really-know-about-growth-in-lmics-part-1-sectoral

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “Doing Good Effectively is Unusual” by Richard Y Chappell

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 17:03:19 GMT

tl;dr: It actually seems pretty rare for people to care about the general good as such (i.e., optimizing cause-agnostic impartial well-being), as we can see by prejudged dismissals of EA concern for non-standard beneficiaries and for doing good via indirect means.

Introduction.

Moral truisms may still be widely ignored. The moral truism underlying Effective Altruism is that we have strong reasons to do more good, and it's worth adopting the efficient promotion of the impartial good among one's life projects. (One can do this in a “non-totalizing” way, i.e. without it being one's only project.) Anyone who personally adopts that project (to any non-trivial extent) counts, in my book, as an effective altruist (whatever their opinion of the EA movement and its institutions).

Many people don’t adopt this explicit goal as a personal priority to any degree, but still do significant good via more particular commitments (to more specific communities, causes, or individuals). [...]

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Outline:

(03:14) Let's be honest

(08:36) OK, but what about the actual movement/institutions?

(09:32) Serious Evaluation Goes Beyond Vibes

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
December 1st, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YKidYukDhKLBtDqsh/doing-good-effectively-is-unusual

Linkpost URL:
https://rychappell.substack.com/p/doing-good-effectively-is-unusual

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Effektiv Spenden’s Impact Evaluation 2019-2023 (exec. summary)” by Sebastian Schienle, Sebastian Schwiecker, Anne Schulze

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 08:16:53 GMT

effektiv-spenden.org is an effective giving platform in Germany and Switzerland that was founded in 2019. To reflect on our past impact, we examine Effektiv Spenden's cost-effectiveness as a "giving multiplier" from 2019 to 2022 in terms of how much money is directed to highly effective charities due to our work. We have two primary reasons for this analysis:

To provide past and future donors with transparent information about our cost-effectiveness;
To hold ourselves accountable, particularly in a situation where we are investing in further growth of our platform.

We provide both a simple multiple (or “leverage ratio”) of donations raised for highly effective charities compared to our operating costs, as well as an analysis of the counterfactual (i.e. what would have happened had we never existed).

Our analysis complements our Annual Review 2022 (in German) and builds on previous updates and annual reviews, such as, amongst others, our reviews of 2021 and 2019. [...]

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Outline:

(02:07) Key results

(03:56) How to interpret our results

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
December 1st, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wtjFne8WdcLJTpyWm/effektiv-spenden-s-impact-evaluation-2019-2023-exec-summary

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “In Continued Defense Of Effective Altruism — Scott Alexander” by Pablo

Wed, 29 Nov 2023 10:37:49 GMT

In Continued Defense Of Effective Altruism — Scott Alexanderhttps://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ML6hxqM6g6mXewJtZ/in-continued-defense-of-effective-altruism-scott-alexander

Linkpost URL:
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/in-continued-defense-of-effective
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“How I feel about my GWWC Pledge” by Michael Townsend

Wed, 29 Nov 2023 04:22:46 GMT

I took the GWWC Pledge in 2018, while I was an undergraduate student. I only have a hazy recollection of the journey that led to me taking the Pledge. I thought I’d write that down, reflect on how I feel now, and maybe share it.
In high-school, I was kind of cringe
I saw respected people wear suits, and I watched (and really liked) shows like Suits.
I unreflectively assumed I’d end up the same. The only time I would reflect on it was to motivate myself to study for my upcoming exams — I have memories of going to the bathroom as a 17-year old, looking at myself in the mirror, and imagining being successful. I imagined the BMW I might drive, the family I could provide for, and the nice house I could own. A lot of this was psychologically tied up in aspirations to be in great shape.
I was [...]

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Outline:
(00:20) In high-school, I was kind of cringe
(02:09) In early university, I didn’t really know who I wanted to be
(04:20) Then, I started giving
(05:13) Then, I took the Pledge
(07:09) Does how we feel about giving matter?
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First published:
November 29th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sdNYqwaTJ5j4hGZit/how-i-feel-about-my-gwwc-pledge
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“EA is good, actually” by Amy Labenz

Tue, 28 Nov 2023 15:59:50 GMT

The last year has been tough
The last year has been tough for EA.
FTX blew up in the most spectacular way and SBF has been found guilty of one of the biggest frauds in history. I was heartbroken to learn that someone I trusted hurt so many people, was heartbroken for the people who lost their money, and was heartbroken about the projects I thought would happen that no longer will. The media piled on, and on, and on.
The community has processed the shock in all sorts of ways — some more productive than others. Many have published thoughtful reflections. Many have tried to come up with ways to ensure that nothing like this will ever happen again. Some people rallied, some people looked for who to blame, we all felt betrayed.
I personally spent November–February working more than full-time on a secondment to Effective Ventures. Meanwhile, there were several [...]

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Outline:
(00:03) The last year has been tough
(02:55) The EA community is good
(05:43) EA ideas are good
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First published:
November 28th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dgXg6ddauC3sBwe67/ea-is-good-actually
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“AMF – Reflecting on 2023 and looking ahead to 2024” by RobM

Fri, 24 Nov 2023 05:37:44 GMT

Rob Mather, CEO, AMF, 25 November 2023
2023 has been a very busy year for AMF, more on 2024 later.
Impact
AMF's team of 13 is in the middle of a nine-month period during which we are distributing, with partners, 90 million nets to protect 160 million people in six countries: Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, South Sudan, Togo, Uganda, and Zambia.
The impact of these nets is expected to be, ± 20%, 40,000 deaths prevented, 20 million cases of malaria averted and a US$2.2 billion improvement in local economy (12x the funds applied). When people are ill they cannot farm, drive, teach – function, so the improvement in health leads to economic as well as humanitarian benefits.
This is a terrific contribution from the tens of thousands of donors who have contributed US$180 million over the last two years, and the many partners with whom we work that make possible the distribution [...]

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First published:
November 24th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fkft56o8Md2HmjSP7/amf-reflecting-on-2023-and-looking-ahead-to-2024
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“The passing of Sebastian Lodemann” by ClaireB, amanda

Thu, 23 Nov 2023 16:53:23 GMT

With immense sadness, we want to let the community know about the passing of Sebastian Lodemann, who lost his life on November 9th, 2023, in a completely unexpected and sudden accident. Those who have met him know how humble and kind he was, in addition to being a brilliant and energetic person full of light. Sebastian was deeply altruistic, curious, and took seriously both the challenges facing our world, and its potential. He loved connecting with humans from across the globe and supporting as many people as he could, so there will be a wide international community of people who will keenly feel his absence.
Sebastian has been involved with EA since 2016, working on a wide range of projects in AI governance and strategy, pandemic prevention, civilisational resilience and career advising, and taking the Giving What We Can pledge.
We extend our deepest sympathies to Sebastian's wife, his children, his [...]

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First published:
November 23rd, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dqDhXc9qirhPHjfXH/the-passing-of-sebastian-lodemann
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“A Thanksgiving gratitude post to EA” by Joy Bittner

Thu, 23 Nov 2023 13:38:17 GMT

Despite the complicated and imperfect origins of American Thanksgiving, what's worth preserving is the moment it offers for society to step back and count our blessings. And in this moment, I want to express my gratitude to the EA community.
It's been a hard year for EA, and many of us have felt increasing levels of disillusionment. Still, a huge thank you to each of you for being part of this messy, but beautiful family.
What I love about EA is that at our core, we are people who look around and see a world is world is messed up and kind of shitty. But also, when we see this mess, we deeply feel a moral responsibility to do something about it. And rather than falling into despair, we are optimistic enough to think we can actually do something about it.
This more than anything else is what I think makes this [...]

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First published:
November 23rd, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YRGSmjYDaMvScCXh2/a-thanksgiving-gratitude-post-to-ea
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“GWWC’s evaluations of evaluators” by Sjir Hoeijmakers, Giving What We Can, Michael Townsend🔸, Alana HF

Wed, 22 Nov 2023 16:22:08 GMT

The Giving What We Can research team is excited to share the results of our first round of evaluations of charity evaluators and grantmakers! After announcing our plans for a new research direction last year, we have now completed five[1] evaluations that will inform our donation recommendations for this giving season. There are substantial limitations to these evaluations, but we nevertheless think that they are a significant improvement on the status quo, in which there were no independent evaluations of evaluators’ work. We plan to continue to evaluate evaluators, extending the list beyond the five we’ve covered so far, improving our methodology, and regularly renewing our existing evaluations.
In this post, we share the key takeaways from each of these evaluations, and link to the full reports. [EDIT 27 November] Our website has now been updated to reflect the new fund and charity recommendations that came out of these [...]

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Outline:
(02:26) Global health and wellbeing
(02:30) GiveWell (GW)
(03:51) Happier Lives Institute (HLI)
(04:10) Animal welfare
(04:14) EA Funds’ Animal Welfare Fund (AWF)
(05:21) Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE)
(08:31) Reducing global catastrophic risks
(08:36) EA Funds’ Long-Term Future Fund (LTFF)
(10:22) Longview's Longtermism Fund (LLF)
The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
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First published:
November 22nd, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/PTHskHoNpcRDZtJoh/gwwc-s-evaluations-of-evaluators
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Rethink Priorities needs your support. Here’s what we’d do with it.” by Peter Wildeford

Tue, 21 Nov 2023 17:55:57 GMT

In honor of “Marginal Funding Week” for 2023 Giving Season on the EA Forum, I’d like to tell you what Rethink Priorities (RP) would do with funding beyond what we currently expect to raise from our major funders, and to emphasize that RP currently has a significant funding gap even after taking these major funders into account.

A personal appeal
Hi. I know it's traditional in EA to stick to the facts and avoid emotional content, but I can’t help but interject and say that this fundraising appeal is a bit different. It is personal to me. It's not just a list of things that we could take or leave, it's a fight for RP to survive the way I want it to as an organization that is intellectually independent and serves the EA community.
To be blunt, our funding situation is not where we want it to be. 2023 has been a [...]

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Outline:

(07:00) General

(07:03) $1K - $10K per research work to allow us to publish our backlog of research

(11:29) Worldview Investigations

(11:33) $200K to do cause prioritization research and build on the cross-cause model

(14:27) $500K to do more worldview cause exploration

(14:58) Surveys and Data Analysis

(15:02) $60K to run the next EA Survey

(16:01) $40K-100K to more rigorously understand branding for EA and existential risk

(17:56) $25K-$100K to more rigorously understand EA's growth trajectory

(18:53) $40K to more rigorously understand branding for AI risk outreach

(19:35) $50K to more rigorously understand why people drop out of EA

(20:03) Animal welfare

(21:17) $250K to create a review of interventions to reduce the consumption of animal products

(22:10) $38K to create a Farmed Animals Impact Tracker

(23:09) $60K to understand interventions that would address crustacean welfare

(23:39) $50K for development and implementation of an insect farming welfare ask

(24:32) $100K to develop a database of possible near-term interventions for wild animals

(25:15) $75K to do a theory of change status report for the animal advocacy movement

(26:13) $300K to develop a better system similar to QALYs/DALYs but for animals

(27:18) Global Health and Development

(27:22) $405K to pilot our Value of Research model

(29:21) AI Governance

(29:25) $15K to write up learnings from spending a year attempting longtermist incubation

(30:07) $114K to train an additional AI policy researcher

(31:05) Included with your donation: talent pipelines and field building

(33:45) Conclusion

(36:19) Acknowledgements

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First published:
November 21st, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/cMcEBSNiy4meDrmuE/rethink-priorities-needs-your-support-here-s-what-we-d-do

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“The EA Animal Welfare Fund (Once Again) Has Significant Room For More Funding” by kierangreig🔸, Neil_Dullaghan🔹, KarolinaSarek, Zoë Sigle

Mon, 20 Nov 2023 22:03:10 GMT

Just as~2 years ago, the EA Animal Welfare Fund has significant room for more funding. This could be a pretty important point that informs end of year giving for a number of donors who are looking to make donations within the animal sector.

