2024 November EA Updates

EAGx Virtual and EA conferences around the world

Nov 05, 2024

Applications are still open for EAGx Virtual (15th-17th Nov), probably the best opportunity to connect with people from all over the world who have similar values, interests and goals. It’s also useful even if you are busy that weekend to find people to arrange chats with in the following weeks and months.

Apply Here (attendance is free with a suggested donation)

Organisational Updates

Luke Freeman - Stepping down from GWWC
Giving What We Can is now its own legal entity
CEA
- Contact people for the EA community
- What Has the CEA Uni Groups Team Been up To?
The Good Governance Project is offering free support to identify and select board members for high-impact organisations
EA Infrastructure Fund
- What should EAIF fund?
- Brief Updates
Lizka - Announcing my departure from CEA (& sharing assorted notes)
Update from the EA Good Governance Project
Examples of success from city and national groups
Small simple way to promote effective giving while making people feel good
Charity Entrepreneurship - Our Recommended Charity Ideas for February 2025
CEA - Who would you like to see speak at EA Global?

Effective Giving

GWWC - Updates on the effective giving ecosystem
- The ecosystem is expanding moderately in terms of money moved (excl. OP and GiveWell from ~$50m in 2020 to ~$160m in 2023; including them from ~$430m to ~$1.05 billion)
- ~80% is going towards global health and wellbeing
Sjir Hoeijmakers - Thoughts on earning to give (Meta Coordination Forum memo)
AIM
- Funding Circles: A Guide to improving donor coordination
- Presenting five new effective giving initiatives
  - New York City, Italy, France/Switzerland, Belgium and India
Abraham Rowe - Announcing Equal Hands — an experiment in democratising effective giving
EA Forum - Giving Season 2024 Announcement
GiveWell as Moneyball
The Life You Can Save has teamed up with Cool.org to provide free educational resources for students in years 5–10
Joel Tan - GWWC's Giving Multiplier
Sarah Eustis-Guthrie - You Can Save A Life
An update from an England resident writing a will leaving money to EA charities
New video from Ali Abdaal: Why I’m giving 10% of my income to charity (forever)
Evaluations from Manifund's EA Community Choice initiative

Careers

Liquidity in Careers and Skills
Open Philanthropy - Day in the Life: Dee Kathuria, Recruiter
Lauren Gilbert - Career Advice For College Students
Eirin Evjen - Cheap tests and expensive signals to develop professionally
Consultants for Impact
- From McKinsey to GiveDirectly and back again (with more skills!)
- How much is a dollar worth to a GiveWell accountant? With Daisy Hao
JWS - My top 10 picks from 200 episodes of the 80k podcast
Amy Labenz - Appreciating Stable Support Roles at EA Orgs
Probably Good - A new interview series with people doing impactful work
- Astronaut ambitions, leaving clinical medicine, and eliminating lead exposure
- Navigating academia & researching morality
- From construction engineering to non-profit operations

Grants

Action for Women’s Health is a $250 million global open call launched by Pivotal that will fund organisations around the world that are improving women’s mental and physical health
WAM Foundation Fall 2024 Funding Round, with tracks for road safety, nutrition, mental health and reducing suffering
Announcing Cosmos Ventures - Fast grants to build prototypes at the intersection of technology and human flourishing
Scott Alexander - Results of an informal survey on AI grantmaking
Foresight Institute Grants - AI Safety & Automation / Neuro / Security / Multipolar Approaches
Founders Pledge have granted $1.6m in their Global Health & Development fund

Global Health

Open Philanthropy
- OP is supporting ACF, CARE, CRS, Mercy Corps and Save the Children to conduct 100 cost analyses
- How Platinum Helps Draw Attention to Japan’s Role in Global Health Funding - the third largest single-country donor
- How Neil King and David Baker are using AI to create more effective vaccines
R&D for neglected diseases returns $405 for every dollar spent
This chart is right. Most interventions don't do much. (Cameroon experience)
Hear This Idea podcast with Jacob Trefethen on Global Health R&D
Lauren Gilbert
- Air Conditioning Is A Survival Technology
- Reading glasses might be one of the best buys in global health (with pushback in the comments)
Launching the Health Progress Hub (and how you can help us!)
Project Impala recently got funding from Founders Pledge - They have a vital signs monitoring system designed specifically for neonates and children at hospitals within LMIC
Fungal diseases: Health burden, neglectedness, and potential interventions
- Annual death burden could be 1.5m - 4.6m (80% CI)

Economic Growth

Lincoln Quirk - Startup advice targeting low and middle income countries
Jeff Mason live x-ing at the Growth Summit - Arvind Subramanian - "It's absurd that we even have to discuss why growth is important. This is a problem of outsiders—we [on the ground in countries] have been obsessed with growth for 40 years."
Karthik Tadepalli
- Want Growth? Kill Small Businesses
- Growth theory for EA – reading list and summary

