2022 April Effective Altruism Updates
Welcome to the first of these monthly updates on Substack. As effective altruism has grown it seems harder and harder to stay up to date with everything that is going on and I thought it could be useful to provide brief updates on the wide range of projects, events and updates in EA and related areas.
If there is anything you think is missing, ways to improve this or any other feedback just let me know.
Main News
Last month the FTX Future Fund was announced, aiming to support ambitious projects in order to improve humanity's long-term prospects. They plan on distributing $100 million this year and potentially a lot more over time, this would put them at a similar level to Open Philanthropy who have been the largest funder of EA related projects in recent years.
You can read about their plans here and get a sense of the projects they want to fund, see what EA Forum users have suggested as potential ideas and read about their regranting program, you can also apply to be a regrantor as well.
New Projects
Effective Ideas is a new $100,000 blog prize aiming to encourage a broader conversation around EA and longtermism
Lizka Vaintrob, Joshua Teperowski Monrad and Fin Moorhouse are planning to run a contest for critiques in EA and are looking for feedback on this idea
CEA has launched the University Group Accelerator Program
Social Change Lab is a new project that is conducting research into whether protest could be a cost-effective way to achieve positive social change
The Colombian Center for Effective Altruism has been set up, here is their first newsletter (in Spanish)
Non-trivial Pursuits is a new organisation aimed at connecting teenagers to impactful career advice
Animal Advocacy Careers is running a work placement programme for people to try out fundraising for different organisations
80,000 Hours have a new podcast - '80k After Hours', with episodes on 'The philosophy of The 80,000 Hours Podcast', 'Alex Lawsen on his advice for students' and 'Michelle and Habiba on what they’d tell their younger selves, and the impact of the 1-1 team'
Meta Effective Altruism
Vaidehi Agarwalla with a post looking at some benefits and risks of failure transparency in EA
Thomas Kwa with the post 'Effectiveness is a Conjunction of Multipliers'
Ada-Maaria Hyvärinen with 'Unsurprising things about the EA movement that surprised me'
Lucius Caviola, David Althaus, Stefan Schubert and Joshua Lewis with research on which psychological traits predict interest in effective altruism
A post looking at the winners of the Future Fund’s project ideas competition
Kuhan Jeyapragasan and Akash Wasil with 'Questions That Lead to Impactful Conversations' and also a post on how to improve your 1-1 conversations
ALLFED with a case study on how to make the EA community more resilient to catastrophes
Cristina Schmidt Ibáñez asking about peoples perceptions of social rewards in EA
Fin Moorhouse with a list of EA projects he would like to see
Giving What We Can with their plans for 2022
Nuño Sempere on how to value research by eliciting comparisons from other researchers
Milan Griffes on EA blindspots
James Ozden with thoughts on recent EA funding announcements
Julian Hazell on why it's okay to not be perfect at effective altruism
High Impact Professionals with a list of companies with the most people interested in EA
An update on the EA Librarian service, where you can submit any questions you have about EA
One For The World with lessons and results from workplace giving talks
Rose Hadshar with research ideas on the history of social movements and how that might help EA
John Bridge looking at where intersectionality and effective altruism intersect
Peter Wildeford with a post suggesting that 'A less cost-effective opportunity that is more scalable can be better than a more cost-effective but less scalable opportunity'
Careers
80,000 Hours with updates to their high impact careers page
Akash Wasil with a curated list of forum posts about careers
Yufeng Tao with a career story 'why I decided to leave corporate for now'
Yonatan Cale on how to become a professional software developer
Andy Morgan writing about being a policy analyst
Ollie Base with the post 'Grantmaking is more like a skill than a path'
80,000 Hours have a post on China-related AI safety and governance paths
A post on the demandingness of operations work
80,000 Hours with an updated profile on communication careers
A post on why you should become a hacker rather than a consultant if you want to work in information security
Jack Ryan and Olivia Jimenez with 23 career choice heuristics
Grants
Open Phil have made 23 grants recently with a total value of $31,300,000
$13,600,000 - Scientific Research
$4,000,000 - Kainomyx — Antimalarial Drug
$3,300,000 - Protein Design Research
$3,200,000 - Universal Influenza Vaccines
$5,400,000 - Other Areas
2,900,000 - Kurzgesagt - Video Creation and Translation
1,000,000 - Founders Pledge
$5,000,000 - Global Catastrophic Risks
$5,000,000 - The Degrees Initiative
$2,900,000 - Potential Risks from Advanced AI
$2,500,000 - Centre for the Governance of AI
$2,000,000 - Farm Animal Welfare
$1,500,000 - Criminal Justice Reform
$900,000 - Immigration Policy
Building a Stronger Future - a family foundation run by Sam Bankman-Fried - announced a $5,000,000 grant to ProPublica to support investigations into ongoing questions about the COVID-19 pandemic, biosecurity and public health preparedness
