2023 September EA Updates
Top Posts
Max Görlitz - Thoughts on far-UVC after working in the field for 8 months
Widespread installation could passively suppress future pandemics before we even learn that an outbreak has occurred, but a lot of work needs to be done
Nadia Montazeri - How can we improve Infohazard Governance in EA Biosecurity?
80,000 Hours podcast with Jan Leike on OpenAI’s massive push to make superintelligence safe in 4 years or less
Stuart Buck - Metascience Since 2012: A Personal History
Nick Laing - Soaking Beans - a cost-effectiveness analysis
Lots of comments on this one
Max Roser - The limits of our personal experience and the value of statistics
Jacob Peacock - Price-, Taste-, and Convenience-Competitive Plant-Based Meat Would Not Currently Replace Meat
Lots of responses including GFI
Aysa Bergal - Reflections on my time on the Long-Term Future Fund
Linch - Select examples of adverse selection in longtermist grantmaking
Dave Banerjee - University EA Groups Need Fixing
Bastian Stern - Update on cause area focus working group
Including survey responses on the future of EA movement building
Conferences
8th-10th September - EAGxBerlin
22nd-24th September - EAGxAustralia
20th-22nd October - EAGxPhilippines
27th-29th October - EAG Boston
Virtual Events
3rd September - Giving What We Can Meetup
5th September - Charity Entrepreneurship: Top ideas talk for 2024
14th September - Fauna Connections - Symposium for animal advocates
30th September - Building Effective Spaces Conference
17-19th November - EAGxVirtual 2023
Fellowships & Programs
Biosecurity Fundamentals: Pandemics Course - Apply by 13th September
Open Philanthropy - The Century Fellowship - 14th September
Operations Fellowship Cohort - 15th September
Horizon Fellowship - Washington DC - 24th September
Charity Entrepreneurship 2024 Incubation Program - 30th September
Future Academy (India edition) - 1st October
Non-Trivial Fellowship for people aged 14-20 - 8th October
Magnificent Grants is a new $100,000 fellowship over two years
Emergent Ventures - there is also a new vertical that supports talent identification projects
Visit Mexico City in January & February to interact with the AI Futures Fellowship
Meta
Request for public input: The EA Handbook
EA Survey 2022: What Helps People Have an Impact and Connect with Other EAs
Eli Nathan - How much do EAGs cost (and why)?
Trammell - Against much financial risk tolerance
Richard Y Chappell - Uncertain Optimizing and Opportunity Costs
Aden - Islam and EA: Some Insights From Scripture and Scholarship
Results from a survey of 400 Christians on EA-related topics
Ashura Batungwanayo & Hayley Martin - Making EA more inclusive, representative, and impactful in Africa
Lizka - Problems with free services for EA projects
C Evans - Taking prioritisation within 'EA' seriously
Yonatan Schoen & Ezrah - Local charity evaluation: Lessons from the "Maximum Impact" Program in Israel
James Odene - The cost of (not) taking marketing seriously
Igor Scaldini - Marketing 101 for EA Organisations
Community Building
Jonas Vollmer - How to fix EA "community building"
Dušan D. Nešić - Learning from Non-EA orgs: Rotary and impact through local communities
Willem Sleegers & David Moss - EA Survey 2022: Community Satisfaction, Retention, and Mental Health
Rockwell - Two Years Community Building, Ten Lessons (Re)Learned
Kaleem - An Elephant in the Community Building room
Careers
Giving What We Can - Seeking founders for new effective giving organisations
80,000 Hours have updated their career guide
Career Conversations Week on the EA Forum (8-15 September)
Elizabeth - A quick take on whether it is always good to encourage people to apply for jobs
Vardev - Register your interest in helping to create advice on ‘quitting your PhD effectively’
High Impact Engineers podcast with Lennart Heim discussing AI compute governance
Jess Smith - Operations management: how I found the right career path for me
Ryan Carey - Should we fund people for more years at a time?
