Top Posts
Open Philanthropy - Our Progress in 2023 and Plans for 2024
Ben Williamson & Sarah Eustis-Guthrie - Maternal Health Initiative is Shutting Down
Richard Y Chappell - EA "Worldviews" Need Rethinking
Ambitious Impact - Combined Application - combined application - charity entrepreneurship, research and for-profit programs - 14th April
Denmark is entering into a collaboration with NVIDIA to establish a national centre for AI innovation [led by the Novo Nordisk Foundation and the Export and Investment Fund of Denmark]
Virtual Events
2nd April - A Day in the Life of an Alt.Protein Supply Chain Manager - Talist
25th April - Think like a consultant: How to maximise your ROI on charitable impact - One for the World
29th April - 23rd June - Introductory EA Program - Apply by April 7th
29th April - 23rd June - In-Depth EA Program - Apply by April 7th
2nd May - GWWC Online: May
27th May - 14th July - The Precipice Reading Group - Apply by May 5th
Conferences
13th-14th April - EAGxAustin
26-28th April EAGxNordics
18th-19th May - EA for Christians Conference in D.C.
31st May - 2nd June - EAG: London
3rd June - AI, Animals, and Digital Minds Conference
5th-7th July - EAGxUtrecht
13-15th September - EAGxBerlin
1st-3rd November - EAG Boston
Meta
Rethink Priorities - Updates on Community Health Survey Results
Joey - The current limiting factor for new charities [early stage funding]
Sarah Weiler - Critique of the notion that impact follows a power-law distribution
Review of EA Global Bay Area 2024 (Global Catastrophic Risks)
Nuño Sempere - Unflattering aspects of Effective Altruism
Vasco Grilo - Cost-effectiveness of The Introductory EA Program and 80,000 Hours’ 1-on-1 program
A spreadsheet breakdown of Open Philanthropy grants to date
Effective Giving
Charity Navigator rethinking the focus on overheads
GWWC asking Londoners how rich they think they were compared to the rest of the world
Effectief Geven has been launched in Belgium
Peter Singer - The Competitive Edge of Doing Good [business giving]
Effective Long-term Sadaqah (Islamic Charity)
Kyle Smith - The Lack of EA in US Private Foundations
JD Bauman - Effective Giving Projects That Have Been Tried Among Christians
Kevin Starr - Trust-based philanthropy shouldn’t mean blind faith
The Life You Can Save surpassed $100m in donations since its inception in 2013
TLYCS have updated their charity evaluation framework and cause funds
Marcus Daniell is back for his last year of [tennis] tour and is donating 50% of his prize money, you can pledge an amount per point he wins
Careers
James Newport
Civil Service Career Strategy: Rise or Specialise
Behaviours: Making Effective Applications to the Civil Service
Probably Good - Communications: A Guide to High-Impact Careers
EA Consulting Network - Navigating Value Drift as a High-Income Professional
Clearer Thinking podcast with Benjamin Hilton [80,000 Hours] on impactful careers
Applications Open for ILINA 3.0 - Apply by April 12th (designed for undergrads and recent graduates from Africa)
Andy Masley - Resources on US policy careers
Joris P - Personal fit is different from the thing that you already like
Michel - I’m glad I joined an experienced, 20+ person organisation
Jess Smith - Writing about my job: Operations Specialist
Organisation Updates
EA Philippines Needs Your Help - Fundraising post
Hire the CEA Online team for software development & consulting
EA Sweden’s Impact 2023, Plans for 2024, and Current Funding Gap
Zach Robinson (chief executive of CEA) on SBF and EA
Videos on the world’s most pressing problems, by 80,000 Hours
The Wytham Abbey Project is closing
Crowdsourced Overview of Funding for Regional Community Building Orgs
Announcing Unfinished Impact: Give your abandoned projects a second chance
Grants
Open Philanthropy added 46 grants for $94m to their database
$45.8m - Global Health & Development
$20m - International Rescue Committee – Treatment of Malnutrition (2021)
$4m - Kyoto University - Reproductive Biology Research
$21.9m - Global Catastrophic Risks Capacity Building
$10m - Effective Altruism Funds
$3.1m - Global Priorities Institute
$20m - Animal Welfare
$13.2m - Anima International
$2m - Shrimp Welfare Project
$4.4m - Potential Risks from Advanced AI
$2.9m - Massachusetts Institute of Technology — AI Trends and Impacts Research
$1m - Harvard University — AI Interpretability, Controllability, and Safety Research
$1.1m - Innovation Policy
$870k - Land Use Reform
Global Development
For more in depth updates I also write the Global Development & EA newsletter.
US Congress agrees to fund global anti-HIV program PEPFAR
GiveWell - What we fund, #1: We fund many opportunities outside our top charities
Sophie Gulliver and Tom Drake - The $1 Trillion Paradox: Why Reforming Research Publishing Should Be a Global Priority
Max Roser - Why is improving agricultural productivity crucial to ending global hunger and protecting the world’s wildlife?
