2024 March EA Updates
Rebrands, wealth pledges, animal forums, chip ambitions, long journeys and more.
Top Posts
Nick Laing - Can we help individual people cost-effectively? Our trial with three sick kids
Charity Entrepreneurship are rebranding to Ambitious Impact (AIM)
They also have a combined application (April 14th deadline) where you can fill out one form to apply for their charity entrepreneurship, research and for-profit programs at the same time
Dustin Moskovitz - The Long Journey to Doing Good Better
Lewis Bollard - This is why we can’t have nice laws
There is a new animal advocacy forum
Head of TED Chris Anderson signs new “Wealth Pledge” to give 2.5% of wealth to high-impact charities each year
Garrison - Sam Altman’s Chip Ambitions Undercut OpenAI’s Safety Strategy
International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science has been launched by NTI
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
5th-7th July - EAGxUtrecht
13-15th September - EAGxBerlin
1st-3rd November - EAG Boston
Meta
80,000 Hours - Our new series on building skills
Kelsey Piper - Can effective altruism stay effective?
Alexandra Bos - Deciding What Project/Org to Start: A Guide to Prioritisation Research
EA Forum with threads on people looking to be hired and organisations hiring
EA in Arabic has been launched
Jessica Wen - An Analysis of Engineering Jobs on the 80,000 Hours Job Board
Rockwell - Meta EA Regional Organizations (MEAROs): An Introduction
How we started our own EA charity (and why we decided to wrap up)
Meta Charity Funders: Launching the 2nd round
Kevin N - How to Accelerate Your New EA Organisation with Fiscal Sponsorship and Operations Support
Announcing the EA Forum Draft Amnesty Week (March 11th-17th)
Effective Giving
GWWC - Comparing charities: How big is the difference?
Seeking applicants and funders for the Mental Health Funding Circle - March 31st
Effective Giving Belgium has been set up - Effectief Geven
Introducing the Effektiv Spenden "Defending Democracy" fund
Marcus Abramovitch - My Donations 2023
Organisation Updates
Announcing Niel Bowerman as the next CEO of 80,000 Hours
Upcoming changes to the EV US and EV UK leadership teams
EA infrastructure projects ongoing in 2024
New Open Philanthropy Grantmaking Program: Forecasting
Grants
Open Philanthropy have made 46 grants recently for $74m
$22.7m - Global Health & Development
$9.2m - Evidence Action - Iron and Folic Acid Supplementation in India
$3.6m - International Vaccine Institute - Strep A Vaccine Global Consortium
$2.2m - University of Bonn - Influenza Drug Development
$17.3m - Global Catastrophic Risks Capacity Building
$11m - Centre for Effective Altruism
$2.3m - Effective Ventures Foundation USA
$1.5m - BlueDot Impact
$16m - Potential Risks from Advanced AI
$10.5m - RAND Corporation - Emerging Technology Initiatives
$1.2m - SERI MATS 4.0
$840k - Owain Evans Research Group - AI Evaluations Research
$12m - Farm Animal Welfare
$5.3m - The Good Food Institute
$1.9m - FAI Farms - Tilapia and Shrimp Welfare Reforms
$890k - HSI - Farm Animal Welfare in Southeast Asia
$4m - Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness
$2.3m - Exscientia - Agonists for Interferon Lambda
$1m - Eradivir - Influenza Antiviral Drug
$2.1m - Land Use Reform
$2m - Open New York
ACX Grants - $1.3m on 33 grants
$100k - Kurtis Lockhart, to help build a campus for the African School of Economics in Fumba, Zanzibar
$100k - 1DaySooner
$100k - Robert Yaman, for Innovate Animal Ag
Global Development
For more in depth updates I also write the Global Development & EA newsletter.
Max Roser - The global fight against polio - how far have we come?
Podcast with Kartik Akileswaran and Jonathan Mazumdar on Growth Teams and structural transformation
Unacknowledged problems with anti-malaria bed nets are causing a rise in malaria
Jason Wendle - Betting on Migration for Impact
Open Philanthropy - Social science research we'd like to see on global health and wellbeing
Karthik Tadepalli - Labor markets in LMICs
From salt intake reduction to labor migration: Announcing top ideas for the AIM 2024 CE Incubation Program
Dylan Scott - From Gaza to Sudan, conflict is driving a rise in hunger worldwide
GiveWell are hiring for a head of communications and senior researches
One For The World are looking for an executive director
Animal Welfare
For more comprehensive animal news I recommend Impactful Animal Advocacy.