Briefly, here's why the Animal Welfare Fund has some pretty significant room for more funding at this point:

Right now, there's currently ~$1M in the Animal Welfare Fund.
We also now have 50 grants, summing to ~$4.5M in grants under evaluation.
Between mid-last year and mid-this year, the EA AWF received ~350 applications over the past year of which ~150 were desk rejects and ~200 were graded by fund managers. Of these ~200, ~60 received funding, and ~30 received the grant amount they applied for or more.
Assuming that the general shape of the pipeline remains similar, that could imply we may now have [...]

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First published:
November 20th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qpqab3LwmA6yBFJCk/the-ea-animal-welfare-fund-once-again-has-significant-room

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Open Phil Should Allocate Most Neartermist Funding to Animal Welfare” by Ariel Simnegar

Sun, 19 Nov 2023 17:00:25 GMT

Thanks to Michael St. Jules for his comments.

Key Takeaways

The evidence that animal welfare dominates in neartermism is strong.
Open Philanthropy (OP) should scale up its animal welfare allocation over several years to approach a majority of OP's neartermist grantmaking.
If OP disagrees, they should practice reasoning transparency by clarifying their views:
- How much weight does OP's theory of welfare place on pleasure and pain, as opposed to nonhedonic goods?
- Precisely how much more does OP value one unit of a human's welfare than one unit of another animal's welfare, just because the former is a human? How does OP derive this tradeoff?
- How would OP's views have to change for OP to prioritize animal welfare in neartermism?

Summary.

Rethink Priorities (RP)'s moral weight research endorses the claim that the best animal welfare interventions are orders of magnitude (1000x) more cost-effective than the best neartermist alternatives.
Avoiding this conclusion seems very difficult:
- Rejecting hedonism (the view that only pleasure and pain have moral [...]

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Outline:

(00:09) Key Takeaways

(02:46) The Evidence Endorses Prioritizing Animal Welfare in Neartermism

(06:32) Objections

(06:35) Animal Welfare Does Not Dominate in Neartermism

(07:07) RPs Project Assumptions are Incorrect

(09:21) Endorsing Overwhelming Non-Hedonism

(14:13) Endorsing Overwhelming Hierarchicalism

(16:09) Its Strongly Intuitive that Helping Humans Helping Chickens

(16:46) Skepticism of Formal Philosophy

(17:58) Even if Animal Welfare Dominates, it Still Shouldnt Receive a Majority of Neartermist Funding

(18:12) Worldview Diversification Opposes Majority Allocations to Controversial Cause Areas

(19:43) OP is Already a Massive Animal Welfare Funder

(20:16) Animal Welfare has Faster Diminishing Marginal Returns than Global Health

(21:36) Increasing Animal Welfare Funding would Reduce OP's Influence on Philanthropists

(23:42) Request for Reasoning Transparency from OP

(26:13) Conclusion

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First published:
November 19th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/btTeBHKGkmRyD5sFK/open-phil-should-allocate-most-neartermist-funding-to-animal

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “Sam Altman fired from OpenAI” by Larks

Fri, 17 Nov 2023 21:11:11 GMT

The board of directors of OpenAI, Inc, the 501(c)(3) that acts as the overall governing body for all OpenAI activities, today announced that Sam Altman will depart as CEO and leave the board of directors. Mira Murati, the company's chief technology officer, will serve as interim CEO, effective immediately.

A member of OpenAI's leadership team for five years, Mira has played a critical role in OpenAI's evolution into a global AI leader. She brings a unique skill set, understanding of the company's values, operations, and business, and already leads the company's research, product, and safety functions. Given her long tenure and close engagement with all aspects of the company, including her experience in AI governance and policy, the board believes she is uniquely qualified for the role and anticipates a seamless transition while it conducts a formal search for a permanent CEO.

Mr. Altman's departure follows a deliberative review process by the [...]

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First published:
November 17th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HjgD3Q5uWD2iJZpEN/sam-altman-fired-from-openai

Linkpost URL:
https://openai.com/blog/openai-announces-leadership-transition

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Spiro - New TB charity raising seed funds” by Habiba Banu

Fri, 17 Nov 2023 11:37:29 GMT

Summary

We (Habiba Banu and Roxanne Heston) have launched Spiro, a new TB screening and prevention charity focused on children. Our website is here.

We are fundraising $198,000 for our first year. We’re currently reaching out to people in the EA network. So far we have between 20%-50% of our budget promised and fundraising is currently one of the main things we’re focusing on.

The major components of our first year budget are co-founder time, country visits, and delivery of a pilot program, which aims to do household-level TB screening and provision of preventative medication.

We think that this project has a lot of promise:

Tuberculosis has a huge global burden, killing 1.3 million people every year, and is disproportionately neglected and fatal in young children.
The evidence for preventative treatment is robust and household programs are promising, yet few high-burden countries have scaled up this intervention.
Modeling by Charity Entrepreneurship and by academics indicate that this [...]

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Outline:

(02:10) Who are we?

(03:26) What are we going to do?

(04:12) Why TB?

(04:40) Why this intervention?

(06:36) Why Spiro?

(07:28) Budget

(09:21) Learn more

(09:36) Donations

---

First published:
November 17th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/C8ZzjFc7aKT7ihmeK/spiro-new-tb-charity-raising-seed-funds

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “Kids or No Kids” by KidsOrNoKids

Sun, 12 Nov 2023 18:44:51 GMT

This post summarizes how my partner and I decided whether to have children or not. We spent hundreds of hours on this decision and hope to save others part of that time. We found it very useful to read the thoughts of people who share significant parts of our values on the topic and thus want to "pay it forward" by writing this up. In the end, we decided to have children; our son is four months old now and we’re very happy with how we made the decision and with how our lives are now (through a combination of sheer luck and good planning). It was a very narrow and very tough decision though.

Both of us care a lot about having a positive impact on the world and our jobs are the main way we expect to have an impact (through direct work and/or earning to give). As a [...]

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Outline:

(01:35) Process - how we decided

(04:25) Content - considerations we used

(04:29) Impact considerations

(04:33) Time

(07:29) Sleep

(10:45) Money

(11:33) Flexibility

(12:07) Effects on one's community

(13:07) Falling out of the heavy tail

(13:38) The childrens impact

(14:17) Value drift

(14:44) Personal life worthiness or happiness considerations

(14:49) Health

(18:06) Social/soft factors

(20:49) Overarching considerations

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First published:
November 12th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YYnjHt5YzuHSH7oRR/kids-or-no-kids

Linkpost URL:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3MzDMBk4DZrbYePJS/kids-or-no-kids

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“A robust earning to give ecosystem is better for EA organizations and the community” by abrahamrowe

Sat, 11 Nov 2023 22:17:59 GMT

(Written in a personal capacity, and not representing either my current employer or former one)

In 2016, I founded Utility Farm, and later merged it with Wild-Animal Suffering Research (founded by Persis Eskander) to form Wild Animal Initiative. Wild Animal Initiative is, by my estimation, a highly successful research organization. The current Wild Animal Initiative staff deserve all the credit for where they have taken the organization, but I’m incredibly proud that I got to be involved early in the establishment of a new field of study, wild animal welfare science, and to see the tiny organization I started in an apartment with a few hundred dollars go on to be recommended by ACE as a Top Charity for 4 years in a row. In my opinion, Wild Animal Initiative has become, under the stewardship of more capable people than I, the single best bet for unlocking interventions that could tackle [...]

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Outline:

(08:21) A robust earning to give ecosystem is better for charities

(11:22) A robust earning to give ecosystem is better for the EA community

(13:59) The success of EA shouldn’t only be measured by how much money is moved by the community

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First published:
November 11th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AyLF2KQ8AqQuiuDLz/a-robust-earning-to-give-ecosystem-is-better-for-ea

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Takes from staff at orgs with leadership that went off the rails” by Julia_Wise🔸

Thu, 09 Nov 2023 19:01:17 GMT

I spoke with some people who worked or served on the board at organizations that had a leadership transition after things went seriously wrong. In some cases the organizations were EA-affiliated, in other cases only tangentially related to the EA space.

This is an informal collection of advice the ~eight people I spoke with have for staff or board members who might find themselves in a similar position. I bucketed this advice into a few categories below. Some are direct quotes and others are paraphrases of what they said. All spelling is Americanized for anonymity.

I’m sharing it here not because I think it's an exhaustive accounting of all types of potential leadership issues (it's not) or because I think any of this is unique to or particularly prevalent in or around EA (I don’t). But I hope that it's helpful to any readers who may someday be [...]

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Outline:

(01:09) Written policies

(02:44) Role of board / advice for board

(06:25) Advice for staff

(11:02) More notes

---

First published:
November 9th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jLaDP2aWxdDCzwBYy/takes-from-staff-at-orgs-with-leadership-that-went-off-the

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Announcing Athena - Women in AI Alignment Research” by Claire Short

Wed, 08 Nov 2023 02:49:53 GMT

Athena is a new research mentorship program fostering diversity of ideas in AI safety research. We aim to get more women and marginalized genders into technical research and offer the support needed to thrive in this space.

Applications for scholars are open until December 3rd, 2023

Apply as a scholar: here

Apply as a mentor or speaker: here

Financial aid is available for travel expenses for the in-person retreat to those otherwise unable to attend without it

Program Structure

A 2-month hybrid mentorship program for women looking to strengthen their research skills and network in technical AI safety research beginning in January 2024.

This includes 1-week in-person retreat in Oxford, UK followed by a 2-month remote mentorship by established researchers in the field, with networking and weekly research talks.

Athena aims to equip women with the knowledge, skills, and network they need to thrive in AI safety research. We believe that diversity is a strength [...]

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Outline:

(01:32) Who should apply?

(01:53) Application process

(02:08) Questions?

(02:15) Why are we doing this

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First published:
November 7th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/B2t559dP65ffKZsDa/announcing-athena-women-in-ai-alignment-research

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“10 years of Earning to Give” by AGB

Tue, 07 Nov 2023 23:36:11 GMT

General note: The bulk of this post was written a couple of months ago, but I am releasing it now to coincide with the Effective Giving Spotlight week. I shortly expect to release a second post documenting some observations on the community building funding landscape.

Introduction

Way back in 2010, I was sitting in my parents' house, watching one of my favourite TV shows, the UK's Daily Politics. That day's guest was an Oxford academic by the name of Toby Ord. He was donating everything above £18000 (£26300 in today's money) to charity, and gently pushing others to give 10%.

