2023 August EA Updates
Top Posts
The latest US senate hearing on AI, with a focus on existential risks, and discussion of setting up regulatory bodies
Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI announced the formation of the Frontier Model Forum, a new industry body focused on ensuring safe and responsible development of frontier AI models
Nick Laing - Bill Gates' 400 million dollar bet - First Tuberculosis Vaccine in 100 years?
Vadim Albinsky - Are education interventions as cost effective as the top health interventions?
Laura Duffy - Effective Animal Advocacy Forum Survey: Results and analysis
Toby Ord - Shaping Humanity's Longterm Trajectory
Joey, Vilhelm Skoglund & Gage Weston - Launching the meta charity funding circle: Apply for funding or join as a donor
Upcoming Events
Global
18th-20th August - EAGxNYC - Apply by 31st July
8th-10th September - EAGxBerlin - Apply by 18th August
22nd-24th September - EAGxAustralia
20th-22nd October - EAGxPhilippines
27th-29th October - EAG Boston
Virtual
10th August - Rethink Priorities August Town Hall
3rd September - Giving What We Can Meetup
17-19th November - EAGxVirtual 2023
Fellowships & Programs
Better Trajectories - Project Nigeria - high school outreach initiative for Nigerian students, with an in-person summit (Lagos) and microgrants
The Roots of Progress Blog Building Intensive - 11th August
Open Philanthropy Undergraduate Scholarship - 18th August
AI Futures Fellowship - Mexico City - 24th August
Animal Advocacy Africa - Training Program Application - 28th August
Horizon Fellowship - Washington DC - 24th September
Charity Entrepreneurship 2024 Incubation Program - 30th September
Meta Updates
Aidan Alexander - Nailing the basics – Theories of change
Elizabeth - Grant applications and grand narratives
Joel Tan - Longlist of Causes + Cause Exploration Contest
Effective Altruism and the strategic ambiguity of ‘doing good’
Arthur Malone - General support for “General EA”
Ben West - Some Reflections on EA Strategy Fortnight
The ILINA program have announced their 2023 fellows, from Ghana, Kenya, Niger and South Africa
Charity Entrepreneurship - Announcing our February 2024 Charity Ideas
Childhood vaccination reminders
Mass media to prevent violence against women
Influencing EU fish welfare policy through strategic work in Greece
Influencing key stakeholders of the emerging insect industry
Ask Me Anything - Peter Wildeford (Co-CEO at Rethink Priorities)
Spencer Ericson - SoGive have a survey for donors giving over £10,000 a year to find out what donors need to give better
Organisation Updates
Alexander Berger is now sole CEO of Open Philanthropy
Five Years of Rethink Priorities: Impact, Future Plans, Funding Needs
EA Data
JWS - EA data analysis: What do Forum Topics tell us about changes in EA?
Willem Sleegers & David Moss - EA Survey 2022: How People Get Involved in EA
Jamie Elsey & David Moss - EA Survey 2022: Geography
Hamish Doodles - EffectiveAltruismData is now a spreadsheet
New Projects
Rachel Weinberg & Austin - Announcing Manifund Regrants (mainly AI focused)
Seed Network Funding Circles has been launched by Charity Entrepreneurship to support donors interested in early stage projects
Keiran Harris from 80,000 Hours with a new podcast called ‘The Worst Ideas in the History of the World’
Aaron Bergman - Announcing the EA Archive
Grants
Open Philanthropy have made 46 grants recently, with a value of $71 million
$27.6m - Global Health and Wellbeing
$25m - Eleanor Crook Foundation — Global Malnutrition Regranting
$1m - IRD Global — RCT Planning for Tuberculosis Program
$20m - EA Community Growth (Longtermism)
$8m - 80,000 Hours
$4.7m - CEA
$3.4m - Effective Altruism Funds
$2m - Atlas Fellowship
$1m - Asterisk
$9.2m - Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness
$7.8m - Nuclear Threat Initiative — Biosecurity Program Support
$800k - CSIRO — Henipavirus Research
$7.6m - Potential Risks from Advanced AI
$5.5m - RAND Corporation — Emerging Technology Fellowships and Research
$6.8m - Other Areas
$3m - Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT — Pneumonia Diagnostics
$2m - Dezernat Zukunft — Macroeconomic Stabilisation Policy
$600k - Federation of American Scientists — High-Skilled Immigration Reform
$460k - University of Ottawa — Institute for Replication
The Mental Health Funding Circle recently disbursed $789,833 to 11 projects
Global Development
A new TB vaccine could save 8.5 million lives over the next quarter of a century
Nigeria Poised to Save $28 Billion After Ending Fuel Subsidies
Rachel DuRose - Half the world is at risk of dengue. Why is there no universal way to prevent it?