Short agony or long ache: comparing sources of suffering that differ in duration and intensity
6 new projects selected for research grants from Wild Animal Initiative
Social Change Lab - What are the short and long-term effects of disruptive animal rights protest?
Podcast with Lauren Mee on the career landscape for helping animals
Moritz Stumpe & Aashish Khimasia - Charity Evaluation: Animal Advocacy Careers
Animal Charity Evaluators - Movement Grant applications are now open
Animal Think Tank have launched a new newsletter
Zuzana Sperlova & Moritz Stumpe - Exploring Corporate Campaigns Against Silk Retailers
Norway's fish farms are using more vegetarian feed for their salmon
Animal Advocacy in Africa
Aashish Khimasia - Slowing down factory farming in Sub Saharan Africa
Animal Advocacy Africa’s 2023 Review and Plans for 2024
Farmed animal funding towards Africa is growing but remains highly neglected
Alternative Proteins
Podcast with Simon Newstead on developing alternatives to animal protein
UK government invests £12m in fermentation hub for alternative proteins
Biosecurity
GCBR Organisation Updates - my recommendation for updates on biosecurity
Jesse Smith - Lies, Damned Lies, and Manometer Readings - Interventions in indoor air quality are the next frontier in pandemic prevention - but are they up to the task?
OpenAI - Building an early warning system for LLM-aided biological threat creation
80,000 Hours - Anonymous answers - What are the biggest misconceptions about biosecurity and pandemic risk?
Nuclear Safety
ALLFED - Seaweed as a Resilient Food Solution After a Nuclear War
Clearer Thinking podcast - The alternate histories and possible futures of nuclear weapons with Carl Robichaud
80,000 Hours - Why you might not want to work on nuclear disarmament (and what to work on instead)
Vasco Grillo - Nuclear war tail risk has been exaggerated?
Environment
Nat Bullard annual presentation on the state of decarbonisation told with climate, capital markets, technology and sector data
Rachel Glennerster & Seema Jayachandran - Rich Countries Should Increase Their Spending on Green Projects in Poor Countries
How India electrified 45% of its railway network in five years
AI Safety
For more regular updates I recommend the AI Safety Newsletter.
Seb Krier with a seven-part series focused on questions of responsibility, accountability, and control in a pre-AGI world
Kelsey Piper - Should we make our most powerful AI models open source to all?
The Institute for Law & AI has been launched
Vael Gates - Offering AI safety support calls for ML professionals
Nora Belrose - Counting arguments provide no evidence for AI doom
Seth Lazar - Can philosophy help us get a grip on generative agents?
Gabriel Weil - Tort Law Can Play an Important Role in Mitigating AI Risk
AI Governance
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Mike Johnson and Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries launched a bipartisan Task Force on AI
Key executive leadership announced for the U.S. AI Safety Institute
AI Safety Institute: third progress report
GovAI - Computing Power and the Governance of AI
Japan launches AI safety institute
AISN covering investments in compute and military AI
A new proposed AI bill in California which requires frontier AI developers to adopt safety and security protocols
Christian Ruhl & Stephen Clare - Great Power Competition and Transformative Technologies
James Newport - Interested in a high-impact role in AI safety? The UK Government could be the place for you!
AI Communication
Azeem Azhar - Existential risks’ existential problem
Garrison - My cover story in Jacobin on AI capitalism and the x-risk debates
Samuel Hammond - Effective Accelerationism and the future of humanity
Improving Institutions
The Observatory - Can the EU Maintain Consensus on the Green Deal, and other institution updates
The University of Bern has launched a program, backed by 250,000 Swiss francs, to pay reviewers to root out mistakes in papers, starting with psychology
Experimentation is more popular than you might think with the public (with clear majorities over implement/don’t implement specific policies)
Progress, Innovation & Metascience
Accelerator For Innovation & Research Funding Experimentation is a new collaboration aiming to boost institutional capacity for experiments with funding
Stuart Buck - Why Are We Screwing Over Researchers Who Make Innovative Discoveries? - the University of Pennsylvania has made $1.2 billion in royalties from patents on Katalin Karikó’s work after forcing her out
Matt Clancy - Boosting innovation by teaching people to be tech entrepreneurs?