"Nice guy," I thought. "Pity it'll never catch on."

Two years later, a couple of peers interned at Giving What We Can. At the same time, I did my own internship in finance, and my estimate of my earning potential quadrupled[1]. One year after that, I graduated and took the Giving What We [...]

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Outline:

(01:13) Post goals

(02:28) My path

(03:07) Work

(05:36) Lifestyle Inflation

(07:48) Savings

(09:27) Donations

(10:11) Community

(10:14) Why engage?

(11:58) Why stop?

(13:48) Closing Thoughts

The original text contained 7 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
November 7th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gxppfWhx7ta2fkF3R/10-years-of-earning-to-give

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“State of the East and Southeast Asian EAcosystem” by Elmerei Cuevas, jiayang, Obeyesekere, Dion, Yi-Yang, Saad Siddiqui, BrianTan, Jaynell Chang, onenastassja, Alethea Faye Cendaña

Mon, 06 Nov 2023 06:55:41 GMT

This write-up is a compilation of organisations and projects aligned / adjacent to the effective altruism movement in East Asia and Southeast Asia and was written around the EAGxPhilippines conference. Some organisations, projects, and contributors also prefer to not be public and hence removed from this write-up. While this is not an exhaustive list of projects and organisations per country in the region, it is a good baseline of the progress of the effective altruism movement for this side of the globe.

Feel free to click the links to the organisations/projects themselves to dive deeper into their works.

Contributors: Saad Siddiqui; Anthony Lau; Anthony Obeyesekere; Masayuki "Moon" Nagai; Yi-Yang Chua; Elmerei Cuevas, Alethea Faye Cedaña, Jaynell Ehren Chang, Brian Tan, Nastassja "Tanya" Quijano; Dion Tan, Jia Yang Li; Saeyoung Kim; Nguyen Tran; Alvin Lau
Forum Post Graphic credits to Jaynell Ehren Chang
EAGxPhotos credits to CS Creatives

Mainland China 🇨🇳

China Global Priorities Group

Aims [...]

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Outline:

(01:15) Mainland China 🇨🇳

(01:18) China Global Priorities Group

(01:51) City Group: EAHK

(03:13) University Group: EAHKU

(03:39) Academia (AI):

(04:51) Academia (Psychology):

(05:04) Cause specific organisations/ projects

(05:27) EA Indonesia

(08:17) EA Japan

(09:36) Malaysia 🇲🇾

(09:42) EA Malaysia

(10:15) Philippines 🇵🇭

(10:22) A. Meta Organizations/ Projects:

(11:18) B. Some Cause Specific Organisations

(12:57) Singapore 🇸🇬

(13:03) EA Singapore

(13:19) EA NUS

(13:27) Welfare Matters

(13:35) CEARCH

(13:45) GFI APAC

(13:53) Global Food Partners

(13:59) Effective Giving SG

(14:08) AI Safety

(14:14) South Korea 🇰🇷

(14:17) EA South Korea

(14:40) Viet Nam 🇻🇳

(14:46) EA Viet Nam

(14:55) EA Fullbright (Fulbright University Vietnam)

(15:02) LessWrong Vietnam

(15:11) Shrimp Welfare Project

(15:15) Taiwan 🇹🇼

(15:21) EA Taiwan

---

First published:
November 6th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NrqGyXzvwB2Gqu6XW/state-of-the-east-and-southeast-asian-eacosystem

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Clean water - the incredible 30% mortality reducer we can’t explain” by NickLaing

Sat, 04 Nov 2023 00:52:38 GMT

TLDR: The best research we have shows that clean water may provide a 30% mortality reduction to children under 5. This might be the biggest mortality reduction of any single global health intervention, yet we don’t understand why it works.

Here, I share my journey exploring a life-saving intervention that we don’t fully understand, but really should. I may err a little on the side of artistic license - so if you find inaccuracies please forgive me, correct me or even feel free to just tear me to shreds in the comments ;).

Part 1: Givewell's Seemingly absurd numbers

I first became curious after a glance at what seemed like a dubious GiveWell funded project. A $450,000 dollar scoping grant for water chlorination in Rwanda? This didn’t make intuitive sense to me.

In Sub-saharan Africa diarrhoea causes 5-10% of child mortality. While significant, the diarrhea problem continues to improve with better access to [...]

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Outline:

(02:26) Part 2: A Nobel Prize winner's innovative math

(04:27) Part 3. We already knew about this anomaly – 100 years ago

(08:10) Part 5: What next for clean water?

The original text contained 7 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
November 4th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hFPbe2ZwmB9athsXT/clean-water-the-incredible-30-mortality-reducer-we-can-t

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Rethink Priorities’ Cross-Cause Cost-Effectiveness Model: Introduction and Overview” by Derek Shiller, bcbernardo, Chase Carter, Agustín Covarrubias, Marcus_A_Davis, MichaelDickens, Laura Duffy, Peter Wildeford

Fri, 03 Nov 2023 12:27:06 GMT

This post is a part of Rethink Priorities’ Worldview Investigations Team's CURVE Sequence: “Causes and Uncertainty: Rethinking Value in Expectation.” The aim of this sequence is twofold: first, to consider alternatives to expected value maximization for cause prioritization; second, to evaluate the claim that a commitment to expected value maximization robustly supports the conclusion that we ought to prioritize existential risk mitigation over all else. This post presents a software tool we're developing to better understand risk and effectiveness.

Executive Summary

The cross-cause cost-effectiveness model (CCM) is a software tool under development by Rethink Priorities to produce cost-effectiveness evaluations in different cause areas.

The CCM enables evaluations of interventions in global health and development, animal welfare, and existential risk mitigation.
The CCM also includes functionality for evaluating research projects aimed at improving existing interventions or discovering more effective alternatives.

The CCM follows a Monte Carlo approach to assessing probabilities.

The CCM accepts user-supplied distributions as parameter [...]

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Outline:

(00:43) Executive Summary

(04:24) Purpose

(05:36) Key Features

(05:52) We model uncertainty with simulations

(06:38) We incorporate user-specified parameter distributions

(07:17) Our results capture outcome ineffectiveness

(08:42) We enable users to specify the probability of extinction for different future eras

(09:28) Structure

(10:08) Intervention module

(10:40) Global Health and Development

(11:14) Animal Welfare

(12:00) Existential Risk Mitigation

(13:59) Research projects module

(14:56) Limitations

(15:12) It is geared towards specific kinds of interventions

(16:24) Distributions are a questionable way of handling deep uncertainty

(17:13) The model doesn’t handle model uncertainty

(18:01) The model assumes parameter independence

(18:59) Lessons

(19:06) The expected value of existential risk mitigation interventions depends on future population dynamics

(20:15) The value of existential risk mitigation is extremely variable

(21:38) Tail-end results can capture a huge amount of expected value

(22:22) Unrepresented correlations may be decisive

(23:43) Future Plans

(24:49) Acknowledgements

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First published:
November 3rd, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pniDWyjc9vY5sjGre/rethink-priorities-cross-cause-cost-effectiveness-model

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “How Long Do Policy Changes Matter? New Paper” by zdgroff

Thu, 02 Nov 2023 20:53:17 GMT

A key question for many interventions' impact is how long the intervention changes some output counterfactually, or how long the intervention washes out. This is often the case for work to change policy: the cost-effectiveness of efforts to pass animal welfare ballot initiatives, nuclear non-proliferation policy, climate policy, and voting reform, for example, will depend on (a) whether those policies get repealed and (b) whether they would pass anyway. Often there is an explicit assumption, e.g., that passing a policy is equivalent to speeding up when it would have gone into place anyway by X years.[1] [2] As people routinely note when making these assumptions, it is very unclear what assumption would be appropriate.

In a new paper (my economics "job market paper"), I address this question, focusing on U.S. referendums but with some data on other policymaking processes:

Policy choices sometimes appear stubbornly persistent, even when they become politically unpopular or [...]

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Outline:

(02:20) Overview of Results and Methods

(06:23) Notes Particular to the EA Community

(06:27) Policy Changes Seem to Matter (Much) Longer than EAs Have Assumed

(07:34) Neglectedness Matters

(08:02) Comparing Persistence: Can We Compare Policy to Other Social Changes?

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
November 2nd, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jCwuozHHjeoLPLemB/how-long-do-policy-changes-matter-new-paper

Linkpost URL:
https://zachfreitasgroff.com/FreitasGroff_Policy_Persistence.pdf

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Are 1-in-5 Americans familiar with EA?” by David_Moss

Thu, 02 Nov 2023 15:08:09 GMT

YouGov recently reported the results of a survey (n=1000) suggesting that about “one in five (22%) Americans are familiar with effective altruism.”[1]

We think these results are exceptionally unlikely to be true. Their 22% figure is very similar to the proportion of Americans we previously found claim to have heard of effective altruism (19%) in our earlier survey (n=6130). But, after conducting appropriate checks, we estimated that much lower percentages are likely to have genuinely heard of EA[2] (2.6% after the most stringent checks, which we speculate is still likely to be somewhat inflated[3]).

Is it possible that these numbers have simply dramatically increased following the FTX scandal?

Fortunately, we have tested this with multiple followup surveys explicitly designed with this possibility in mind.[4]

In our most recent survey (conducted October 6th[5]), we estimated that approximately 16% (13.0%-20.4%) of US adults would claim to have heard of EA. Yet, when we add in [...]

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Outline:

(02:00) Attitudes towards EA

(02:35) Conclusions

The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
November 2nd, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CwKiAt54aJjcqoQDh/are-1-in-5-americans-familiar-with-ea

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Alvea’s Story, Wins, and Challenges [Unofficial]” by kyle_fish

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 12:43:45 GMT

Intro

A few months ago, the other (former) Alvea executives and I made the difficult decision to wind Alvea down and return our remaining funding to investors. In this post, I’ll share an overview of Alvea's story and highlight a few of our wins and challenges from my perspective as an Alvea Co-Founder and former CTO, in hopes that our experiences might be useful to others who are working on (or considering) ambitious projects to solve the biggest problems in the world. I’m sharing everything below in a personal capacity and as a window into my current thinking—this is not the definitive or official word on Alvea and it doesn’t necessarily represent the views of any other Alvea team members. I expect my reflections to continue evolving as I further process the journey and outcomes of this project, and hope to share more along the way.

Alvea's Story

First vaccine sprint and [...]

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Outline:

(00:05) Intro

(00:55) Alvea's Story

(00:59) First vaccine sprint and decision to continue Alvea (December 2021 through April 2022)

(02:48) Product pursuits (May 2022 through July 2022)

(04:04) Second vaccine sprint (August 2022-December 2023)

(05:22) Funding environment change and pivot (Dec 2022 - May 2023)

(07:33) Wind down and PanLabs spin out (June-Present)

(09:08) Wins

(09:11) Record time to safe clinical development

(10:12) General-purpose rapid drug development capacity

(11:12) Team Development

(12:09) Medical countermeasure knowledge

(13:02) Challenges

(13:22) Challenges of rapid growth

(14:21) Costs of complex non-standard corporate set up

(15:00) Navigating the transition from short- to long-term goals

(16:12) Conclusion

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First published:
November 1st, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/d9bamQHBAwAjuKtNA/alvea-s-story-wins-and-challenges-unofficial

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “Alvea Wind Down Announcement [Official]” by kyle_fish, greghima, cateycat

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 12:39:43 GMT

After careful consideration, we made the difficult decision to wind Alvea down and return our remaining funds to investors. This decision was the result of many months of experimentation and analysis regarding Alvea's strategy, path to impact, and commercial potential, which ultimately led us to the conclusion that Alvea's overall prospects were not sufficiently compelling to justify the requisite investment of money, time, and energy over the coming years.