Global Development
Rory Fenton arguing against cash benchmarking for global development RCTs
Care International looking at the 10 most under reported humanitarian crisis in 2021
Saloni Dattani on how randomised controlled trials work and why they matter
Charity Entrepreneurship with a research report on road traffic safety
Vox on what the Russian invasion of Ukraine could mean for global hunger
The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk with a paper on the risks and externalities of using AI for agriculture
Shruti Rajagopalan and Lant Pritchett discussing economic predictions and problems with randomised controlled trials
The World Happiness Report for 2022 has been released
Charity Entrepreneurship with a research report on aid quality advocacy
A report on emerging trends and technologies in global development has been released by the WHO
80,000 Hours podcast with Karen Levy on fads and misaligned incentives in global development, and scaling deworming to reach hundreds of millions
Spencer Greenberg in conversation with Elie Hassenfeld on why it's so hard to have confidence that charities are doing good
Hannah Ritchie on how the war in Ukraine could impact global food supplies
Max Roser looking at the progress made in reducing malaria
Animal Welfare
The Good Food Institute with a review of 2021
Max Carpendale with a report asking what divestment from animal agriculture achieves
Ren Springlea with a report on the costs and benefits of a meat tax
Tobias Baumann with a post suggesting how the animal movement could do even more good
Emily Grundy with a summary of a meta review on 'What interventions influence animal-product consumption?'
Alene Anello with a post asking 'Who is protecting animals in the long-term future?'
Neil Dullaghan with a post suggesting that forecasts estimate limited cultured meat production through 2050
Jacob Peacock on the effectiveness of a theory-informed documentary to reduce consumption of meat and animal products
A post on 'Why the expected numbers of farmed animals in the far future might be huge'
There is a new documentary on the future of alternative proteins
Existential & Catastrophic Risks
Holden Karnofsky with 'Important, actionable research questions for the most important century'
The annual Next Generation for Biosecurity Competition has been launched, aiming to cultivate the next generation of global leaders in biosecurity, apply by April 18th
The Global Catastrophic Risk Institute with a post on 'Pluralism in the Field of Global Catastrophic Risk'
Seth Baum with reflections on the Russian invasion of Ukraine through the lens of global catastrophic risks
A post on the strongest arguments against working on existential risk
Nuclear Safety
Seth Baum in the BBC looking at how evaluate the risk of nuclear war
A post looking at forecasting the risk of death from a nuclear strike on a major city in one month
Will Aldred with an overview of the nuclear risk cause area stream within the Cambridge Existential Risks Initiative
Kit Harris with an overview of a new nuclear security grantmaking programme at Longview Philanthropy
Vox with details on the biggest funder of anti-nuclear war programs removing their money from the area
Michael Aird with '8 possible high-level goals for work on nuclear risk'
80,000 Hours podcast with Joan Rohlfing on how to avoid catastrophic nuclear blunders
Max Roser with the post 'Why reducing the risk of nuclear war should be a key concern of our generation'
Chatham House with a paper on the uncertainty and complexity in nuclear decision-making
Improving Institutions
Nadia Eghbal on the last decade of science funding in tech
Ian David Moss with a landscape analysis of institutional improvement opportunities
A post on unblocking research bottlenecks with non-profit start-ups
Interview with Alec Stapp, co-founder of the Institute for Progress
The National Institute for Health Research is trialling a fast grant programme in England
The U.S. has launched the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health with $1 billion in startup investment
Samuel Arbesman has created a database of new types of research organisation
Adam Mastroianni on how grant funding is broken and how to fix it
UK Research and Innovation have a new 5 year strategy, committing to spending £25 billion a year on research and development
Sarah Hamburg with an overview of decentralised science
Matt Clifford with Nadia Eghbal discussing Silicon Valley and the future of philanthropy
A post suggesting that the United Nations should get more attention from organisations in EA
Environment
Herbie Bradley with a climate change overview for the Cambridge Existential Risks Initiative summer research fellowship
Open Philanthropy have funded the Degrees Initiative to support research on the potential implications of solar radiation management
Longtermism
You can now pre-order Will MacAskill's new book 'What We Owe the Future'
An update from Open Philanthropy’s Longtermism EA movement-building team
Future Matters is a new newsletter focused on longtermism
Richard Pettigrew with the Global Priorities Institute working paper 'Effective altruism, risk, and human extinction'