Development RCTs Are Good Actually
India eliminates extreme poverty
The World Happiness Report was released
UNICEF have released the latest data on under-five child mortality - The annual number of under-five deaths has fallen to 4.9 million in 2022. The report reveals that more children are surviving today than ever before, with the global under-5 mortality rate declining by 51 per cent since 2000.
Animal Welfare
For more comprehensive animal news I recommend Impactful Animal Advocacy.
Bryant Research - The £2 billion NHS Windfall: Why Meat Reduction Matters
How I Learned to Love Shrimp podcast with Jayasimha Nuggehalli
Ask Me Anything with Animal Charity Evaluators
Joey - AIM Animal Initiatives
Léa Guttmann - Newly launched Humane Slaughter Initiative (for shrimp)
Virginie Simoneau-Gilbert & Jonathan Birch - The dangers of AI farming
Tälist have relaunched AltProtein.Jobs to help people find career opportunities
Earth Fund announces $60m to establish Bezos Centers for Sustainable Protein
Hazo - Two Concrete Ways to Help Feeder Rodents
Tessa - Victory for Octopus in Washington State
Peter Singer has released a documentary presenting the life and legacy of the animal rights activist Henry Spira
Julia Wise - Stories from the origins of the animal welfare movement
80,000 Hours podcast with Bob Fischer on comparing the welfare of humans, chickens, pigs, octopuses, bees and more
Bella - Killing the moths
Research summary: farmed cricket welfare
Biosecurity
GCBR Organisation Updates - my recommendation for updates on biosecurity
GCBR updates from 1Day Sooner, Blueprint Biosecurity, CLTR, CSR, Effective Giving, IFP, CHS, SecureBio and UNIDIR
CLTR - How the UK Government should address the misuse risk from AI-enabled biological tools
UN Youth for Biosecurity Fellowship - 5th April deadline
The Pathogens Project - A Framework for Tomorrow's Pathogen Research
ChinaTalk spoke with Jason Kelly (NSC on Emerging Biotechnology), Michelle Rozo and Chris Miller on China’s biotech ambitions
Nature - Could AI-designed proteins be weaponised? Scientists lay out safety guidelines
A second strain of flu could be eradicated
Emissions & CO2 Removal
The CO2 Emissions in 2023 report finds that clean energy growth has limited the rise in global emissions, with 2023 registering an increase of 1.1%
Vaclav Smil - Halfway Between Kyoto and 2050: Zero Carbon Is a Highly Unlikely Outcome
Methane emissions from the energy sector remained near a record high in 2023
By some estimates, enhanced rock weathering could remove up to 2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide per year
Singapore to have world’s largest ocean-based carbon dioxide removal plant
Environment
Giving Green's 2023 impact report - influenced ~$11.2m, up from $3m in 2022
Interview with Tyler Cowen on climate change
European Investment Bank president backs nuclear power
US electrical grid planners have doubled their forecast for how much more power will be needed in the next five years
Our World in Data - More people care about climate change than you think
AI Safety
For more regular updates I recommend the AI Safety Newsletter.
Dylan Matthews - Why can’t anyone agree on how dangerous AI will be?
Alex Turner - Many arguments for AI x-risk are wrong
FLI Podcast - Katja Grace on the Largest Survey of AI Researchers
The risks of expanding the definition of ‘AI safety’
CAIS - Measuring and Reducing Hazardous Knowledge in LLMs
Eric Drexler [with a new substack] - How to harness powerful AI
Chi - AI things that are perhaps as important as human-controlled AI
Benjamin Hilton - Preventing an AI-related catastrophe
Zershaaneh Qureshi - Timelines to Transformative AI: an investigation
Ben Millwood - Can the AI afford to wait?
Cody Fenwick - The case for taking your technical expertise to the field of AI policy
David Thorstad on how AI safety efforts may be distracting from other issues
Adam Gleave - More people getting into AI safety should do a PhD
Results from an Adversarial Collaboration on AI Risk
Hear This Idea podcast - Joe Carlsmith on Scheming AI
AI Governance
Jordan Schneider - The Future of AI Diplomacy: Can The State Department grok AI?
GovAI - Goals for the Second AI Safety Summit
Americans for Responsible Innovation launched saying that AI can be regulated using templates from other industries
Bill Anderson-Samways - Responsible Scaling: Comparing Government Guidance and Company Policy
UN General Assembly adopts resolution on AI
Time - US Must Move ‘Decisively’ to Avert ‘Extinction-Level’ Threat From AI, Government-Commissioned Report Says
AI in China
China Talk - Matt Clifford: AI Policy + China Competition
China and the Middle East: A Strategic Convergence in AI
Nancy Yu - AI takes from China’s elite at Two Sessions on AI: Strategy, Security, and Sovereignty
China x AI Reference List
AI Safety in China - Foreign Minister on global AI governance, state-backed think tank on AI x bio and high-level government attention to AI
FAR AI - Leading global AI scientists met in Beijing for the second International Dialogue on AI Safety
AI Around the World
NBER - Scenarios for the Transition to AGI [outputs and wages]
Apurba Kundu - Keeping up with AI- India's place in the world
Technical AI Safety Conference in Tokyo - April 5th - 6th
Dylan Matthews - How AI could explode the economy
The New Yorker - Among the A.I. Doomsayers
Improving Institutions
Statecraft - How to Recruit Iraqi Weapons Scientists [building civilian science]
Jano Costard - Can we implement learnings from Fast Grants in public institutions that face different rules? We tried with the Challenge program at the German Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation, SPRIND, and succeeded
Santi Ruiz - How to Fix the State Department
Progress, Innovation & Metascience
AI identified 23 promising materials from 32 million candidates to help create a new type of battery
Ozempic lowered the risk of kidney disease progression, major cardiac events and death by 24% in diabetic patients with chronic kidney disease
Innovation Growth Lab - Unpicking the productivity puzzle – What have we learnt from the UK’s Business Basics Programme?