Alvea started in late 2021 as a moonshot to rapidly develop and deploy a room temperature-stable DNA vaccine candidate against the Omicron wave of COVID-19, and we soon became the fastest startup to take a new drug from founding to a Phase 1 clinical trial. However, we decided to discontinue our lead candidate during the follow-up period of the trial as the case for large-scale impact weakened amidst the evolving pandemic landscape. Over the following year, we explored different applications of our [...]

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First published:
November 1st, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3EjExF8HeJbmk4Bp4/alvea-wind-down-announcement-official

Linkpost URL:
https://www.alvea.bio/winddown/

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “President Biden Issues Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence” by Tristan Williams

Mon, 30 Oct 2023 11:15:51 GMT

Released today (10/30/23) this is crazy, perhaps the most sweeping action taken by government on AI yet.

Below, I've segmented by x-risk and near term risk related proposals. It's worth noting that some of these are very specific and direct an action to be taken by one of the executive branch organizations (i.e. sharing of saftey test results) but others are guidances, which involve "calls on Congress" to pass legislation that codifies the desired action.

Existential Risk Related Actions:

Require that developers of the most powerful AI systems share their safety test results and other critical information with the U.S. government. In accordance with the Defense Production Act, the Order will require that companies developing any foundation model that poses a serious risk to national security, national economic security, or national public health and safety must notify the federal government when training the model, and must share the results of all [...]

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Outline:

(00:37) Existential Risk Related Actions:

(03:10) Near Term Risk Actions:

(03:14) General

(03:46) Privacy

(04:33) Discrimination

(05:11) Jobs

---

First published:
October 30th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pcbsM45vLmHcFpNnr/president-biden-issues-executive-order-on-safe-secure-and

Linkpost URL:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/10/30/fact-sheet-president-biden-issues-executive-order-on-safe-secure-and-trustworthy-artificial-intelligence/

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“We’re Not Ready: thoughts on ‘pausing’ and responsible scaling policies” by Holden Karnofsky

Fri, 27 Oct 2023 15:21:27 GMT

Views are my own, not Open Philanthropy's. I am married to the President of Anthropic and have a financial interest in both Anthropic and OpenAI via my spouse.

Over the last few months, I’ve spent a lot of my time trying to help out with efforts to get responsible scaling policies adopted. In that context, a number of people have said it would be helpful for me to be publicly explicit about whether I’m in favor of an AI pause. This post will give some thoughts on these topics.

I think transformative AI could be soon, and we’re not ready

I have a strong default to thinking that scientific and technological progress is good and that worries will tend to be overblown. However, I think AI is a big exception here because of its potential for unprecedentedly rapid and radical transformation.1

I think [...]

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Outline:

(00:36) I think transformative AI could be soon, and we’re not ready

(02:11) If it were all up to me, the world would pause now - but it isn’t, and I’m more uncertain about whether a “partial pause” is good

(07:46) Responsible scaling policies (RSPs) seem like a robustly good compromise with people who have different views from mine (with some risks that I think can be managed)

The original text contained 5 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
October 27th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ntWikwczfSi8AJMg3/we-re-not-ready-thoughts-on-pausing-and-responsible-scaling

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Impact Evaluation in EA” by callum

Thu, 26 Oct 2023 23:18:57 GMT

Summary

Given EA's history and values, I’d have expected for impact evaluation to be a distinguishing feature of the movement. In fact, impact evaluation seems fairly rare in the EA space.
There are some things specific actors could do for EA to get more of the benefits of impact evaluation. For example, organisations that don’t already could carry out evaluations of their impact, and a well-suited individual could start an organisation to carry out impact evaluations and analysis of the EA movement.
Overall I’m unsure to what extent more focus on impact evaluation would be an improvement. On the one hand, establishing impact is challenging for many EA activities and impact evaluation can be burdensome. On the other hand, an organisation's historic impact seems very action-relevant to its future activities and current levels of impact evaluation seem low.

What Is Impact Evaluation?

Over the last year I’ve been speaking to EA orgs about their impact [...]

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Outline:

(00:59) What Is Impact Evaluation?

(01:22) Why is Impact Evaluation Important?

(02:17) I’d expect Impact Evaluation to be quite common in EA

(03:00) Impact evaluation is fairly rare in EA

(04:42) Potentially justified reasons for this

(05:58) Some low- to medium-cost opportunities

(08:11) Conclusion

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
October 26th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hDNpHEA2Kn4xBoS8r/impact-evaluation-in-ea

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“How bad would human extinction be?” by arvomm

Thu, 26 Oct 2023 10:28:55 GMT

Figure 1 (see full caption below)

This post is a part of Rethink Priorities' Worldview Investigations Team's CURVE Sequence: "Causes and Uncertainty: Rethinking Value in Expectation." The aim of this sequence is twofold: first, to consider alternatives to expected value maximisation for cause prioritisation; second, to evaluate the claim that a commitment to expected value maximisation robustly supports the conclusion that we ought to prioritise existential risk mitigation over all else.

Executive Summary

Background

This report builds on the model originally introduced by Toby Ord on how to estimate the value of existential risk mitigation.
The previous framework has several limitations, including:
- The inability to model anything requiring shorter time units than centuries, like AI timelines.
- A very limited range of scenarios considered. In the previous model, risk and value growth can take different forms, and each combination represents one scenario
- No explicit treatment of persistence –– how long the mitigation efforts’ effects last for ––as a variable of interest.
- No easy way [...]

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Outline:

(00:38) Executive Summary

(05:26) Abridged Report

(11:20) Generalised Model: Arbitrary Risk Profile

(13:37) Value

(19:00) Great Filters and the Time of Perils Hypothesis

(21:06) Decaying Risk

(21:55) Results

(21:58) Convergence

(25:35) The Expected Value of Mitigating Risk Visualised

(31:59) Concluding Remarks

(35:00) Acknowledgements

The original text contained 24 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
October 23rd, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/S9H86osFKhfFBCday/how-bad-would-human-extinction-be

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Thoughts on responsible scaling policies and regulation” by Paul_Christiano

Tue, 24 Oct 2023 22:25:25 GMT

I am excited about AI developers implementing responsible scaling policies; I’ve recently been spending time refining this idea and advocating for it. Most people I talk to are excited about RSPs, but there is also some uncertainty and pushback about how they relate to regulation. In this post I’ll explain my views on that:

I think that sufficiently good responsible scaling policies could dramatically reduce risk, and that preliminary policies like Anthropic's RSP meaningfully reduce risk by creating urgency around key protective measures and increasing the probability of a pause if those measures can’t be implemented quickly enough.
I think that developers implementing responsible scaling policies now increases the probability of effective regulation. If I instead thought it would make regulation harder, I would have significant reservations.
Transparency about RSPs makes it easier for outside stakeholders to understand whether an AI developer's policies are adequate to manage risk, and creates a focal point for [...]

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Outline:

(02:03) Why I’m excited about RSPs

(03:26) Thoughts on an AI pause

(04:56) I expect RSPs to help facilitate effective regulation

(06:24) Anthropic's RSP

(09:16) On the name “responsible scaling”

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First published:
October 24th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/cKW4db8u2uFEAHewg/thoughts-on-responsible-scaling-policies-and-regulation

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “Pausing AI might be good policy, but it’s bad politics” by Stephen Clare

Mon, 23 Oct 2023 13:37:09 GMT

NIMBYs don’t call themselves NIMBYs. They call themselves affordable housing advocates or community representatives or environmental campaigners. They’re usually not against building houses. They just want to make sure that those houses are affordable, attractive to existing residents, and don’t destroy habitat for birds and stuff.

Who can argue with that? If, ultimately, those demands stop houses from being built entirely, well, that's because developers couldn’t find a way to build them without hurting poor people, local communities, or birds and stuff.

This is called politics and it's powerful. The most effective anti-housebuilding organisation in the UK doesn’t call itself Pause Housebuilding. It calls itself the Campaign to Protect Rural England, because English people love rural England. CPRE campaigns in the 1940s helped shape England's planning system. As a result, permission to build houses is only granted when it's in the “public interest”; in practice it is given infrequently and often with [...]

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
October 23rd, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/avrFeH6LpqJrjmGmc/pausing-ai-might-be-good-policy-but-it-s-bad-politics

Linkpost URL:
https://unfoldingatlas.substack.com/p/pause-ai-is-bad-politics

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Presenting: 2023 Incubated Charities (Round 2) - Charity Entrepreneurship” by CE

Thu, 19 Oct 2023 12:37:13 GMT

After launching our first batch of 2023 charities in April, we are now thrilled to announce the launch of four new nonprofit organizations through our July/August 2023 Incubation Program.

The 2023 Round 2 incubated charities are:

Clear Solutions - Providing treatment for young children to prevent deaths from diarrhoeal diseases.
Lafiya Nigeria - Reducing maternal mortality by providing safe family planning options in rural northern Nigeria.
Alliance for Reducing Microbial Resistance - Supporting sustainable access to and the development of antimicrobials to combat antimicrobial resistance.
Concentric Policies - Preventing and controlling noncommunicable diseases through data-driven policymaking.

Detailed introductions to the new projects will follow below.

Context: The Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program July-August 2023

The July-August 2023 program focused on global health, including health security and policy-focused interventions. Our generous donors from the CE Seed Network have provided the new initiatives with $583,000 seed funding to kickstart their interventions.

In addition to the seed grants, as usual, we will [...]

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Outline:

(02:13) Our new charities introduce themselves:

(02:17) CLEAR SOLUTIONS

(09:01) CONCENTRIC POLICIES

---

First published:
October 19th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pKDob5yXh2djqdgcP/presenting-2023-incubated-charities-round-2-charity

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“How has FTX’s collapse impacted EA?” by AnonymousEAForumAccount

Tue, 17 Oct 2023 17:02:40 GMT

Summary of Findings

It has been almost a year since FTX went bankrupt on November 11, 2022. Some of the ways that has impacted EA have been obvious, like the shuttering of the FTX Foundation, expected to be one of the biggest EA funders. But recent discussions show that the broader impact of the FTX scandal on EA isn’t well understood, and that there is a desire for more empirical evidence on this topic. To that end, I have aggregated a variety of publicly available EA metrics to improve the evidence base. Unfortunately, these wide-ranging perspectives clearly show a broad-based and worrisome deterioration of EA activity in the aftermath of FTX.

Previous attempts to quantify how FTX impacted EA have focused on surveys of members of the EA community, university students, the general public, and university group organizers. These surveys were conducted in the months following FTX's collapse. Their results have been [...]

