2023 January EA Updates
Top Posts
Patrick McKenzie - Some observations from an EA-adjacent charitable effort
Jaime Sevilla - The Spanish-Speaking EA community is awesome
Simon M - StrongMinds should not be a top-rated charity (yet)
Surbhi B, Mo Putera, Varun Agr & Am Aristizabal - EA career guide for people from LMICs
Katja Grace - Let's think about slowing down AI
Jakub Stencel & Weronika Zurek - Why Anima International suspended the campaign to end live fish sales in Poland
Shruti Rajagopalan looking at the trade off between legibility and complexity in evaluating philanthropic efforts
Presenting: 2022 Incubated Charities (Charity Entrepreneurship)
Shakeel Hashim - Good things that happened in EA this year
Siobhan M - Learning from non-EAs who seek to do good
Global Events
7th-8th January - EAGx Latin America
24th-26th February - EAG Bay Area - Applications opened
17th-19th March - EAGx Cambridge
21st-23rd April - EAGx Nordics
19th-21st May - EAG London - Applications opened
Virtual Events
8th January - Giving What We Can Meetup
19th January - Effective Giving Open Forum - Organised by GWWC
January to March - EA Virtual Programs - Apply by 22nd January
Meta
Dan Stein - Is Headhunting within EA Appropriate?
Jeroen W - Why did CEA buy Wytham Abbey?
80,000 Hours podcast with Marcus Davis on founding and leading Rethink Priorities
Tom Gardiner with a comment on humour in EA
Ada-Maaria Hyvärinen - Things I didn’t feel that guilty about before getting involved in effective altruism
Linch with a shortform suggesting that CEA and the EA community should decrease the bar for taking action against bad actors
Jeff Kaufman - CEA Disambiguation
Ollie Base - We should say more than “x-risk is high”
Am Aristizabal - A few more relevant categories to think about diversity in EA
Maya D - I’m a 22-year-old woman involved in effective altruism. I’m sad, disappointed, and scared
Isobel P - SoGive Grants: a promising pilot. Our reflections and payout report
Michael PJ - Keep EA high-trust
Arepo - Revisiting EA's media policy
New EA Forum content (including comments and shortform posts) will be published under CC-BY
Hear This Idea podcast with Dewi Erwan on BlueDot Impact and Scaling High-Impact Organisations
Benjamin Hilton - Why being open to changing our minds is especially important right now
Events
Elika & Vaidehi Agarwalla - EAGx application community norms we'd like to see
Eli Nathan, Ollie Base & Amy Labenz - Update on spending for CEA-run events
Vaidehi Agarwalla & Elika - Improving EA events: start early & invest in content and stewardship
Venkatesh on their experience of EAGx Berkeley
Kelsey Piper on her experience attending EAGxBerkeley
Gemma Paterson with a writeup of an EA Taskmaster game she ran
The ILINA Fellowship with an update from Kenya
New Projects
Tegan - Announcing the Forecasting Research Institute
There is a new forecasting subforum on the EA Forum
Announcing: Audio narrations of EA Forum posts
Nikos - Creating a database for base rates
Jona & Max Negele - Introducing cFactual - a new, EA-aligned consultancy
Ines & Pearl - Announcing the EA Merch Store!
Michael Noetel - Seeking feedback on a Massively Open Online Course draft plan: Skills for Doing Good Better
Dewi Erwan, Jamie Bernardi, Will Saunter - Announcing BlueDot Impact
John Salter - Introducing Resolute: Free Behaviour Change Coaching for people interested in EA
Deena Englander - Introducing WorkStream EA: Providing support, training, and consulting for EA organizational development
Donating
Jeff Kaufman - Our 2022 Giving
Jack Malde - Against philanthropic diversification
GiveWell - Staff members’ personal donations for giving season 2022
Jaime Sevilla - Supporting Projects in the Spanish-Speaking Effective Altruism Community
Movement building
Sean Lawrence & Sarah Pomeranz - A Summary of Profession-Based Community Building
Ben Kuhn - Some notes on common challenges building EA orgs
Vaidehi Agarwalla - Observations of community building in Asia
Nathan Young - What specific changes should we as a community make to the effective altruism community? (with 70+ answers)
Vaidehi Agarwalla - A sketch of leader and member-organised movements
Freedom and Utility - EA is probably undergoing "Evaporative Cooling" right now
Josh C Morrison - If EA Community-Building Could Be Net-Negative, What Follows?