Tim Hwang - Progress Deferred: Lessons From mRNA Vaccine Development
Stuart Buck - When funding agencies ask for high-impact research, that can be the very thing that prevents high-impact research
Matt Clancy - Training enhances the value of new technology
Google launched a global competition to find real-world use cases for quantum computing with a $5m prize
Longtermism
Nick Bostrom’s new book, “Deep Utopia”, has been released
The William Temple Foundation Podcast with episodes including Richard Fisher on deep time and Cecil Abungu on longtermism and african perspectives
Will Aldred - Long Reflection Reading List
Christianity and Longtermism workshop in DC on May 17
Summary: Longtermism, Aggregation, and Catastrophic Risk (Emma J. Curran)
Forecasting
Molly Hickman - How Not To Predict The Future
Podcast: Is Forecasting a Promising EA Cause Area?
Open Nuclear Network held a workshop aimed at forecasting the developments in North Korea's nuclear programmes
Predict which new EA cause area will go mainstream
Approaching Human-Level Forecasting with Language Models
Other Causes
Arden Koehler - Particularly neglected causes you could work on
Vasco Grilo - Supervolcanoes tail risk has been exaggerated?
Rhodri Davies - Philanthropy and the Quest for Eternal Life
80,000 Hours with Laura Deming on the science that could keep us healthy in our 80s and beyond
Beyond Steel Tanks - How can Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly scale production of their weight loss drugs
Statista - Worldwide Decline of Freedom Outweighs Improvements
Haydn Belfield - What Oppenheimer gets right and wrong about the threat of nuclear weapons
80,000 Hours - Christian Ruhl on why we’re entering a new nuclear age - and how to reduce the risks
Rumtin Sepasspour & Courtney Tee - To prevent global catastrophe, governments must first admit there’s a problem
José Luis Ricón - Making Cells Young
Podcast with Jeff Sebo - Should we widen our moral circles to include animals, insects, and AIs?
Stories & EA Around the World
Graham Nelson - Sitting down with the Hankook-ilbo this week to discuss AMF Korea and our hopes to enlist the generosity of the Korean people in the fight against malaria
Lotte G - There and back again: reflections from leaving EA (and returning)
Joris P - Ways in which I’m not living up to my EA values
Effektiv Altruisme NTNU had their 10 year anniversary ball
John Michael Bridge on the one year anniversary of committing to giving 10%
Emma Cameron - Running 200 miles for New Incentives
Liv Boeree interviewing Marcus Daniell
Jeroen Melman on why he gives
John Cena recommending unconditional cash transfers in his latest comedy
Other Links
James Özden - How can activists understand if their tactics are working?
Nature - Decades-long bet on consciousness ends — and it’s philosopher 1, neuroscientist 0
Christian Tarsney, Teruji Thomas & William MacAskill - Moral Decision-Making Under Uncertainty
Wired interview with Elie Hassenfeld on GiveWell
Yanni Kyriacos - Why I worry about about EA leadership, explained through two completely made-up LinkedIn profiles
Lizka - Focusing on bad criticism is dangerous to your epistemics
Igor - Failed promises and disrespect from the EA Infrastructure Fund
Jamie B - How Educational Courses Help Build Fields: Lessons from AI Safety Fundamentals
Ariel Simnegar - The Scale of Fetal Suffering in Late-Term Abortions
Carlo: uncertainty analysis in Google Sheets
Effective language-learning for people interested in EA
Stan Pinsent - This is why people are reluctant to write on the EA Forum
Michelle Hutchinson - Friendship as a sacred value
Teddy Schleifer - Dustin Moskovitz, EA, his meeting with Joe Biden, plans for the 2024 election, and his beef with Marc Andreessen over AI
Peter Singer has started a Substack - Bold Reasoning
80,000 Hours podcast - Spencer Greenberg on causation without correlation, money and happiness ,lightgassing, hype vs value and more
Good News
The Atlantic - The cystic-fibrosis breakthrough - In the 2000s patients could expect to survive to 35. Today, with new treatments, they can expect to survive to 82.5
NBER - Inequality Within Countries is Falling
Maharashtra sees 11% drop in child mortality in 4 years
The maternal mortality ratio in Nepal has declined from 536 per 100,000 live births in 1996 to 151 by 2021