2024 January EA Updates
CEA’s next CEO, wins for animals, growth in LMIC's and an expert survey on progress in AI
Top Posts
Effective Ventures updates: FTX settlement and the future of EV (No evidence that anyone at EV was aware of the criminal fraud and several organisations supported by EV are becoming independent legal entities)
Zach Robinson will be CEA’s next CEO
Karthik Tadepalli - What do we really know about growth in LMICs? - Sectoral Transformation
Lewis Bollard - A year of wins for farmed animals
Joey - Altruism sharpens altruism
Erich Grunewald - Attention on AI X-Risk Likely Hasn't Distracted from Current Harms from AI
The 2023 Expert Survey on Progress in AI is out, with 2778 participants
Expected time to human-level performance dropped 1-5 decades since the 2022 survey
Conferences
2nd-4th February - EAG: Bay Area (Global Catastrophic Risks)
16-18th February - EAGx LATAM - Mexico City
18th-19th May - EA for Christians Conference in D.C.
31st May - 2nd June - EAG: London
Fellowships & Programs
AI Safety Fundamentals: Alignment - 10th January
Charity Entrepreneurship - Founders - Effective Giving Incubation - 14th January
ML4Good bootcamp March 2024 - 21st January
Charity Entrepreneurship Research Training Program - 28th January
Meta
Richard Y Chappell - Doing Good Effectively is Unusual
Public Fundraising has Positive Externalities
Vasco Grilo - Should 80,000 Hours be more transparent about how they rank problems and careers?
Shakeel Hashim - EA Wins 2023
Hayley Martin & Ashura Batungwanayo - EA events in Africa Interest Form
Alix Pham - The privilege of native English speakers in reaching high-status, influential positions in EA
Rethink Priorities - Announcing Surveys on Community Health, Causes, and Harassment
Benjamin Todd on the history of 80,000 Hours
Kaleem with a quick take on EA & Zakat
Effective Giving
Bloom Wellbeing Fund is a new donor advised fund aiming to enable high-impact charitable giving with a focus on wellbeing - A project supported by HLI
Suggestions for Individual Donors from Open Philanthropy Staff
Where are the GWWC team donating in 2023?
GiveWell staff members’ personal donations for giving season 2023
Why Effective Giving Incubation?
Winners in the Forum’s Donation Election
Against Malaria Foundation Korea was successfully designated tax-deductible in December, becoming the first charity recommended by GiveWell to be eligible for tax efficient donations in South Korea
Organisation Updates
GWWC Operational Funding Match - run until January 31st
EA Infrastructure Fund's Plan to Focus on Principles-First EA
80,000 Hours spin out announcement and fundraising
GWWC is spinning out of EV
Announcing Impact Ops
EA Germany’s 2023 Report, 2024 Plans & Funding Gap
ALLFED's 2023 Highlights
ALTER Israel - End-of-2023 Update
Effektiv Spenden's Impact Evaluation 2019-2023 (exec. summary)
Nonlinear’s Evidence
Ozy Brennan - Appendix to "Nonlinear's Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims”
Effective Aspersions: How the Nonlinear Investigation Went Wrong
Grants
Open Philanthropy have made 6 grants recently for $10m
$8.6m - Potential Risks from Advanced AI
$6m - OpenMined - Software for AI Audits
$2.6m - Eleuther AI - Interpretability Research
$840k - Global Health & Wellbeing
$740k - International Vaccine Institute - Hepatitis E and Leptospirosis Study
$500k - Global Catastrophic Risks Capacity Building
$40k - Farm Animal Welfare
Mental Health Funding Circle held its fall grants round and members granted a total of $785,000
MacKenzie Scott granted $2.15 billion to 366 organisations including
$20m - Fistula Foundation
$10m - Malaria Consortium
Global Development
For more in depth updates I also write the Global Development & EA newsletter.
PEPFAR, one of the most life-saving global health programs, is at risk
Lauren Gilbert - Rarely is the Question Asked: Is Our Children Learning? [The Learning Crisis in LMIC Education]
WHO prequalifies a second malaria vaccine
Karthik Tadepalli - What we know about growth in LMICs (part 2: firm dynamics)
IDInsight with The Dignity Report 2023
Vox - Tuberculosis kills more people than malaria or HIV. Why haven’t we found a vaccine?