Gergo Gaspar - Community Building from scratch: The first year of EA Hungary
JP Addison - On Epistemics and Communities
EA landscape in the UK
Am Aristizabal - Top down interventions that could increase participation and impact of Low and Middle Income Countries in EA
Critiques
Sven Rone - The Effective Altruism movement is not above conflicts of interest
David Thorstad - New blog: Some doubts about effective altruism
Jack Malde - Concerns over EA’s possible neglect of experts
A libertarian socialist’s view on how EA can improve
Alisha Andomeda - Why we’re getting the Fidelity Model wrong
Jeroen W - The case for transparent spending
Ludwig Bald - Bad Omens in current EA Governance
FTX Related
Dylan Matthews - How EA let Sam Bankman-Fried happen
Richard Y Chappell - Reflections on Vox's "How effective altruism let SBF happen"
"I'm less approving of the EA community now than before the FTX collapse"
Duncan Sabien - 'I'm as approving of the EA community now as before the FTX collapse'
Titotal - Cryptocurrency is not all bad. We should stay away from it anyway
Organisation Updates
Max Dalton, Angelina Li & Oscar Howie - CEA's work in 2022
CEEALAR: 2022 Update
SoGive's 2023 plans + funding request
EA London rebranding to EA UK
Careers
Monitoring & Evaluation Specialists – a new career path profile from Probably Good
Jarrah Bloomfield with an 80,000 Hours career review on Information Security
80,000 Hours wants to see more people trying out recruiting
Ben West - Entrepreneurship ETG Might Be Better Than 80,000 Hours Thought
High Impact Professionals have created a Talent Directory
Veterinary Medicine - career profile from Probably Good
A post with resources at the intersection of EA and the practice/study of Law
Prioritisation Researcher - career profile from Probably Good
Transitioning from Consulting to EA is easier than you may think: An interview with Paul Ziesche
EA Finance are looking for volunteers
Grants
Open Philanthropy have made 47 grants recently, with a value of $59 million
$15,600,000 - Global Development
$4,400,000 - Evidence Action - In-Line Chlorination in Malawi
$2,900,000 - Malaria No More UK - Fundraising and Advocacy
$1,900,000 - UC Berkeley - In-Line Water Chlorination Devices
$1,400,000 - Center for Global Development - Staff for USAID Chief Economist
$1,100,000 - Center for Global Development Europe - Education Research
$1,100,000 - University of Georgia - Malaria Vaccine Research
$650,000 - Mercy Corps - Seasonal Migration RCT in Niger
$15,000,000 - Potential Risks from Advanced AI
$12,600,000 - Animal Welfare
$10,300,000 - Accountability Board - Advocacy Campaigns
$9,900,000 - Longtermism & Effective Altruism Community
$4,900,000 - Centre for Effective Altruism - Infrastructure Fund Regranting
$2,000,000 - BlueDot Impact
$1,000,000 - Non-trivial Pursuits
$4,900,000 - Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness
$3,200,000 - Columbia University - Far-UVC Sterilization Research
$1,200,000 - Biosecurity Funding for Individuals - Work and Study Support
$700,000 - Land Use Reform
Survival and Flourishing Fund with grant recommendations for 2022
Global Development
OECD donors spent $185.9 billion in 2021, 8.5% higher than 2020
Lant Pritchett - 'Rely on the Rigorous Evidence' is bad advice
GiveWell - The winners of the Change Our Mind Contest - and some reflections
Mathias KB - Why development aid is a really exciting field
Trudeau signals shift away from humanitarian aid toward financing infrastructure. Canada has earmarked $6.6 billion for aid annually
Session recordings from the Effective Development Co-operation Summit
Devex looking at what's in the US budget for foreign aid
Karthik Tadepalli - New intervention: paying farmers to not burn crops
A can of worms: the non-significant effect of deworming on happiness in the Kenyan Life Panel Survey
Stephen Clare - Visualizing the development gap
Mathias Kirk Bonde - Advancing antivenom
Joy Bittner & Anita Kaslin announcing Vida Plena, aiming to build strong mental health in low-income and refugee communities
Aspen, CEPI and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation expand commitments to improve access to vaccines in Africa
Anthony Kalulu - EA is worse than traditional philanthropy in the way it excludes the extreme poor in the global south
Our World in Data - A history of the eradication of smallpox
Mathias KB, Jacob Wood & Joanna (Asia) Wiaterek - Introducing the Center for Effective Aid Policy (CEAP)
Trevor Woolley - GiveWell’s Moral Weights Underweight the Value of Transfers to the Poor
Dean Spears - r.i.c.e.'s neonatal lifesaving partnership is funded by GiveWell; a description of what we do
Animal Welfare
Brian K - If We Don’t End Factory Farming Soon, It Might Be Here Forever
James Ozden - Animal Advocacy Digest #2
For funders, sign up to learn more from Good Growth about Asian animal welfare projects seeking funding
David van Beveren - Announcing WildAnimalSuffering.org, a new resource launched for the cause
Max Carpendale - Does Sentience Legislation help animals?