Elizabeth - Get ambitious slowly
80,000 Hours - US policy master’s degrees - Why, when, and how to get them
Huon Porteous - Why many people underrate investigating the problem they work on
Organisation Updates
EA Organisation Updates: August 2023
The Long Term Future Fund and EA Infrastructure Fund are unusually funding-constrained right now
EA Funds organisational update: Open Philanthropy matching and distancing
EA Poland 2023 – the first update
Dr Dan Epstein, Sanjana Kashyap - The Long Game Project updates
Probably Good published a list of impact-focused job-boards
Hiring Retrospective: ERA Fellowship 2023
New Projects
Introducing Pivotal, an essay contest on global problems for high school students
Ozzie Gooen & Slava Matyukhn - Announcing Squiggle Hub
Unjournal: Opportunities for researchers and research-driven practitioners in economics, social science, policy, and impact assessment
Grants
Open Philanthropy have made 1 grant recently for $10m
RAND Corporation — Biosecurity Policy
Longtermism Fund: August 2023 Grants Report
5 grants made with a value of $562,000
Long-Term Future Fund: April 2023 grant recommendations
327 grants were made with a value of $12 million
Manifund: What we're funding (weeks 2-4)
$600k+ committed across 12 projects
Global Development
Foreign aid from OECD donors rose to $204 billion in 2022, up 13.6% in real terms since 2021
13 reasons why remittances are important (in 2022 remittances were $647 billion)
An interview with Coura Sène from Wave (mobile finance), which has 10 million users in 6 countries
A new WHO report highlights that 5.6 billion people are now protected with at least one policy to help save lives from tobacco – five times more than in 2007. They estimate there are 300 million less smokers than there otherwise would have been
Asian Development Bank - Pandemic and inflation push 68 million more in Asia into extreme poverty
The University of Chicago is launching The Market Shaping Accelerator, with faculty directors including Michael Kremer and Rachel Glennerster
Can the world really stop wild polio by the end of 2023?
Ken Opalo - How Ghana escaped the coup trap
NBER reports on a randomised experiment to see whether a lottery incentive could boost bank deposit rates in Mexico
Mark Fabian on a podcast discussing whether we can make the world a 'better' place with behavioural economics
Global Fund announces New Mechanism to increase access to more effective mosquito nets to prevent malaria
IRC report on acting before disaster strikes with anticipatory cash transfers
Rachel DuRose - Half the world is at risk of dengue. Why is there no universal way to prevent it?
Gates Foundation funds 48 Generative AI Projects in low and middle income countries
The Energy Progress Report 2023
The Global Flourishing Study is a five-year longitudinal study including data from 200,000 participants from 22 countries
EA & Global Development
About ‘subjective’ wellbeing and cost-effectiveness analysis in mental health
Emmanuel Ochola & Nick Laing - Health AIM: A mapping tool helping Health providers reach remote rural areas
Four things GiveDirectly got right and wrong sending cash to flood survivors
The Life You Can Save - Partnering with IDinsight’s Dignity Initiative to advance Dignity through Data
Kate Porterfield - Preliminary Analysis of Intervention to Reduce Lead Exposure from Adulterated Turmeric in Bangladesh Shows Cost Benefit of About US$1 per DALY
H Hart & Anna Christina - Empowering Numbers: FEM since 2021
Podcast with Tony Senanayake from Fortify Health on data-driven social impact
Animal Welfare
For a more regular and comprehensive updates of animal news I recommend the Impactful Animal Advocacy newsletter and slack space
Animal Advocacy Careers - You Can Also Help Animals By Earning (More) in Other Career Paths and Donating
Animal Charity Evaluators has rebranded
Karolina Sarek on HILTLS podcast - why you should start a new charity to help animals
Impactful Animal Advocacy - Critiques of EA in animal advocacy
Neil Dullaghan - EU farmed fish policy reform roadmap
William McAuliffe & Adam Shriver - “Dimensions of Pain” workshop: Summary and updated conclusions
Jamie Elsey & David Moss - Influences on individuals adopting vegetarian and vegan diets
HILTLS - Amanda Hungerford on Open Philanthropy's funding for farmed animal welfare
Jack Hancock-Fairs - The Vegan Blindspot: A Presentation on Wild Animal Suffering
EU Commission backs phase-out of animal use in experiments and chemicals tests
ACE announcing their 2023 movement grants, with $811,000 granted to 50 projects
Selena Darlim - Wildlife conservation’s relationship to wild animal welfare
Alternative Foods
Aleph Farms Submits Dossier to Launch Cultivated Beef Steaks in the UK
Linus Pardoe - Why Government should support the UK's plant-based foods sector
Julieta Cardenas - Governments have put $1 billion toward making better meat alternatives. A lot more is needed
Development of a domestic cultivated meat industry has been announced as part of the Malaysia National Biotechnology Policy for 2022 - 2030
First European Application for the Sale of Cultivated Meat
Future Food Finance podcast discussing the state of the cultivated meat market
Future Food-Tech conference is in London on September 28-29th
Plant Based World Expo is in London 15-16th November
Biosecurity
Nucleic Acid Observatory - Predicting Virus Relative Abundance in Wastewater
Pandemic Fund Allocates First Grants (worth $338 million)
UKHSA unveils Vaccine Development and Evaluation Centre in ‘step change’ for UK’s growing vaccine capabilities
Kelsey Piper - It’s time to close the gene synthesis loophole that could lead to a human-made pandemic
Jeff Kaufman - Biosecurity Culture, Computer Security Culture
Helena Group have released a statement on biosecurity in the age of AI
Jonas Sandbrink - ChatGPT could make bioterrorism horrifyingly easy
Long-running ProMED email service for alerting world to disease outbreaks is in trouble
Interview with Katalin Karikó, one of the inventors of mRNA technology
NTI Hosts Congressional Educational Event on Dual-Use Bioscience Oversight
Existential & Catastrophic Risks
Global Shield has launched, aiming to advocate for government policy on global catastrophic risk
Gideon Futerman - Statement on Pluralism in Existential Risk Studies
Riesgos Catastróficos Globales needs funding
The Centre for Long-Term Resilience with thoughts on the UKs updated National Risk Register
The register had large magnitude eruptions and their impacts on the UK recognised for the first time
Nuclear Risks
What do Existential Risk Persuasion Tournament forecasts tell us about nuclear risk?