Our World in Data - Measuring progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals
Should donors stop funding orphanages?
Global Prosperity Institute - Exploring the Challenges and Potential of Strengthening Trade Relationships within the African Continent
Susannah Hares , Jack Rossiter & Justin Sandefur - Will Raising Test Scores in Developing Countries Produce More Health, Wealth, and Happiness Later in Life?
Jonathan Gruber, Mengyun Lin & Junjian Yi - The Largest Insurance Expansion in History: Saving One Million Lives Per Year in China
International Growth Centre - Can expert feedback improve SMEs' views of government's regulatory legitimacy?
Plans for UK’s bilateral aid spending to rise sharply after 3 years of cuts
The UK government may be stopped from spending aid budget on arriving refugees, which was £3.7 billion in 2022 - 29% of it’s overseas development assistance budget
Ideas for India is a new policy portal that publishes evidence-based analysis on issues pertaining to growth and development in India
Leah Pierson and Bruce Tsai in the BMJ - Misaligned AI constitutes a growing public health threat
Rachel DuRose - We have malaria vaccines. The next hurdle: Distributing them
OWID with updated pages
EA & Global Development
Schistosomiasis Control Initiative has rebranded to Unlimit Health - Reflections from their CEO on a new strategy: elimination is not the end
GiveWell - Why we're funding clubfoot treatment through MiracleFeet
Pilot results from the 2022 Vida Plena test program to implement WHO-recommended group interpersonal therapy for depression in Latin America
LEEP - Progress on lead paint in Pakistan
Michael Plant - The Happier Lives Institute is funding constrained - with lots of discussion in the comments
Joey & Judith - Who Was the Funder that Counterfactually Resulted in LEEP Starting?
Animal Welfare
HILTLS podcast - Nikunj Sharma on the animal advocacy movement in India
David Thorstad with a review of The Good it Promises
Animal Charity Evaluators - Announcing their 2023 movement grants
Connect for Animals - a platform for people who want help end factory farming
Culture Canopy - a peer-to-peer learning program aiming to connect and educate animal advocates
Lewis Bollard - We Love Animals. Why Do We Torture Them?
Jacob Ayang & Aurelia Adhiambo - The Epidemic of Second-Hand Battery Cages Being Imported into Africa
Constance Li & Nicholas Kees Dupuis - Animal Advocacy in the Age of AI
Chloe Lee & Jayasimha Nuggehalli - Global Food Partners: Impact Sponsorship Programme for Asian farmers to transition to cage-free egg production
Omnizoid - Underwater Torture Chambers: The Horror Of Fish Farming
Simeon - AGI x Animal Welfare: A High-EV Outreach Opportunity?