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Outline:

(00:04) Summary of Findings

(04:22) Detailed Findings

(04:25) Notes on Data Sources and Presentation

(05:21) Donation Data

(05:24) EA Funds: Donation and Donor Data

(08:10) GWWC Pledges

(08:43) EA Newsletter Subscriptions

(09:41) Attitude Data

(09:44) Survey of EA Community

(12:20) Surveys of University Populations and General Public

(13:47) Engagement Metrics

(13:51) EffectiveAltruism.org Web Traffic

(16:52) EA Forum

(19:09) Google Search Interest

(20:39) EA Global and EA Global X

(22:51) Virtual Programs

(23:47) 80k Metrics

(24:22) University Group Accelerator Program

(24:43) Additional data that would shed more light on FTX's impact and its causes

(27:42) Conclusions

(29:24) Appendix: Meta commentary about data collection and distribution

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
October 17th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vXzEnBcG7BipkRSrF/how-has-ftx-s-collapse-impacted-ea

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“The Risks and Rewards of Prioritizing Animals of Uncertain Sentience” by Bob Fischer

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 09:51:13 GMT

Summary

Expected value (EV) maximization is a common method for making decisions across different cause areas. The EV of an action is an average of the possible outcomes of that action, weighted by the probability of those outcomes occurring if the action is performed.
When comparing actions that would benefit different species (e.g., malaria prevention for humans, cage-free campaigns for chickens, stunning operations in shrimp farms), calculating EV includes assessing the probability that the individuals it affects are sentient.
Small invertebrates, like shrimp and insects, have relatively low probabilities [...]

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Outline:

(04:12) 1. Introduction

(07:13) 2. Results of EV maximization

(10:33) 3. Dissatisfaction with results of EV maximization

(14:57) 4. Risk

(16:25) 5. Risk aversion as avoiding worst case outcomes

(16:30) 5.1. Risk aversion about outcomes

(18:22) 5.2. A formal model of risk aversion about outcomes

(21:45) 6. Risk aversion as avoiding inefficacy

(22:12) 6.1. Difference-making risk aversion

(23:45) 6.2. The risk of wasting money on non-sentient creatures

(27:10) 6.3. Is difference-making risk aversion rational?

(29:10) 6.4. A formal model of difference-making risk aversion

(32:51) 7. Risk as avoiding ambiguity

(40:19) 8. What about chickens?

(45:01) 9. Conclusions

(47:19) Acknowledgments

The original text contained 34 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
October 16th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HMakzketADQq4bkvD/the-risks-and-rewards-of-prioritizing-animals-of-uncertain

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Cash and FX management for EA organizations” by JueYan

Sat, 14 Oct 2023 00:19:11 GMT

I’m a grantmaker who previously spent a decade as a professional investor. I’ve recently helped some Open Phil, GiveWell, and Survival and Flourishing Fund grantees with their cash and foreign exchange (FX) management. In the EA community, we seem collectively quite bad at this. My aim with this post is to help others 80/20 their cash and FX management: for 20% of the effort (these 4 items below), we can capture 80% of the benefit of corporate best practices. This will often be a highly impactful use of your time: I think that for the median organization, implementing these suggestions will take 15 to 30 hours of staff time, but will be about as valuable as raising 5% more money.

My suggestions are:

have more than one bank
invest your cash in a government-guaranteed money market account, earning ~5%
hold international currencies in the same proportions as your spending in those currencies
watch out for [...]

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Outline:

(01:09) Have more than one bank

(03:04) Invest your cash in a government guaranteed money market account, earning ~5%

(06:59) Hold FX in the same proportions as your spending

(08:58) Watch out for FX fees

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First published:
October 14th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/akSr4YXHKZcK8EnQe/cash-and-fx-management-for-ea-organizations

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Chuck Feeney (1931–2023)” by finm

Wed, 11 Oct 2023 14:32:31 GMT

Philanthropist Chuck Feeney died on October 9, at 92. He founded one of the largest private charitable foundations in history, giving away his entire fortune within his lifetime. He was almost obsessively secretive in his giving, and set a standard of seriousness which inspired the Giving Pledge and many of its pledgers.

Feeney was born at the tail end of the Great Depression into modest circumstances, raised by blue-collar Irish-American parents, and became the first of his family to attend university.

The story of his fortune began after Feeney enrolled in the U.S. Air Force, soon deployed to Japan as a radio operator during the Korean War. The 1944 GI Bill of Rights had entitled returning GIs to a course of study after WWII, and the scheme was renewed for Korean War veterans. He used the allowance to attend Cornell, graduated in 1956, then travelled to Europe to indulge a newly developed [...]

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
October 11th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yS3qRbHzzWxjR2Ehp/chuck-feeney-1931-2023

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Potentially actionable opportunity: eliminating the New World screwworm (flesh-devouring maggots that affect a billion animals each year)” by Forumite

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 17:07:48 GMT

In the latest episode of the 80,000 Hours podcast, Kevin Esvelt talks about the New World screwworm. He claims that there is a potential for a massive animal welfare win, if we can eliminate this parasite.

This feels worthy of a discussion, so I'm starting this thread. Is this issue on anyone's radar? Has anyone looked into these claims? They seem potentially important/actionable, if true!

Relevant section from the podcast:

Kevin Esvelt: [...] the New World screwworm, which has the amazing scientific name of Cochliomyia hominivorax: “the man devourer.” But it doesn’t primarily eat humans; it feeds indiscriminately on warm-blooded things, so mammals and birds. It's a botfly that lays its eggs in open wounds, anything as small as a tick bite. And it's called the screwworm because the larvae are screw-shaped and they drill their way into living flesh, devouring it. And as they do, they cultivate bacteria that attract [...]

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First published:
October 6th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JWuPdMaPiNy7AD3AX/potentially-actionable-opportunity-eliminating-the-new-world

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Observations on the funding landscape of EA and AI safety” by Vilhelm Skoglund, Jona

Mon, 02 Oct 2023 09:45:46 GMT

Epistemic status: Hot takes for discussion. These observations are a side product of another strategy project, rather than a systematic and rigorous analysis of the funding landscape, and we may be missing important considerations. Observations are also non-exhaustive and mostly come from anecdotal data and EA Forum posts. We haven’t vetted the resources that we are citing; instead, we took numerous data points at face value and asked for feedback from >5 people who have more of an inside view than we do (see acknowledgments, but note that these people do not necessarily endorse all claims). We aim to indicate our certainty in the specific claims we are making.

Context and summary

While researching for another project, we discovered that there have been some significant changes in the EA funding landscape this year. We found these changes interesting and surprising enough that we wanted to share them, to potentially help people update [...]

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Outline:

(00:47) Context and summary

(05:52) Some observations on the general EA funding landscape

(05:57) More funding sources

(08:00) More activity in the effective giving ecosystem

(08:41) Changes in funding flows

(14:01) Potential future EA funding

(15:09) Some observations on the AI safety funding landscape

(15:29) A brief overview of the broad AI safety funding landscape

(18:39) There might be more funding gaps in AI safety this year

(22:19) Potential future AI safety funding

(25:07) Further questions

(27:17) Further resources (non-exhaustive)

(27:58) Acknowledgments

The original text contained 18 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
October 2nd, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RueHqBuBKQBtSYkzp/observations-on-the-funding-landscape-of-ea-and-ai-safety

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Violence Before Agriculture” by John G. Halstead, Philip Thomson

Mon, 02 Oct 2023 08:01:37 GMT

This is a summary of a report on trends in violence since the dawn of humanity: from the hunter-gatherer period to the present day.[1] The full report is available at this Substack and as a preprint on SSRN.[2] Phil did 95% of the work on the report.

Expert reviewers provided the following comments on our report.

“Thomson and Halstead have provided an admirably thorough and fair assessment of this difficult and emotionally fraught empirical question. I don’t agree with all of their conclusions, but this will surely be the standard reference for this issue for years to come.”

Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University

“This work uses an impressively comprehensive survey of ethnographic and archeological data on military mortality in historically and archeologically known small-scale societies in an effort to pin down the scale of the killing in the pre-agricultural world. This will be a useful [...]

The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
October 2nd, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/QH2sECmmbLWbMXLhJ/violence-before-agriculture

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “Why I’m still going out to bat for the EA movement post FTX” by Gemma 🔸

Sat, 30 Sep 2023 15:04:55 GMT

This is a link post.

From the looks of it, next week might be rough for people who care about Effective Altruism. As CEA acting CEO Ben West pointed out on the forum:

“Sam Bankman-Fried's trial is scheduled to start October 3, 2023, and Michael Lewis's book about FTX comes out the same day. My hope and expectation is that neither will be focused on EA …

Nonetheless, I think there's a decent chance that viewing the Forum, Twitter, or news media could become stressful for some people, and you may want to pre-emptively create a plan for engaging with that in a healthy way.

I really appreciated that comment since I didn’t know that and I’m glad I had time to mentally prepare. As someone who does outward facing voluntary community building at my workplace and in London, I feel nervous. I’ve written this piece to manage that [...]

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Outline:

(01:10) Thoughts on EA after 2022

(06:48) Why I’m still publicly going out to bat for EA

(11:16) Conclusion and some caveats

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

The original text contained 2 images which were described by AI.

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First published:
September 30th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wGKGrCYNwjhhK4N69/why-i-m-still-going-out-to-bat-for-the-ea-movement-post-ftx

Linkpost URL:
https://bashingthearc.substack.com/p/why-im-still-going-out-to-bat-for

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

“Open Philanthropy is hiring for multiple roles across our Global Catastrophic Risks teams” by Open Philanthropy

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 23:25:01 GMT

It's been another busy year at Open Philanthropy; after nearly doubling the size of our team in 2022, we’ve added over 30 new team members so far in 2023. Now we’re launching a number of open applications for roles in all of our Global Catastrophic Risks (GCR) cause area teams (AI Governance and Policy, Technical AI Safety, Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness, GCR Cause Prioritization, and GCR Capacity Building[1]).

The application, job descriptions, and general team information are available here.

We’re hiring because our GCR teams feel pinched and really need more capacity. Program Officers in GCR areas think that growing their teams will lead them to make significantly more grants at or above our current bar. We’ve had to turn down potentially promising opportunities because we didn’t have enough time to investigate them[2]; on the flip side, we’re likely currently allocating tens of millions of dollars suboptimally in ways that more [...]

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
September 29th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bBefhAXpCFNswNr9m/open-philanthropy-is-hiring-for-multiple-roles-across-our

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Our tofu book has launched!! (Upvote on Amazon)” by George Stiffman

Wed, 27 Sep 2023 16:25:14 GMT

As some of you know, I’m working on growing the US market for Chinese tofus. I believe it could be a way to significantly reduce animal suffering, while shifting American dining culture.

We just launched our book - Broken Cuisine - which introduces five of these tofus to Western home cooks. The goal is to spark curiosity and demand for these ingredients, so that we can convince retailers to carry them.

Do you have five minutes right now to take an action?

Download our FREE e-book on Amazon. (If possible, TODAY)
Skim through.
A day or two later, leave an honest review. (Amazon easily detects spam.)