Lewis Bollard - Big Wins for Farm Animals This Decade
Michael Dello - Longtermism and Animal Farming Trajectories
Robert Y - Working with the Beef Industry for Chicken Welfare
Animal Advocacy Africa’s 2022 Review - Our Achievements and 2023 Strategy
Bob Fischer - Octopuses (Probably) Don't Have Nine Minds
Gene-edited hens may end cull of billions of chicks
Animal Advocacy Careers are running the Introduction to Animal Advocacy online course again
Biosecurity
Richard Williamson - Pandemic prevention as fire-fighting
Patrick McKenzie - The story of VaccinateCA
The Pandemic Fund prepares for first round of funding with $1.6 billion in pledges to finance projects
The International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science is launching, aiming to reduce emerging biological risks
Alexandra Malikova and Nikki Aluquin - Pandemic Preparedness: Stakeholders who influence politicians in the UK
Air Safety to Combat Global Catastrophic Biorisks
Jenny Lei Ravelo - Why the world isn’t ready for the next pandemic
Existential & Catastrophic Risks
Survival and Flourishing Fund Grant Round Application, deadline 30th January
Nandini Shiralkar - Announcing Existential Risk Alliance
80,000 Hours podcast with Jeffrey Lewis on the most common misconceptions about nuclear weapons
Podcast with Vincent Boulanin on the dangers of AI in nuclear weapons systems
Global Catastrophic Risk Institute annual report for 2022
Jaime Sevilla - Join Riesgos Catastróficos Globales
Improving Institutions & Metascience
Metascience conference, May 2023 in Washington DC
Paul Niehaus & Heidi Williams - Developing the science of science
Stuart Buck - Good Science Project Update for Year-End 2022
Spencer Greenberg - Importance Hacking: a major (yet rarely-discussed) problem in science
Transparent Replications is a new project from Clearer Thinking seeking to celebrate high quality social science while shifting incentives toward more replicable, reliable methods
Michael Story - Why I generally don't recommend internal prediction markets or forecasting tournaments to organisations
Ian David Moss - Introducing the Effective Institutions Project Innovation Fund, a new regranting option for donors
Progress Studies
Nick Corvino - I went to the Progress Summit. Here’s What I Learned
Jason Crawford - Think wider about the root causes of progress
Patrick McKenzie, CEO of VaccinateCA, with an Ask Me Anything on the Progress Forum
Environment
2022 updates to Giving Green's approach and recommendations
Rethink Priorities - The REDD+ framework for reducing deforestation and mitigating climate change: overview, evaluation, and cost-effectiveness
Vasco Grilo, Hanzhang Ren, Melissa Bedinger - Tree planting cost-effectiveness
Bezos Earth reveals $110M in new grants in climate and reforestation
Hear This Idea Podcast with Greg Nemet on Technological Change and How Solar Became Cheap
Hannah Ritchie speaking to Russ Roberts on EconTalk
Alex Trembath - On the Differences Between Ecomodernism and Effective Altruism
Hannah Ritchie - Eating local is still not a good way to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet
Longtermism
Colum Lynch with an article on how longtermism intersects with the UN
Andrew Critch - Survival and Flourishing Fund Speculation Grants as an expedited funding source
Future Matters longtermism newsletter #6
Toby Crisford - Should strong longtermists really want to minimize existential risk?