Dylan Matthews - The first results from the world’s biggest basic income experiment
EA & Global Development
AMA with the founder and CEO of the Against Malaria Foundation, Rob Mather
CE-incubated tobacco & NCD policy Charity: updates, funding gap, and future plans for Concentric Policies
Lucia Coulter on the 80,000 Hours podcast discussing how LEEP prevent lead poisoning for $1.66 per child
1Day Sooner - Malaria Vaccine Research Help Needed - Looking for research volunteers
Bernardo Baron & Juan Benzo - Why EA should (probably) fund ceramic water filters
Vasco Grilo - My quick thoughts on donating to EA Funds' Global Health and Development Fund and what it should do
Bill Gates with an endorsement of GiveWell
Animal Welfare
For more comprehensive animal news I recommend Impactful Animal Advocacy.
Animal Advocacy Careers have launched Giving For Animals - a public commitment to donate a percentage of income to impactful animal charities
Seth Ariel Green & Benny Smith - Environmental & health appeals are the most effective vegan outreach strategies
Welfare considerations for farmed shrimp
Sofia Balderson - Resources for farmed animal advocacy: 2023 roundup
Podcast with Stien Van Der Ploeg, new executive director of Animal Charity Evaluators
Marina Bolotnikova - The greenwashing of wool, explained
ACE with a list of farmed animal advocacy organisations
Max Taylor - Bringing about animal-inclusive AI
Pawel Rawicki - What do the Polish 2023 parliamentary elections mean for animals?
Risk Aversion in Wild Animal Welfare
Podcast with Wanyi Zeng on building the farmed animal movement in Southeast Asia
Tufts University Launches World’s First Undergraduate Degree in Cellular Agriculture
Fish Welfare Initiative - Updates on Our Work In China
Moritz Stumpe - Extending Existing Animal Protection Laws
Biosecurity
Anemone Franz & Tessa Alexanian - GCBR Organisation Updates (also my recommendation for best newsletter to stay updated on biosecurity)
Saloni Dattani - What were the death tolls from pandemics in history?
Sofya Lebedeva - On-Ramps Into Biosecurity - A Model
Bio(un)ethical podcast with Marc Lipsitch on what role research should play in mitigating and preventing future pandemics
Hear This Idea podcast with Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley on barriers to bioweapons
David Thorstad - Exaggerating the risks (Part 13: Ord on Biorisk)
Justen, L.; Bradshaw, W. - Air Sampling for Early Pathogen Detection
What is the pandemic treaty and what would it do?
Oscar Delaney - Reflections on the Biological Weapons Convention
Global Catastrophic Risks
Emilia Javorsky - Hollywood, nuclear war, and the art of saving the world
Maxwell Tabarrok - The Offense-Defense Balance Rarely Changes
Observatorio de Riesgos Catastróficos Globales Recap 2023
Michael Nielsen - Notes on the Vulnerable World Hypothesis
Future Of Life Award 2023 - celebrating two films that were profoundly impactful in reducing the threat of nuclear war, and the five storytellers behind them
Gideon F - Managing the contribution of Solar Radiation Modification and Climate Change to Global Catastrophic Risk
Jordan Stone - An exhaustive list of cosmic threats
Environment
The United States joins multinational declaration to triple nuclear energy capacity by 2050 to support global climate and energy security goals
Global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels to hit record high in 2023
Campaigners warn of $343 billion climate finance 'black hole' - two thirds of commitments were never reported as disbursed or had little connection to climate
John Arnold - 23 musings of the massive changes seen in energy and climate in the US over past 5 years
A new wave of startups is tackling a huge emissions source: wildfires
New Google geothermal electricity project could be a milestone for clean energy
Longtermism
The Mimir Center for Long Term Futures Research has been launched, they aim to chart paths to possible futures and provides early insights into topics that have long term importance
Summary of the GPI Working Paper “The scope of longtermism” by David Thorstad
AI Safety
For more regular updates I recommend the AI Safety Newsletter.
Preparedness - An overview of OpenAI’s processes to track, evaluate, forecast and protect against catastrophic risks posed by increasingly powerful models
ML Safety Newsletter #11 from Dan Hendrycks and Aidan O'gara
Ben Snodin - Incubating AI x-risk projects: some personal reflections
AI safety advocates should consider providing gentle pushback following the events at OpenAI
Model Evaluation and Threat Research is the new name for ARC Evals
On the future of language models
Center on Long-Term Risk: Annual review and fundraiser 2023
What is the current most representative EA AI x-risk argument?