Downloading and reviewing our book during launch week will convince the Amazon recommender algorithm to push our book, creating a virtuous cycle that will bring it to more people. If Broken Cuisine can crack the bestseller lists, I'm hopefully we can meaningfully start growing the market for these foods!

Thank [...]

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First published:
September 27th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RTG4ZAy6bqJqXo7uW/our-tofu-book-has-launched-upvote-on-amazon

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “GWWC’s new community strategy” by Giving What We Can, GraceAdams

Tue, 26 Sep 2023 23:58:34 GMT

I’m extremely excited to announce the launch of our new community strategy that aims to connect our existing community better, and inspire more people to join us – I’ve been working on this for the past few months and am thrilled to finally share it!

Over the almost two years I’ve been working with Giving What We Can, I’ve seen how important our community is — whether it's a supportive network to ask questions, a friendly face in a new city, or a shared sense that none of us are alone in wanting to do what we can to make a better world, I’ve personally taken much-needed inspiration, motivation, and comfort more times than I can count, simply by hearing from you!

I want to make it easier for you to do the same.

We are launching some new spaces for you to meet, connect, and chat with each other. [...]

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Outline:

(01:51) TL;DR: How do I get involved?

(02:15) 1: GWWC Local Groups

(04:14) What will GWWC Groups look like?

(05:39) Locations for GWWC Groups

(06:57) What if we already have a local group focused on creating community around effective giving?

(07:28) Help run a GWWC Group

(09:20) Can I run events about effective giving if I’m not part of a group?

(10:19) One for the World is helping to support our groups

(10:54) Evaluating the trial

(11:29) FAQ:

(11:33) Being a part of a local group

(13:19) 2: Our new online community space

(14:17) 3: Global Effective Giving Community Directory

---

First published:
September 26th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KuNsnszBxENS3tWMm/gwwc-s-new-community-strategy

Linkpost URL:
https://givingwhatwecan.org/blog/community-strategy-2023

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Net global welfare may be negative and declining” by kyle_fish

Tue, 26 Sep 2023 18:49:35 GMT

Overview

The total moral value of the world includes humans as well as all other beings of moral significance. As such, a picture of the overall trajectory of net global welfare that accounts for both human and non-human populations is important context for thinking about the future on any timescale, and about the potential impacts of transformative technologies.

There's compelling evidence that life has gotten better for humans recently, but the same can’t be said for other animals, especially given the rise of industrial animal agriculture. How do these trends cash out, and what's the overall trajectory?

I’ve used human and farmed animal population data, estimates of welfare ranges across different species, and estimates of the average wellbeing of different species to get a rough sense of recent trends in total global welfare. Importantly, this initial analysis is limited to humans and some of the most abundant farmed animals—it does not consider effects [...]

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Outline:

(00:04) Overview

(01:49) Notes and Assumptions

(03:36) Analysis

(03:39) Background and Definitions

(04:57) Populations

(05:57) Welfare Capacities

(07:10) Total Welfare

(09:29) Tentative Reflections

(11:33) Future Directions

(12:38) Acknowledgments

---

First published:
September 26th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HDFxQwMwPp275J87r/net-global-welfare-may-be-negative-and-declining-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“AMA: Andy Weber (U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense from 2009-2014)” by Lizka, Andy Weber

Tue, 26 Sep 2023 09:41:19 GMT

Andy Weber was the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical & Biological Defense Programs from 2009 to 2014. He's now a senior fellow at the Council on Strategic Risks. You might also know him from his appearance on the 80,000 Hours Podcast. Ask him anything![1]

He’ll try to answer some questions on Friday, September 29 (afternoon, Eastern Time), and might get to some earlier.

I (Lizka) am particularly excited that Andy can share his experience in nuclear (and other kinds of) threat reduction given that it is Petrov Day today.

Instructions and practical notes:

Please post your questions as comments on this post.
Posting questions earlier is better than later.
If you have multiple questions, it might be better to post them separately.
Feel free to upvote questions that others have posted, as it might help prioritize questions later.

Other context and topics that might be especially interesting to talk about:

Risks of “tactical” nuclear [...]

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
September 26th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KbTasufbtJwZYiJQ8/ama-andy-weber-u-s-assistant-secretary-of-defense-from-2009

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “New page on animal welfare on Our World in Data” by EdMathieu

Mon, 25 Sep 2023 22:08:19 GMT

Our team at Our World in Data just launched a new page on animal welfare! There you can find a brand new Animal Welfare Data Explorer, 22 interactive charts, and 4 new articles:

How many animals get slaughtered every day?
How many animals are factory-farmed?
Do better cages or cage-free environments really improve the lives of hens?
Adopting slower-growing breeds of chicken would reduce animal suffering significantly

On Our World in Data, we cover many topics related to reducing human suffering: alleviating poverty, reducing child and maternal mortality, curing diseases, and ending hunger.

But if we aim to reduce total suffering, society's ability to reduce this in other animals – which feel pain, too – also matters.

This is especially true when we look at the numbers: every year, humans slaughter more than 80 billion land-based animals for farming alone. Most of these animals are raised in factory farms, often in painful and inhumane conditions.

Estimates for fish [...]

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First published:
September 25th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pydpzj9sxcdSsAngr/new-page-on-animal-welfare-on-our-world-in-data

Linkpost URL:
https://ourworldindata.org/animal-welfare

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Two Years of Shrimp Welfare Project: Insights and Impact from our Explore Phase” by Aaron Boddy, Andres Jimenez

Mon, 25 Sep 2023 08:24:13 GMT

Summary

Shrimp Welfare Project launched in Sep 2021, via the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program. We aim to reduce the suffering of billions of farmed shrimps. This post summarises our work to date, what we plan to work on going forward, and clarifies areas where we’re not focusing our attention. This post was written to coincide with the launch of our new (Shr)Impact page on our website.

We have four broad workstreams: corporate engagement, farmer support, research, and raising issue salience. We believe our key achievements to date are:

Corporate engagement: Our Humane Slaughter Initiative (commitments with large producers to purchase electrical stunners, such as MER Seafood, and Seajoy), ongoing conversations with UK retailers (including Marks & Spencer, who now have a published Decapod Welfare Policy), and contributing to the Aquaculture Stewardship Council's (ASC) Shrimp Welfare Technical Working Group.
- Humane Slaughter Initiative: This work in particular seems to be our most promising [...]

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Outline:

(00:08) Summary

(06:22) Our Work So Far

(06:35) Corporate Engagement

(07:54) Farmer Support

(09:14) Research

(11:21) Raising Issue Salience

(12:40) What Were Doing Now

(13:01) Humane Slaughter Initiative

(15:23) Sustainable Shrimp Farmers of India (SSFI)

(16:53) Shrimp Welfare Index

(18:59) What We Arent Doing

(19:56) Wild-Caught

(22:39) Specialisation work

(25:55) ”Shrimp-Inclusive” work

(28:31) How You Can Help

(28:34) Funding

(29:04) ASC stakeholder consultation

(30:15) Volunteer or work with us

(31:11) Newsletter and social media

(31:49) Start a “shrimp welfare project”

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First published:
September 25th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Qo3559TqP5BzoQyWX/two-years-of-shrimp-welfare-project-insights-and-impact-from

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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“Monetary and social incentives in longtermist careers” by Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸

Sat, 23 Sep 2023 21:03:22 GMT

In this post I talk about several strong non-epistemic incentives and issues that can influence people to pursue longtermist[1]career paths (and specifically x-risk reduction careers and AI safety[2]) for EA community members.

For what it's worth, I personally I am sympathetic to longtermism, and to people who want to create more incentives for longtermist careers, because of the high urgency some assign to AI Safety and the fact that longtermism is a relatively new field. I am currently running career support pilots to support early-career longtermists.) However I think it's important to think carefully about career choices, even when it's difficult. I'm worried that these incentives lead people to feel (unconscious & conscious) pressure to pursue (certain) longtermist career paths even if it may not be the right choice for them. I think it's good for to be thoughtful about cause prioritization and career choices, especially for people earlier [...]

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Outline:

(01:03) Incentives

(01:07) Good pay and job security

(02:10) Funding in an oligopoly

(04:04) It's easier to socially defer

(05:14) High status

(07:05) Role models and founder's effects

(08:04) Availability

(09:36) Support

(10:17) Conclusion and Suggestions

The original text contained 18 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
September 23rd, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/SWfwmqnCPid8PuTBo/monetary-and-social-incentives-in-longtermist-careers

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Debate series: should we push for a pause on the development of AI?” by Ben_West

Sat, 23 Sep 2023 01:33:22 GMT

In March of this year, 30,000 people, including leading AI figures like Yoshua Bengio and Stuart Russell, signed a letter calling on AI labs to pause the training of AI systems. While it seems unlikely that this letter will succeed in pausing the development of AI, it did draw substantial attention to slowing AI as a strategy for reducing existential risk.

While initial work has been done on this topic (this sequence links to some relevant work), many areas of uncertainty remain. I’ve asked a group of participants to discuss and debate various aspects of the value of advocating for a pause on the development of AI on the EA Forum, in a format loosely inspired by Cato Unbound.

On September 16, we will launch with three posts:
- David Manheim will share a post giving an overview of what a pause would include, how a pause would work, and some possible concrete steps [...]

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First published:
September 8th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6SvZPHAvhT5dtqefF/debate-series-should-we-push-for-a-pause-on-the-development

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Will MacAskill has stepped down as trustee of EV UK” by lincolnq

Thu, 21 Sep 2023 15:41:08 GMT

Earlier today, Will MacAskill stepped down from the board of Effective Ventures UK[1], having served as a trustee since its founding more than a decade ago.

Will has been intending to step down for several months and announced his intention to do so earlier this year. Will had initially planned to remain on the board until we brought on additional trustees to replace him. However, given that our trustee recruitment process has taken longer than anticipated, and given also that Will continues to be recused from a significant proportion of board business[2], he felt that it didn’t make sense for him to stay on any longer.

Will announced his resignation today.

As a founding board member of EV UK (then called CEA), Will played a vital role in getting EV and its constituent projects off the ground, including co-founding Giving What We Can and 80,000 Hours. We are very grateful [...]

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
September 21st, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mArisdpuQiFtTNWw3/will-macaskill-has-stepped-down-as-trustee-of-ev-uk

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“The Case for AI Safety Advocacy to the Public” by Holly_Elmore

Wed, 20 Sep 2023 12:04:04 GMT

tl;dr: Advocacy to the public is a large and neglected opportunity to advance AI Safety. AI Safety as a field is unfamiliar with advocacy, and it has reservations, some founded and others not. A deeper understanding of the dynamics of social change reveals the promise of pursuing outside game strategies to complement the already strong inside game strategies. I support an indefinite global Pause on frontier AI and I explain why Pause AI is a good message for advocacy. Because I’m American and focused on US advocacy, I will mostly be drawing on examples from the US. Please bear in mind, though, that for Pause to be a true solution it will have to be global.

The case for advocacy in general

Advocacy can work

I’ve encountered many EAs who are skeptical about the role of advocacy in social change. While it is difficult to prove causality in social phenomena like this [...]