Rhys Lindmark looking at how the FTX Future Fund might impact the longtermism ecosystem
Our World in Data with a post and visualisations on longtermism
The Global Catastrophic Risk Institute with the case for ecocentric space expansion
Jan Kulveit and Gavin Leech on experimental longtermism as part of a series on learning from crisis
Linch Zhang with 'Why short-range forecasting can be useful for longtermism'
Giving What We Can with an introductory video on safeguarding the long-term future
John Myers and Larks writing up their concerns with the Wellbeing of Future Generations bill
Michael Townsend on the value of small donations from a longtermism perspective
Sam Hilton on Hear This Idea podcast discussing 'Charity Entrepreneurship, Exploratory Altruism, and Longtermist Policy'
The Center on Long-Term Risk's annual report
Holden Karnofsky debating himself on whether 'extra lives lived' are as good as 'deaths prevented'
Artificial Intelligence
Rob Bensinger with Twitter-length responses to 24 AI alignment arguments
Aryeh Englander on presenting the case for AI risk
An EA forum post arguing that AI risk should be explained with more sci-fi descriptions
A post on the role of academia in AI safety
Marius Hobbhahn with an AI safety starter pack
Neel Nanda on how he formed his own views about AI safety
The Future of Life podcast with Daniela and Dario Amodei on Anthropic
Ukraine
Vox with ways to help Ukrainians
EA Forum posts on the Ukraine-Russia conflict
80,000 Hours podcast with Samuel Charap on why Putin invaded Ukraine, the risk of escalation, and how to prevent disaster
Other Causes
George Altman with a cause profile on cognitive enhancement research
Bryan Caplan with a presentation on open borders as effective altruism
A new Cambridge University interdisciplinary research programme will investigate life in the universe
Tim Farkas with the post 'Mind Enhancement: A High Impact, High Neglect Cause Area?'
Hauke Hillebrandt with a critique of Open Philanthropy's macroeconomic policy advocacy
Matthew Barnett with thoughts on the risks from the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence
David Chalmers and Azeem Azhar discussing potential moral issues in the metaverse
Tobias Baumann with five recommendations for better political discourse
Other Links
Dylan Matthews looking at how war became a crime
Schmidt Futures are looking for people to help them create resources to help people make high impact career shifts
Holden Karnofsky with his experience of working on vaguely defined problems
Finan Adamson with a nuclear preparedness guide
Ben Kuhn with a post on searching for outliers
Hear This Idea podcast with Glen Weyl on pluralism, radical markets and social technology
There has been a breakthrough in underground mapping using quantum technology
There is a new type of ultraviolet light that could make indoor air as safe as the outdoors
Sam Bankman-Fried in discussion with Tyler Cowen on crypto and altruism
Ben Williamson, Kristyna Stastna and Terezie Kosik with notes on managing highly stressful news and situations
Magnus Vinding with a new book looking at politics based on ethical reasoning and empirical evidence
INFER are running an EA college forecasting tournament from April to July
Lizka Vaintrob highlighting a post by Chris Olah and Shan Carter on the benefits of making research easier to understand
EA in the Media
Krista Hessey for Global News covering EA in Canada
Ben Todd on the Waking Up podcast with Sam Harris discussing 80,000 Hours
Financial Independence Europe podcast with Luke Freeman and Rebecca Herbst on how to give effectively
Zachary Brown on his discovery of effective altruism two years ago and how it intersects with religious beliefs
Upcoming Events
1-3rd April - EAGx Boston
15-17th April - EA Global London
13-15th May - EAGxPrague
22-24th June - Breakthrough Dialogue, Progress Problems is a hybrid conference in California, with speakers including Tamara Winter, Ezra Klein and Caleb Watney
26-29th June - Open Student Workshop on Global Priorities Research - Oxford, apply by 20th April
29-31st July - EA Global: San Francisco
23-25th September - EA Global: Washington, D.C.
Upcoming Virtual Events
19-21st April - Cambridge Conference on Catastrophic Risk
23rd April - Effective Altruism for Christians Annual Conference - Sign up by April 1st
7th May - 4th June - Red Team Challenge - Organised by Training for Good, sign up by April 15th
Fellowships
Cambridge Existential Risks Initiative are running a 10 week Summer Research Fellowship - Apply by 3rd April
Atlas Fellowship - A summer programme in California open to high school students globally and it comes with a $50,000 scholarship - 10th April
Training for Good are running the European Technology Policy Fellowship from July to December - 19th April
Open Philanthropy - EA Summer Communications Fellowship - 25th April
New Science are running a one year fellowship in Massachusetts - 1st May
Leaf are running an eight day residential program in Oxford in August for sixth formers on the theme 'Building a Better Future'
Good News
There were 700,000 fewer Dengue cases in 2020 than the previous year as a result of Covid restrictions
Saudi Arabia has eliminated trachoma as a public health problem
Tweet
In response to a challenge from Tyler Alterman to explain effective altruism using only poetic language, Habiba came up with this poem.