Siwani Agrawal - How the Jains built a culture of respect for nonhuman animals
MHR - Electric Shrimp Stunning: a Potential High-Impact Donation Opportunity
Alternative Proteins
GFI - European government funding in sustainable proteins poised to hit half a billion euros
Talist have created an impact calculator for people joining the alternative protein industry
GFI - The State of Global Policy on Alternative Proteins
Biosecurity
Seventh Annual Next Generation for Biosecurity Competition Open for Applications - Apply by 11th September
Statement from Biden on Completing the Destruction of the United States’ Chemical Weapons Stockpile
Aron Lajko - Biosecurity Resource Hub
Rose Hadshar - An overview of standards in biosafety and biorisk
Center for Health Security summarise the introduction of 2 critical bills to protect health security from threats arising from advances in biotechnology
Sam Hilton - Charity Entrepreneurship - Rigorously prioritising the top health security ideas
Existential & Catastrophic Risks
Future of Life Institute with a list of their nuclear war research grants
80,000 Hours podcast with Stephen Clare on What the war in Ukraine shows us about catastrophic risks
David Thorstad - Three mistakes in the moral mathematics of existential risk
Caleb & Wim van der Schoot - Announcing the Existential InfoSec Forum (August 10th - Las Vegas)
Existential Risk Forecasts
Forecasting Existential Risks: Evidence from a Long-Run Forecasting Tournament
Toby Ord with takeaways from the forecasting tournament
Astral Codex Ten on The Extinction Tournament
Rose Hadshar - Who’s right about inputs to the biological anchors model?
Javier Prieto - Takeaways from the Metaculus AI Progress Tournament
Environment
The 2023 Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy - Global energy-related emissions continued to grow, up 0.8%
How low-sulphur shipping rules are affecting global warming
Giving Green 2023 mid-year organisational updates
Groups are stepping up pressure on the U.N. to force armies to disclose their emissions, estimated to be 5.5% of global total
Politico - White House cautiously opens the door to study blocking sun’s rays to slow global warming
A paper in Nature - Vegans, vegetarians, fish-eaters and meat-eaters in the UK show discrepant environmental impacts
Giving Green's Research Overview
Rachel Glennerster and Seema Jayachandran - Opportunities to Mitigate Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
Startup claims breakthrough in turning the earth’s heat into clean power
Markham Heid - Why Germany turned its back on nuclear energy
DeepMind - Using AI to fight climate change
Alex Tabarrok on Geoengineering
Longtermism
Hear This Idea - Guive Assadi on Whether Humanity Will Choose Its Future
Jim Buhler - Why we may expect our successors not to care about suffering
The Maastricht Principles on the Human Rights of Future Generations
Future Academy - Successes, Challenges, and Recommendations to the Community
AI Safety
For more regular in depth updates I recommend the AI Safety Newsletter from the Center for AI Safety.
OpenAI - Introducing Superalignment
Daniel Filan podcast discussing Superalignment with Jan Leike
Zvi on Superalignment
xAI has been launched, aiming to understand the true nature of the universe (advised by Dan Hendrycks from CAIS)
Jason Crawford - Will AI inevitably seek power?
Frontier AI Regulation: Managing Emerging Risks to Public Safety
Stephen McAleese - An Overview of the AI Safety Funding Situation
John Wentworth - Alignment Grantmaking is Funding-Limited Right Now
Gwern - Douglas Hofstadter changes his mind on Deep Learning & AI risk?
Omega - An Introduction to Critiques of prominent AI safety organizations
What do XPT forecasts tell us about AI risk?
Dušan D. Nešić - AI Safety Hub Serbia - priority to citizens from countries like Russia and China
CAIS - Modeling the impact of AI safety field-building programs
AI Governance
DeepMind - Exploring institutions for global AI governance
OpenAI - Moving AI governance forward
China’s government released new rules governing generative AI
Greg Colbourn - Thoughts on the UN Security Council meeting on AI
Divyansh Kaushik and Matt Korda - Panic about AI risk could lead to the wrong kind of regulation
Zvi with observations of Anthropic and their corporate structure
Biden-Harris Administration Secures Voluntary Commitments from Leading Artificial Intelligence Companies to Manage the Risks Posed by AI
80,000 Hours podcast with Markus Anderljung on how to regulate cutting-edge AI models
UK Governance
Jack Clark - What should the UK’s £100 million Foundation Model Taskforce do?
Ben Garfinkel & Lennart Heim - What Should the Global Summit on AI Safety Try to Accomplish?