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Outline:

(00:46) The case for advocacy in general

(00:50) Advocacy can work

(02:32) We can now talk to the public about AI risk

(03:22) What having the public's support gets us

(05:17) Social change works best inside and outside the system

(09:31) Pros and potential pitfalls of advocacy

(09:35) Other pros of advocacy

(11:11) Misconceptions about advocacy

(13:23) Downsides to advocacy

(14:26) Downside risks of continuing the status quo

(15:59) The case for advocating AI Pause

(16:31) Pros and pitfalls of AI Pause

(21:09) How AI Pause advocacy can effect change

(24:01) Audience questions

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First published:
September 20th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Y4SaFM5LfsZzbnymu/the-case-for-ai-safety-advocacy-to-the-public

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“My life would be much harder without the Community Health Team. I think yours might too.” by Daystar Eld

Tue, 19 Sep 2023 14:59:41 GMT

I don't have much time to get into this, but I heard rumblings, saw a post, and wrote a comment, and now I'm making a post of my own because this information feels worth spreading now. I will not be going into much more details, for reasons that should be obvious.

For those that don't know me, I'm a therapist who has been working in the community for about 5 years now, and has been almost exclusively working with the community since early 2020, though I've been scaling down my therapy practice to focus on other projects like therapist recruitment/supervision, and mental health research. I also do mediation now and then, and in both situations, Community Health has been incredibly helpful.

Another of my major things is teaching at various rationality camps and workshops for high-school age students, as well as some for adults. To say that Community Health has been valuable [...]

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First published:
September 19th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/78A2NHL3zBS3ESurp/my-life-would-be-much-harder-without-the-community-health

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Relationship between EA Community and AI safety” by Tom Barnes🔸

Mon, 18 Sep 2023 13:49:54 GMT

Personal opinion only. Inspired by filling out the Meta coordination forum survey.

Epistemic status: Very uncertain, rough speculation. I’d be keen to see more public discussion on this question

One open question about the EA community is it's relationship to AI safety (see e.g. MacAskill). I think the relationship EA and AI safety (+ GHD & animal welfare) previously looked something like this (up until 2022ish):[1]

With the growth of AI safety, I think the field now looks something like this:

It's an open question whether the EA Community should further grow the AI safety field, or whether the EA Community should become a distinct field from AI safety. I think my preferred approach is something like: EA and AI safety grow into new fields rather than into eachother:

AI safety grows in AI/ML communities
EA grows in other specific causes, as well as an “EA-qua-EA” [...]

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
September 18th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/opCxiPwxFcaaayyMB/relationship-between-ea-community-and-ai-safety

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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[Linkpost] “Map of the biosecurity landscape (list of GCBR-relevant orgs for newcomers)” by Max Görlitz

Sun, 17 Sep 2023 08:56:45 GMT

When talking to newcomers to the field of biosecurity, I often felt annoyed that there wasn't a single introductory resource I could point them to that gives an overview of all the biosecurity-relevant organizations, upskilling opportunities, and funders.

With the help of a lot of contributors, I started this Google doc to provide such a resource. I'm sure that we missed some relevant organizations, and it'd be lovely if some people were to comment on the doc with additional information!

I'll copy the current version below, but please check out the link to the doc if you want to comment and see the most up-to-date version in the future!

Contributors: Max Görlitz, Simon Grimm, Andreas Prenner, Jasper Götting, Anemone Franz, Eva Siegmann, & more

Introduction

I would like to see something like aisafety.world for biosecurity. There already exists the Map of Biosecurity Interventions, but I want one for organizations!

This is a work-in-progress attempt to [...]

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Outline:

(01:25) Policy

(01:28) Think tanks

(01:31) Europe

(04:30) USA

(07:11) (Inter)governmental actors

(07:15) USA

(08:25) Europe

(09:21) International actors

(11:49) Technical RandD

(12:26) GCBR-focused non-profits

(14:06) Relevant for-profits

(14:27) Academic labs

(14:31) Upskilling (fellowships)

(14:35) Focused on newcomers

(15:44) E-learning resources

(16:42) Focused on people with some experience

(20:32) Funders of work on biorisk mitigation

(20:36) Major funders explicitly focused on catastrophic biorisk

(22:17) Smaller funders with some part of their portfolio dedicated to catastrophic biorisk

(23:33) Funders that are focused on pandemic preparedness more broadly

---

First published:
September 17th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/28iXeSY75aLsqAagg/map-of-the-biosecurity-landscape-list-of-gcbr-relevant-orgs

Linkpost URL:
https://bit.ly/biosecurity-map

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“AI Pause Will Likely Backfire” by nora

Sat, 16 Sep 2023 10:21:36 GMT

Should we lobby governments to impose a moratorium on AI research? Since we don’t enforce pauses on most new technologies, I hope the reader will grant that the burden of proof is on those who advocate for such a moratorium. We should only advocate for such heavy-handed government action if it's clear that the benefits of doing so would significantly outweigh the costs.[1] In this essay, I’ll argue an AI pause would increase the risk of catastrophically bad outcomes, in at least three different ways:

Reducing the quality of AI alignment research by forcing researchers to exclusively test ideas on models like GPT-4 or weaker.
Increasing the chance of a “fast takeoff” in which one or a handful of AIs rapidly and discontinuously become more capable, concentrating immense power in their hands.
Pushing capabilities research underground, and to countries with looser regulations and safety requirements.

Along the way, I’ll introduce an argument for optimism [...]

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Outline:

(01:09) Feedback loops are at the core of alignment

(01:54) Alignment and robustness are often in tension

(03:21) Alignment is doing pretty well

(04:30) Alignment research was pretty bad during the last “pause”

(06:31) Fast takeoff has a really bad feedback loop

(08:43) Slow takeoff is the default (so don’t mess it up with a pause)

(09:25) Alignment optimism: AIs are white boxes

(09:49) Human and animal alignment is black box

(11:41) Status quo AI alignment methods are white box

(13:25) White box alignment in nature

(15:35) Realistic AI pauses would be counterproductive

(15:56) Realistic pauses are not international

(18:19) Realistic pauses don’t include hardware

(19:23) Hardware overhang is likely

(20:58) Likely consequences of a realistic pause

The original text contained 8 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
September 16th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JYEAL8g7ArqGoTaX6/ai-pause-will-likely-backfire

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Mistakes, flukes, and good calls I made in my multiple careers” by Catherine Low🔸

Fri, 15 Sep 2023 20:45:24 GMT

I’m Catherine, and I'm one of the Community Liaisons working in CEA's Community Health and Special Projects Team. This is a personal post about my career.

I’m somewhat to the right of the main age peak of the EA community😬 .So I’ve had a lot of time to make mistakes sub-optimal choices in my career. It has been a long and odd road from my childhood/teenage dream jobs (train driver, Department of Conservation ranger, vet and then physicist) to where I am now.

Train I planned to drive. Endangered parrot I planned to help make less endangered.

Before I got into EA

Fluke 1: Born into immense privilege by global standards (and reasonable privilege by rich country standards)

Mistake 1: Not doing something with that privilege. I wish someone (maybe me?) sat me down and said (maybe a more polite version of)“You know which part of the bell curve you’re [...]

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Outline:

(00:47) Before I got into EA

(00:51) Fluke 1: Born into immense privilege by global standards (and reasonable privilege by rich country standards)

(01:00) Mistake 1: Not doing something with that privilege. I wish someone (maybe me?) sat me down and said (maybe a more polite version of)“You know which part of the bell curve you’re on. Try doing something more useful for the world!”.

(01:44) Good call 1: I talked to other students in the research group before choosing a PhD supervisor

(02:08) Mistake 2: Mistaking my interest in the ideas with interest in the day to day work

(02:28) Mistake 3: Not giving up sooner

(03:13) Mistake 4: Not exploring more options (even though they were scary)

(03:29) Good Call 2: Got really good at a valuable(ish) thing, and then used that as leverage to branch out a little

(04:12) After learning about EA

(04:21) Good call 3: I didn’t let my age put me off changing careers

(04:59) Good call 4: I reliably did stuff that seemed to need doing, even if they were boring, low status, or unpaid. I tried to be of service to others.

(06:09) Mistake 5: Thought too narrowly about my absolute advantage and didnt consider where my largest impact was.

(07:44) Good Call 5: I took a scary step - quitting my secure job without another guaranteed paid opportunity lined up (but with runway and a plan Z).

(08:19) Mistake 6: Not giving up sooner (again)

(08:44) Mistake 7: Over updating on a few rejections

(09:55) Fluke 2: Stumbling into a role at the Groups team at CEA

(10:22) Good call 6 (the best call): Doing what people I trusted thought would be most valuable

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
September 15th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/w59DkYCJYqaYDpEqG/mistakes-flukes-and-good-calls-i-made-in-my-multiple-careers

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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“Shrimp: The animals most commonly used and killed for food production” by Rethink Priorities, Daniela R. Waldhorn, Elisa Autric

Sun, 10 Sep 2023 17:03:41 GMT

Citation: Romero Waldhorn, D., & Autric, E. (2022, December 21). Shrimp: The animals most commonly used and killed for food production. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/b8n3t

Summary

Decapod crustaceans or, for short, decapods[1] (e.g., crabs, shrimp, or crayfish) represent a major food source for humans across the globe. If these animals are sentient, the growing decapod production industry likely poses serious welfare concerns for these animals.
Information about the number of decapods used for food is needed to better assess the scale of this problem and the expected value of helping these animals.
In this work we estimated the number of shrimp and prawns farmed and killed in a year, given that they seem to be the vast majority of decapods used in the food system.
We estimated that around:
- 440 billion (90% subjective confidence interval [SCI]: 300 billion - 620 billion) farmed shrimp are killed per year, which vastly exceeds the figure of the most numerous farmed vertebrates used [...]

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Outline:

(07:47) Methods

(08:56) Farmed shrimp estimates

(11:50) Wild-caught shrimp estimates

(16:36) Total shrimp estimates

(16:51) Results

(16:54) Farmed shrimp

(22:45) Wild shrimp

(27:19) Total shrimp estimates

(29:39) Discussion

(38:58) Conclusion

(40:10) Acknowledgments

(41:12) References

(57:17) Appendix

(57:20) Farmed shrimp estimates

(01:07:05) Wild-caught shrimp estimates

The original text contained 29 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
September 10th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Fhoq7tP9LYPqaJDxx/shrimp-the-animals-most-commonly-used-and-killed-for-food

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“An Incomplete List of Things I Think EAs Probably Shouldn’t Do” by Rockwell

Fri, 08 Sep 2023 16:17:52 GMT

There has already been ample discussion of what norms and taboos should exist in the EA community, especially over the past ten months. Below, I'm sharing an incomplete list of actions and dynamics I would strongly encourage EAs and EA organizations to either strictly avoid or treat as warranting a serious—and possibly ongoing—risk analysis.

I believe there is a reasonable risk should EAs:

Live with coworkers, especially when there is a power differential and especially when there is a direct report relationship
Date coworkers, especially when there is a power differential and especially when there is a direct report relationship
Promote[1] drug use among coworkers, including legal drugs, and including alcohol and stimulants
Live with their funders/grantees, especially when substantial conflict-of-interest mechanisms are not active
Date their funders/grantees, especially when substantial conflict-of-interest mechanisms are not active
Date the partner of their funder/grantee, especially when substantial conflict-of-interest mechanisms are not active
Retain someone as a full-time contractor or grant recipient [...]