Longtermism Fund: December 2022 Grants Report
Center on Long-Term Risk - Annual Review & Fundraiser 2022
Finland hosted the World Summit of the Committees of the Future
Jon Leighton - Promoting compassionate longtermism
Linch - What Rethink Priorities General Longtermism Team Did in 2022, and Updates in Light of the Current Situation
Ollie Base - Deep Hope
Tom Barnes & Christian R - How Founders Pledge's Patient Philanthropy Fund and Global Catastrophic Risks Fund Work Together
Longtermism Panel Discussion - 14th January - Organised by EA for Christians
Artificial Intelligence
Paul Christiano - AI alignment is distinct from its near-term applications
Rob Bensinger - A challenge for AGI organizations, and a challenge for readers
Séb Krier - AI from Superintelligence to ChatGPT
Holden Karnofsky - AI Safety Seems Hard to Measure
Matthew Barnett - Slightly against aligning with neo-luddites
Our World in Data with an overview of AI
Rob Bensinger & Nate Soares - Thoughts on AGI organizations and capabilities work
Isabella Duan - Race to the Top: Rethink Benchmark-Making for Safe AI Development
80,000 Hours podcast with Richard Ngo on large language models, OpenAI, and striving to make the future go well
Marius Hobbhahn - The next decades might be wild
Holden Karnofsky - High-level hopes for AI alignment
Vael Gates - What AI Safety Materials Do ML Researchers Find Compelling?
Jay Bailey - Reflections on my 5-month AI alignment upskilling grant
Ben Cottier - Understanding the diffusion of large language models
Holden Karnofksy - Racing through a minefield: the AI deployment problem
February to April - AGI Safety Fundamentals: Alignment Course - Apply by 5th January
AI Policy
Sam Clarke & Di Cooke - The ‘Old AI’: Lessons for AI governance from early electricity regulation
Simeon C - AGI Timelines in Governance: Different Strategies for Different Timeframes
Jomg Monnet - Main paths to impact in EU AI Policy
Sam Hilton - Concrete actionable policies relevant to AI safety (written 2019)
Alexander Saeri - Concrete actions to improve AI governance: the behaviour science approach
Other Causes
Freedom and Utility - List of cause areas that EA should potentially prioritise more
Oscar Delaney - Flooding is not a promising cause area - shallow investigation
Ariel Simnegar - A Case for Voluntary Abortion Reduction
Our World in Data with an overview of biodiversity
Pew Research - Social Media Seen as Mostly Good for Democracy Across Many Nations, But U.S. is a Major Outlier
The UN, WHO and the World Organisation for Animal Health launches a new platform to tackle antimicrobial resistance threat to human and animal health and ecosystems
Stories
Giving What We Can member profile - Meera Bradley
Quadratic Reciprocity - How my thinking about doing good changed over the years
Emily Dardaman on AI safety, EA Consultant Network retreats, and advice for young consultants
Angelina Li - Savoring my moral circle
John Michael Bridge on why he is committing to give 10% of income to organisations fighting global poverty
EAGxRotterdam with a short after movie
Moral Philosophy
Theron Pummer - The Rules of Rescue - book out now
Magnus Vinding - Beware frictions from altruistic value differences
Joe Carlsmith - Against meta-ethical hedonism
Jon Leighton - New book: The Tango of Ethics: Intuition, Rationality and the Prevention of Suffering
James Ozden - What you prioritise is mostly moral intuition
Richard Y Chappell - Saving Lives vs Creating Lives
Paper summary: The paralysis argument (William MacAskill and Andreas Mogensen)
Bob Fischer, Adam Shriver, Michael St Jules - Do Brains Contain Many Conscious Subsystems? If So, Should We Act Differently?
Productivity
Nicole Janeway - Personal Finance for people interested in EA
Jonas Vollmer - Consider radical changes without freaking out
Ben Kuhn - Staring into the abyss as a core life skill
Sam Hilton - Example of a personal ethics, values and causes review
Other Links
David Goldberg - Recent learnings: exploring a pledge minimum
'Insider EA content' in Gideon Lewis-Kraus's recent New Yorker article
Ben Clifford - Lessons learned from Tyve, an effective giving startup
Hayden Wilkinson - Can an evidentialist be risk-averse?
David Reinstein - MacKenzie Scott's grantmaking data
James Ozden - Radical tactics can increase support for more moderate groups
A message from EA Philippines
Good News
99 good news stories from Future Crunch
Rubella eliminated from Singapore
Vox with 9 breakthroughs in 2022 that give hope for the future
EU Carbon Emissions Drop To 30-Year Lows