Matthew Gentzel and Christian Ruhl - It’s time for a new atomic altruism
Sam Harris speaks with Carl Robichaud about the ongoing threat of nuclear war
Michael Hinge - Nuclear winter - Reviewing the evidence, the complexities, and my conclusions
The NTI Nuclear Security Index has been release
Environment
Michael Noetel, Greg S & Obeyesekere - Introducing the Effective Altruism Australia Environment Fund
Hannah Ritchie - Anger, sadness, guilt, hope: on the complex emotions of climate change
Angus Chapman & Desné Masie - Are carbon offsets all they’re cracked up to be?
An unintended test of geoengineering is fueling record ocean warmth
How China is using nuclear power to reduce its carbon emissions
80,000 Hours podcast with Hannah Ritchie on why it makes sense to be optimistic about the environment
Manifest Climate Grants is a fast grants program that awards $25K - $100K to scientists to accelerate their most ambitious bio x climate ideas
India succeeds in reducing emissions rate by 33% over 14 years
Longtermism
Linch, Caleb P & Daniel Eth - What Does a Marginal Grant at LTFF Look Like?
Lizka - “Longtermist causes” is a tricky classification
Why isn't there a charity evaluator for longtermist projects?
Ben Stevenson - How do longtermists respond to 'With a Whimper: Depopulation and Longtermism'?
Michael Plant with a review of What We Owe The Future
2-year review: concluding Simon Institute's inception
Zayn A - Unveiling the Longtermism Framework in Islam: Urging Muslims to Embrace Future-Oriented Values through 'Islamic Longtermism'
Nat Kiilu - Personal Reflections on Longtermism
AI Safety
For more regular in depth updates I recommend the AI Safety Newsletter from the Center for AI Safety
Charbel-Raphaël - Against Almost Every Theory of Impact of Interpretability
Model Organisms of Misalignment: The Case for a New Pillar of Alignment Research
Ajeya Cotra & Kelsey Piper - Language models surprised us - Most experts were surprised by progress recently. There may be more surprises ahead, so experts should register their forecasts now about 2024 and 2025
Anthropic - Frontier Threats Red Teaming for AI Safety
Holden Karnofsky - 3 levels of threat obfuscation
Elteerkers & Allison Duettmann - Launching Foresight Institute’s AI Grant for Underexplored Approaches to AI Safety – Apply for Funding
Patrick L - AI Safety Bounties
John S Wentworth - Alignment Grantmaking is Funding-Limited Right Now
Emilia Javorsky & Hamza Chaudhry - Convergence: Artificial intelligence and the new and old weapons of mass destruction
80,000 Hours podcast with Holden Karnofsky on how AIs might take over even if they’re no smarter than humans, and his four-part play book for AI risk
Nikola - Inflection.ai is a major AGI lab
Leon Lang - We Should Prepare for a Larger Representation of Academia in AI Safety
80,000 Hours podcast with Michael Webb on whether AI will soon cause job loss, lower incomes, and higher inequality—or the opposite
The Foresight Institute podcast with Lewis Hammond, introducing Cooperative AI
AI Governance
Biden-Harris Administration Launches AI Cyber Challenge to Protect America’s Critical Software
Jakob Graabak on giving testimony in the Norwegian Parliament
Bletchley Park to host UK AI Safety Summit in early November. Matt Clifford has been appointed to spearhead this event
Lewis Ho - International Institutions for Advanced AI
Cody Fenwick - What recent events mean for AI governance career paths
Kelsey Piper - Why Meta’s move to make its new AI open source is more dangerous than you think
FLI podcast with Robert Trager on International AI Governance and Cybersecurity at AI Companies
The Centre for Long-Term Resilience - Strengthening Resilience to AI Risk: A guide for UK policymakers
Ed Saperia is launching the Civic AI Observatory
Flynn Devine is launching Recursive Public, hoping to build a community around AI governance (supported with a grant from Open AI)
Thomas Larsen - Introducing the Center for AI Policy
AI Communication
An Overview of Catastrophic AI Risks from CAIS
Victoria Krakovna - When discussing AI risks, talk about capabilities, not intelligence
Yoshua Bengio - Personal and Psychological Dimensions of AI Researchers Confronting AI Catastrophic Risks