Stop talking about p(doom)
Mistral AI, a Paris-based OpenAI rival, closed its $415 million funding round
OpenAI's Superalignment team has opened Fast Grants
Emmett Shear on AI's culture wars
Nirit Weiss-Blatt
Overview of EA funding of the AI existential risk ecosystem
Ultimate Guide to “AI Existential Risk” Ecosystem
AI Governance
EU policymakers reach an agreement on the AI Act
Julian Hazell - AI governance talent profiles I’d like to see apply for Open Phil funding
Cecil Abungu, Michelle Malonza & Sumaya Nur Adan - Can apparent bystanders distinctively shape an outcome?
NBER - Regulating AI
80,000 Hours podcast with Nathan Labenz on the final push for AGI, understanding OpenAI’s leadership drama, and red-teaming frontier models
Google DeepMind - AI Policy Discovery
Progress & Innovation
Google DeepMind - Millions of new materials discovered with deep learning
Derek Thompson - The Nine Breakthroughs of the Year
Nathan Warren - Industrial policy is making a comeback
Metascience and Institutional Decision Making
Xander Balwit - Launching Asimov Press - A biotechnology blog with a probabilistic and effective bent
Santi Ruiz - How to Use Challenge Prizes
Nature - More than 10,000 research papers were retracted in 2023 — a new record
Jason Crawford - Accelerating science through evolvable institutions
Stuart Ritchie with a round up of recent bad science
Matt Clancy - The Returns to Science in the Presence of Technological Risk
Simon M - Prediction Markets aren't Magic
Effective Institutions Project on the AI Summit and other institutional news
The Center for Open Science and NASA are set to host a virtual conference in March 2024 - Shaping the Future of Open Research
Other Causes
Helene K - Intervention Report: Oral Rabies Vaccination of Dogs
Richard Fisher - Should we geoengineer volcanoes?
80,000 Hours Podcast with Nita Farahany on the neurotechnology already being used to convict criminals and manipulate workers
Joe Carlsmith - Gentleness and the artificial Other
Elina Christian - Is waste management a neglected cause area?
Silas Strawn - My Experience Donating Blood Stem Cells, or: Why You Should Join a Bone Marrow Registry
The International Institute for Strategic Studies - annual review of the political, military and humanitarian dimensions of active conflicts
Our World in Data - State Capacity
TIME with an overview of national elections happening this year (representing 64 countries and 49% of the world’s people)
Saloni Dattani - Seven things you didn't know about life expectancy
Dr. Ivelaw Griffith on the The Guyana-Venezuela Territory Dispute
Toby J - Mike, Mouse, Moth, Machine
Kevin Drum - Report suggests little danger to teens from social media
XPRIZE on aging will award up to $101 million for therapies that restore vigor to the elderly
Reuters - U.S. and China race to shield secrets from quantum computers
Stories & EA Around the World
Tobias Leenaert - I spent a lot of time and money on one dog. Do I need help?
Luk - Confessions of a Recent GWWC Pledger
David Manheim - My Personal Priorities, Charity, Judaism, and Effective Altruism
Jenn - Extended Navel-Gazing On My 2023 Donations
Michael Coulthard on engaging with the EA community in 2023 and launching Giving What We Can Scotland
Sam Atis - Weird people doing good things
Ezrah - EA thoughts from Israel-Hamas war
EA Barcelona: Our first year of impact
Other Links
Eirine - Underpromise, overdeliver
A short history of EA in the Financial Times
Lincoln Quirk - My startup advice
Jeff TK- Trading off Lives
Ozempic drugmaker, Novo Nordisk, to open AI research hub in London
Podcast with Shruti Rajagopalan - Spotting talent & making sense of rising India
Clearer Thinking Podcast with Zvi Mowshowitz
James Özden - Social tipping points are probably overrated
Julia Wise - Ethics of adopting a meat-eating pet
Gregory Lewis - Say how much, not more or less versus someone else
Joel Becker - Some fun lessons I learned as a junior regrantor
Good News
Vox - 10 actually good things that happened in 2023
Future Crunch - 66 Good News Stories for 2023
India has taken six years to reach its financial inclusion target of 80% - 41 years earlier than originally anticipated
Vietnam - Multidimensional poverty rate drops to 2.9%