Andrea Miotti - Priorities for the UK Foundation Models Taskforce
Jess Whittlestone on what the UK government needs to do if it wants to establish itself as a leader in global AI governance
AI Communication
Nintil - The situational awareness assumption in AI risk discourse, or why people should chill
Dylan Matthews - AI is supposedly the new nuclear weapons — but how similar are they, really?
80,000 Hours podcast with Ezra Klein on existential risk from AI and what DC could do about it
Andrew Critch on having empathy and respect for AI professionals who have argued human extinction from AI is morally okay or good
AI in the Media
Ezra Klein interview with Demis Hassabis
Samin - A transcript of a TED talk by Eliezer Yudkowsky
Dylan Matthews spending time at Anthropic as they attempt to make a safe AI company
The Economist - Yoshua Bengio argues that the risk of catastrophe is real enough that action is needed now
The Spectator - James W. Phillips and Eliezer Yudkowsky in conversation
Progress, Metascience and Institutional Decision Making
Macroscience is a new newsletter dedicated to advancing the development of macroscientific theory, policy, and strategy
The Metascience Working Group has launched Sabbaticals in Service, aimed at fostering the exchange of ideas between academics and federal agencies
Nicholas Welch and Jordan Schneider - OpenAI: How Do They Do It? Lessons from Jiu-Jitsu Innovation
Matt Clancy - How to Impede Technological Progress
Jamshid Sourati & James A. Evans - Accelerating science with human-aware AI
Stuart Buck - Science Funders and High-Risk Research
Other Causes
Juan Cambeiro & Brian Potter - Indoor Air Quality Is the Next Great Public Health Challenge
CSER - Safely advancing a spacefaring humanity with AI
Yannick Muehlhaeuser - Risks from Bad Space Governance
James Ozden, Cathy Rogers & Ruud Wouters - Social Change and Protests
Vox covering the 11,000 person Psychedelic Science conference in Colorado
Nature - Australia to prescribe MDMA and psilocybin for PTSD and depression
Time - More effective weight loss drugs may be coming
Our World in Data with an updated post on homicides
Stories
Aaron Gertler - Recovering from Rejection
Leah Libresco Sargeant on EA from a virtue ethicist perspective
Yulia - The Seeker’s Game – Vignettes from the Bay
Devin Kalish - Some Observations on Alcoholism
Kirsten - Short bios of 17 "senior figures" in EA
Amber Dawn - Juan B. García Martínez on tackling many causes at once and his journey into EA
Productivity and Self Help
Paul Graham - How to do great work
80,000 Hours podcast with Hannah Boettcher on the mental health challenges that come with trying to have a big impact
Edmo Gamelin, Inga & John Drummond - Boost your Mental Health – Announcing our Summer Program
Tee - Coaching matchmaking is now open
Emily & Inga - 2023 EA Mental Health & Productivity Survey Results
Other Links
Gregory Lewis with an update to the 80,000 Hours article - How many lives does a doctor save?
Luis Mota Freitas - Some thoughts on quadratic funding
EconTalk podcast with Erik Hoel on Consciousness, Free Will and the Limits of Science
A guide to visiting New York City for people interested in EA
Giving What We Can now has members in 100 countries worldwide
Elliot Davies - Consider Earning Less
Adam Binks - Fatebook: the fastest way to make and track predictions
Luis Mota Freitas - Why is EA so enthusiastic about forecasting?
Teo Ajantaival - Minimalist views of wellbeing
Jeff Kaufman - Accidentally Load Bearing
Good News
25 countries have halved multidimensional poverty within 15 years, including 415 million people exiting poverty in India
First malaria vaccine to be rolled out in 12 African countries with 18 million doses
Childhood immunisation begins recovery after COVID-19 backslide
Ghana parliament votes to abolish death penalty
Cambodia - maternal mortality rate has dropped from 810 per 100,000 births in 2008 to 154 per 100,000 births in 2021-2022
Sydney, Australia, almost completely eliminates HIV transmission in global first