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
September 8th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MvwctfyZ9NrhPzyPj/an-incomplete-list-of-things-i-think-eas-probably-shouldn-t

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Sharing Information About Nonlinear” by Ben Pace

Thu, 07 Sep 2023 06:51:37 GMT

Epistemic status: Once I started actively looking into things, much of my information in the post below came about by a search for negative information about the Nonlinear cofounders, not from a search to give a balanced picture of its overall costs and benefits. I think standard update rules suggest not that you ignore the information, but you think about how bad you expect the information would be if I selected for the worst, credible info I could share, and then update based on how much worse (or better) it is than you expect I could produce. (See section 5 of this post about Mistakes with Conservation of Expected Evidence for more on this.) This seems like a worthwhile exercise for at least non-zero people to do in the comments before reading on. (You can condition on me finding enough to be worth sharing, but also note that I think [...]

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Outline:

(10:09) A High-Level Overview of The Employees’ Experience with Nonlinear

(16:25) An assortment of reported experiences

(40:59) Conversation with Nonlinear

(48:47) My thoughts on the ethics and my takeaways

The original text contained 10 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
September 7th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/32LMQsjEMm6NK2GTH/sharing-information-about-nonlinear

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Nick Beckstead is leaving the Effective Ventures boards” by Eli Rose, lincolnq

Wed, 06 Sep 2023 18:15:29 GMT

On 23rd August, Nick Beckstead stepped down from the boards of Effective Ventures UK and Effective Ventures US.

For context, EV UK and EV US host and fiscally sponsor several (mostly EA-related) projects, such as CEA, 80,000 Hours and various others (see more here).

Since November 2022, Nick has been recused from all board matters related to the collapse of FTX. Over time, it became clear that Nick’s recusal made it difficult for him to add sufficient value to EV and its projects for it to be worth him remaining on the boards[1]. Nick and the other trustees felt that this was sufficient reason for Nick to step down.

Nick wanted to share the following:

Ever since the collapse of FTX, I've been recused from a substantial fraction of business on both boards. This has made it hard to contribute as much as I would like to as a board member, during a time [...]

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
September 6th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Defu3jkejb7pmLjeN/nick-beckstead-is-leaving-the-effective-ventures-boards

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “What I would do if I wasn’t at ARC Evals” by Lawrence Chan

Wed, 06 Sep 2023 05:18:13 GMT

In which: I list 9 projects that I would work on if I wasn’t busy working on safety standards at ARC Evals, and explain why they might be good to work on.

Epistemic status: I’m prioritizing getting this out fast as opposed to writing it carefully. I’ve thought for at least a few hours and talked to a few people I trust about each of the following projects, but I haven’t done that much digging into each of these, and it’s likely that I’m wrong about many material facts. I also make little claim to the novelty of the projects. I’d recommend looking into these yourself before committing to doing them. (Total time spent writing or editing this post: ~8 hours.)

Standard disclaimer: I’m writing this in my own capacity. The views expressed are my own, and should not be taken to represent the views of ARC/FAR/LTFF/Lightspeed or any other org [...]

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Outline:

(02:41) Relevant beliefs I have

(04:52) Technical AI Safety Research

(05:38) Ambitious mechanistic interpretability

(08:34) Late stage project management and paper writing

(09:53) Creating concrete projects and research agendas

(11:32) Grantmaking

(12:37) Working on Open Philanthropy’s Funding Bottlenecks

(14:24) Working on the other EA funders’ funding bottlenecks

(16:02) Chairing the Long-Term Future Fund

(17:28) Community Building

(17:54) Onboarding senior academics and research engineers

(20:05) Extending the young EA/AI researcher mentorship pipeline

(22:31) Writing blog posts or takes in general

The original text contained 9 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
September 6th, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zcHdehWJzDpfxJpmf/what-i-would-do-if-i-wasn-t-at-arc-evals

Linkpost URL:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6FkWnktH3mjMAxdRT/what-i-would-do-if-i-wasn-t-at-arc-evals

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Want to make a difference on policy and governance? Become an expert in something specific and boring” by ASB

Tue, 05 Sep 2023 23:08:15 GMT

I sometimes get a vibe that many people trying to ambitiously do good in the world (including EAs) are misguided about what doing successful policy/governance work looks like. An exaggerated caricature would be activities like: dreaming up novel UN structures, spending time in abstract game theory and ‘strategy spirals[1]’, and sweeping analysis of historical case studies.

Instead, people that want to make the world safer with policy/governance should become experts on very specific and boring topics. One of the most successful people I’ve met in biosecurity got their start by getting really good at analyzing obscure government budgets.

Here are some crowdsourced example areas I would love to see more people become experts in:

Legal liability - obviously relevant to biosecurity and AI safety, and I’m especially interested in how liability law would handle spreading infohazards (e.g. if a bio lab publishes a virus sequence that is then used for bioterrorism, or if [...]

The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
August 31st, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/J7nmbqcWncPMZFhGC/want-to-make-a-difference-on-policy-and-governance-become-an

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“The Lives We Can Save” by Omnizoid

Sun, 03 Sep 2023 05:46:38 GMT

I work as a Resident Assistant at my college. Last year, only a few weeks into me starting, I was called at night to come help with a drunk student. I didn’t actually help very much, and probably didn’t have to be there. I didn’t even have to write up the report at the end. At one point I went outside to let medical services into the building, but mostly I just stood in a hallway.

The person in question was so drunk they couldn’t move. They had puked in the bathroom and were lying in the hallway crying. They could barely talk. When Campus Safety arrived they kneeled down next to this person and helped them drink water, while asking the normal slew of questions about the person’s evening.

They asked this person, whose name I can’t even remember, why they had been drinking so much. They said, in between hiccups [...]

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First published:
September 3rd, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/buFyakASucJnrZj7X/the-lives-we-can-save

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Should I patent my cultivated meat method?” by Michelle Hauser

Fri, 01 Sep 2023 21:54:02 GMT

Congrats on having invented something exciting!

Usually, the best way to get innovative new technology into the hands of beneficiaries quickly is to get a for-profit company to invest with a promise of making money. This can happen via licensing a patent to an existing manufacturer, or creating a whole startup company and raising venture capital, etc.

One of the things such investors want to see is a 'moat': something that this company can do that no other company can easily copy. A patent/exclusive license is a good way to create a moat.

There are some domains like software where simply publishing 'open source' ideas causes those ideas to get used, but for most domains including manufacturing, my default expectation is that new tech is not used unless someone can make money off it. Pharma is a great example - there are tons of vaccines and niche treatments that we [...]

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First published:
August 31st, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/X2w4uqjDuGPJFaHPp/should-i-patent-my-cultivated-meat-method

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Learning from our mistakes: how HLI plans to improve” by PeterBrietbart, MichaelPlant

Fri, 01 Sep 2023 11:11:59 GMT

Hi folks, in this post we’d like to describe our views as the Chair (Peter) and Director (Michael) of HLI in light of the recent conversations around HLI’s work. The purpose of this post is to reflect on HLI’s work and its role within the EA community in response to community member feedback, highlight what we’re doing about it, and engage in further constructive dialogue on how HLI can improve moving forward.

HLI hasn’t always got things right. Indeed, we think there have been some noteworthy errors (quick note: our goal here isn’t to delve into details but to highlight broad lessons learnt, so this isn’t an exhaustive list):

Most importantly, we were overconfident and defensive in communication, particularly around our 2022 giving season post.
- We described our recommendation for StrongMinds using language that was too strong: “We’re now in a position to confidently recommend StrongMinds as the most effective way we [...]

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First published:
September 1st, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4edCygGHya4rGx6xa/learning-from-our-mistakes-how-hli-plans-to-improve

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“In defence of epistemic modesty” by Gregory Lewis

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 09:55:10 GMT

This piece defends a strong form of epistemic modesty: that, in most cases, one should pay scarcely any attention to what you find the most persuasive view on an issue, hewing instead to an idealized consensus of experts. I start by better pinning down exactly what is meant by ‘epistemic modesty’, go on to offer a variety of reasons that motivate it, and reply to some common objections. Along the way, I show common traps people being inappropriately modest fall into. I conclude that modesty is a superior epistemic strategy, and ought to be more widely used - particularly in the EA/rationalist communities.

[gdoc]

Provocation

I argue for this:

In virtually all cases, the credence you hold for any given belief should be dominated by the balance of credences held by your epistemic peers and superiors. One's own convictions should weigh no more [...]

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Outline:

(00:45) Provocation

(01:05) Introductions and clarifications

(01:10) A favourable motivating case

(03:08) Weaker and stronger forms of modesty

(04:25) Motivations for more modesty

(04:42) The symmetry case

(06:53) Compressed sensing of (and not double-counting) the object level

(09:00) Repeated measures, brains as credence censors, and the wisdom of crowds

(11:09) Deferring to better brains

(12:38) Inference to the ideal epistemic observer

(15:26) Excursus: Against common justifications for immodesty

(16:21) Being ‘well informed’ (or even true expertise) is not enough

(18:02) Common knowledge ‘silver bullet arguments’

(19:47) Debunking the expert class (but not you)

(22:51) Private evidence and pet arguments

(24:52) Objections

(25:04) In theory

(25:08) There's no pure ‘outside view’\[12\]

(25:56) Immodestly modest?

(28:55) In practice

(29:25) Trivial (and less trivial) non-use cases

(31:40) In theory, the world should be mad

(34:45) Empirically, the world is mad

(37:22) Expert groups are seldom in reflective equilibrium

(42:05) Somewhat satisfying Shulman

(42:55) Practical challenges to modesty

(44:21) Community benefits to immodesty

(47:25) Conclusion: a pean, and a plea

(47:53) Rationalist/EA exceptionalism

(50:46) To discover, not summarise

(53:00) Paradoxically pathological modesty

(54:28) Coda

(55:02) Acknowledgements

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First published:
October 29th, 2017

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WKPd79PESRGZHQ5GY/in-defence-of-epistemic-modesty

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Progress report on CEA’s search for a new CEO” by MaxDalton

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 08:55:27 GMT

Progress report on CEA’s search for a new CEO

I[1] wanted to give an update on the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA)’s search for a new CEO.

We (Claire Zabel, Max Dalton, and Michelle Hutchinson) were appointed by the Effective Ventures boards to lead this search and make a recommendation to the boards. The committee is advised by James Snowden, Caitlin Elizondo, and one experienced executive working outside EA.

We previously announced the search and asked for community input in this post.

Note, we set out searching for an Executive Director, and during the process have changed the role title to CEO because it was more legible to candidates not familiar with CEA or EV. The role scope remains unchanged.

In summary, we received over 400 nominations, reached out to over 150 people, spoke to about 60, and received over 25 applications. We’re still considering around 15 candidates, and are currently more deeply assessing [...]

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Outline:

(00:05) Progress report on CEA’s search for a new CEO

(01:11) Process

(09:07) Commentary/reflections

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
August 31st, 2023

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Bg6qxLGhsn7pQzHGX/progress-report-on-cea-s-search-for-a-new-ceo

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.