Concordia have a newsletter focused on AI safety in China
David Moss & Willem Sleegers - Why some people disagree with the CAIS statement on AI
Jamie Harris - Corporate campaigns work: a key learning for AI Safety
Paul Christiano - Thoughts on sharing information about language model capabilities
Adam David Long - The "public debate" about AI is confusing for the general public and for policymakers because it is a three-sided debate
Jan Brauner & Alan Chan - AI Poses Doomsday Risks—But That Doesn’t Mean We Shouldn’t Talk About Present Harms Too
AI in the Media
Dwarkesh Patel podcast with Dario Amodei
Clearer Thinking podcast - How quickly is AI advancing? And should you be working in the field? (with Danny Hernandez)
Ian Bremmer and Mustafa Suleyman - Can States Learn to Govern AI - Before It’s Too Late?
EconTalk podcast with Zvi Mowshowitz on AI and the Dial of Progress
Progress, Metascience and Institutional Decision Making
The Institute for Replication (I4R) has been launched to improve the credibility of science by systematically reproducing and replicating research findings in leading academic journals
Matt Clancy and Caroline Fry - Geography and What Gets Researched
In Nature - Want to speed up scientific progress? First understand how science policy works
Hear This Idea podcast with Steven Teles on What the Conservative Legal Movement Teaches About Policy Advocacy
Ilan Gur outlined plans for the £800 million UK Advanced Research and Invention Agency
Statecraft is a new newsletter about how policymakers get things done
Kelsey Piper - Is it defamation to point out scientific research fraud?
A paper on scientific discovery in the age of AI
Other Causes
Fırat Akova - Artificially sentient beings: Moral, political, and legal issues
Joel Tan - Deep Report on Hypertension
Jim Buhler - Future technological progress does NOT correlate with methods that involve less suffering
The Global Flourishing Conference has a call for abstracts - 15th September
Dylan Matthews - How “windfall profits” from AI companies could fund a universal basic income
Manifest is a forecasting conference in California, hosted by Manifund
Alex Tabarrok - Left Digit Bias in Medicine
Consciousness in AI: Insights from the Science of Consciousness
Kelsey Piper - We’re bad at predicting the future and there’s no way around it
Emman Naemeka - Why we should fear any bioengineered fungus and give fungi research attention
Spread of Facebook use is not linked to psychological harm, new global study finds
Lukas Finnveden - Implications of evidential cooperation in large worlds
A clinical trial suggests a weight loss drug could help people avoid the world’s leading cause of death (heart disease)
Stories
Niyorurema Pacifique - EA outlook in LMICs: the case of Rwanda
Michel - I saved a kid’s life today
Jennifer Nan on why she chooses to support GiveWell, and what she would want a new potential donor to know
Henry Stanley - Giving gladly, giving publicly
Jason Cotrebil And An EA-Aligned Journey
Harri Besceli - Does EA bring out the best in me?
Patrick Gruban - Getting into an EA-aligned organisation mid-career
Eli Kaufman - My EA Journey
Carmen Csilla Medina on Condor Camp
Productivity and Self Help
Announcing the Clearer Thinking micro-grants program for 2023 - Apply by 1st September
David Althaus & Ewelina Tur - Impact obsession: Feeling like you never do enough good
Julia Wise - When to not trust my feelings
Other Links
Ben Stevenson has started a blog looking at the intersection of UK politics and EA
EA in New York City: Introduction
Leaf with an overview of their recent fellowship
Fundamentals of Global Priorities Research in Economics Syllabus
Edinburgh University now offers a course on global priorities
“How my view on using games for EA has changed”
The Existential Hope podcast with Liv Boeree
Grace Adams, Frances Lorenz and Kirsten discussing what it means to ‘be an Effective Altruist
Joanna (Asia) Wiaterek - “Being an EA” - Dissertation on EA
EA Kampala has launched
Good News
Iraq eliminates trachoma as a public health problem
Europe's hens are now more than 60% cage-free
Bhutan & Timor-Leste eliminate rubella
In India, 16 million less children suffered from stunting in 2022 compared to 2012