Jessica Wen & Hugh Irving - How Engineers can Contribute to Progress Studies
Jason Crawford - Making every researcher seek grants is a broken model
The Center for Open Science and NASA are hosting an online conference in March to showcase the outcomes and ongoing work
Longtermism
Future of Life Institute - Open letter calling on world leaders to show long-view leadership on existential threats
Devex - Time is short to come up with a worthwhile outcome "pact" for UN Summit of The Future
The Case for Animal-Inclusive Longtermism
Christianity and Longtermism workshop in DC on May 17
Other Causes
Dan Williams - Should we trust misinformation experts to decide what counts as misinformation?
80,000 Hours - Hugo Mercier on why gullibility and misinformation are overrated
Vitalik Buterin - The promise and challenges of crypto + AI applications
Alexander Loewi - Critical Failures in the World Happiness Report's Model of National Satisfaction
Chi - Complexity of value but not disvalue implies more focus on s-risk. Moral uncertainty and preference utilitarianism also do
80,000 Hours - Randy Nesse on why evolution left us so vulnerable to depression and anxiety
A new study has discovered a single human antibody that protects against venom from numerous dangerous snakes
Vox - How the US is preparing to fight a war in space
Hear This Idea with Eric Schwitzgebel discussing digital consciousness
80,000 Hours - Emily Oster on what the evidence actually says about pregnancy and parenting
Natália Coelho Mendonça - The promise of SGLT2 inhibitors (reducing diabetes, heart disease and kidney disease)
Stories & EA Around the World
Michelle Hutchinson - On being an EA for decades
Frances Lorenz - How the idea of "doing good better" makes me feel
Maggie Casas on driving change through digital marketing
Julia Wise - Raising children on the eve of AI
Nikita Patel reflecting on her last 6 and a half years at Fortify Health as she steps down
James Özden - My lifelong pledge to give away 10% of my income each year (and where I donated in 2023)
Toby Jolly - "No-one in my org puts money in their pension"...and other stories about the end of the world
Caitlin Borke - Looking for: songs or art that inspire EA values
EA Brazil with a meetup at EAGxLatAM
Barbara Kayondo kicking off EA MUBS second introductory fellowship
Other Links
80,000 Hours - After Hours podcast - Bean Counting with Chana Messinger
Dylan Matthews - Why would anyone be against lifesaving malaria bed nets?
Toby Tremlett - Tragic Beliefs
Maryam Ali Khan - More Welfare, Less Suffering - Can framing shape our understanding of moral concern?
Julia Wise - Things to check about a job or internship
A Special Issue on EA in the Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy
Virtual Events
2nd March - GWWC Online: Doing More Good Together
6th March - What are the effects of disruptive animal rights protest? - Social Change Lab
7th March - Aim for a career that matters - AIM, with Joey Savoie
12th March - Cell Ag UK Student Conference
14th March - Ask GFI: Alt Protein Careers
14th March - Our Top Charity Ideas in Global Health and Development - AIM
1st April - 26th May - Introductory EA Program - Apply by 10th March
1st April - 26th May - In-Depth EA Program - Apply by 10th March
27th May - 14th July - The Precipice Reading Group - Apply by May 5th
Fellowships & Programs
High Impact Professionals - Impact Accelerator Program - 3rd March
The Center on Long-Term Risk - Summer Research Fellows - 7th March
AI Governance Course - Run by BlueDot Impact - 12th March
EA and Judaism Intro Fellowship - 17th March
IAPS AI Policy Fellowship - 18th March
Good News
13 cases of guinea worm reported in 2023 – Lowest level since the eradication campaign began
WHO - Great Progress Made in Eliminating Trans Fat - From 6% protected 5 years ago to 46% of the world's population today - expecting to save 183,000 lives every year
Guyana reports decline in filaria, leprosy and TB cases
Cambodia on track to eradicate malaria by 2025