Animal Welfare

Vitalik Buterin made a $532k donation to the EA Animal Welfare Fund
James Öz - The default trajectory for animal welfare means vastly more suffering
Animal Advocacy Careers
- Sign up for 1-1 career guidance calls
- Five Years of Animal Advocacy Careers: Our Journey to impact, Lessons Learned, and What’s Next
- Impact Report 2023
Kirsty Henderson - I have stepped aside from my role as Executive Director because I think it will help more animals
Our fight for the future of one billion chickens
The goal isn’t 'end factory farming', but reduce as much suffering as possible
Kelsey Piper - A short history of effective animal advocacy
New Open Access Book: Weighing Animal Welfare
Animal Policy Careers has launched (U.S.)
80,000 Hours with an update profile on factory farming
Announcing the Strategic Animal Funding Circle
Are We Leaving the Individual Behind? The Role of Animal Storytelling in the Animal Rights Movement
Evolving Perspectives - Ten advocates sharing what they’ve changed their minds about during their time in the movement
Challenges in Aquatic Animal Stunning
AI for Animals - Interspecies communication
Vox - How Factory Farming Ends

Alternative Proteins

Lewis Bollard - Positive trends on alternative proteins
Jenny Chapman on a podcast shining a light on misunderstandings surrounding the UPF narrative and plant-based meat
Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein opens at the National University of Singapore (with $30m)
How a livestock industry lobbying campaign is turning Europe against lab-grown meat
GFI
- European investment figures point to an evolving alternative protein sector
- Global alternative protein trends to watch
- Japan joins existing GFI affiliates in accelerating global food innovation

Insects & Wild Animals

Update on the wild animal welfare funding landscape
80,000 Hours podcast
- Meghan Barrett on challenging our assumptions about insects
- Peter Godfrey-Smith on interfering with wild nature
- Sébastien Moro on the most insane things fish can do
Eating insects is not going to save the planet
The Insect Institute has been launched

Global Catastrophic & Existential Risks

Expert Forecasts of Nuclear Risk
Pivotal Research Fellowship - 9-week program designed to enable promising researchers to produce research and accelerate their careers in AI safety, AI governance, and biosecurity
How Likely Are Various Precursors of Existential Risk?
Volcanic winters have happened before - should we prepare for the next one?
Work Is Under Way on NASA’s Next-Generation Asteroid Hunter
Peter Singer - Will We Survive the Next 100 Years?
80,000 Hours - Ezra Karger on what superforecasters and experts think about existential risks
Introducing Tech Governance Project
Elders and FLI launch new film series on existential threats solutions
Carreras con Impacto: Outreach Results Among Latin American Students
CSER - applications are open for October 2025 intake of a new MPhil in Global Risk and Resilience, a one year taught Master's course

Biosecurity

Sentinel Bio has launched - A philanthropic fund aiming to find and scale solutions to prevent biosecurity risks and respond to pandemics
Announcing: biosecurity.world
Asimov Press
- Is That DNA Dangerous?
- Defense-Forward Biosecurity
- Day Zero Antivirals for Future Pandemics
- Measuring the Black Death
Science - AI and biosecurity: The need for governance
Special Issue of Applied Biosafety Focuses on Synthetic Genomics
If far-UV is so great, why isn't it everywhere?
Foreign Affairs - How Synthetic Biology Could Destabilise the World
Anonymous answers
- What are the best ways to fight the next pandemic?
- How can we manage info hazards in biosecurity?
- Could advances in AI supercharge biorisk?

Environment

Giving Green’s 2024 top climate nonprofits and Giving Green Fund grantees
Climate policies that achieved major emission reductions: Global evidence from two decades
The IMF’s Climate Change Debate
Hannah Ritchie - How much energy does desalinisation use? Is it “absurdly cheap”?
Can Solar Costs Keep Shrinking?
€700m Dutch scheme approved for farmers to close livestock sites
Christians for Impact - Climate Change - Full report

AI Safety

Dangerous capability tests should be harder
Flo & Rudolf - Investigating an insurance-for-AI startup
China's AI Safety Evaluations Ecosystem
Open Philanthropy - Funding for work that builds capacity to address risks from transformative AI
METR - An update on our general capability evaluations
SFF is launching a funding round that targets proposals aiming to advance the R&D of hardware-enabled governance mechanisms targeted at AI accelerators used for large-scale AI training
Schmidt Sciences - Request for Proposals - SAFE-AI: Safety Assurance through Fundamental Science in Emerging AI
Introducing Kairos: a new AI safety field building organization (the new home for SPAR and FSP)

AI & Communication

Richard Ngo - Defining alignment research
AGI Safety and Alignment at Google DeepMind: A Summary of Recent Work
A Case for Nuanced Risk Assessment
Principles for the AGI Race
Key writings on AI development from Open Philanthropy staff
The AI Risk Repository - A living database of 700+ AI risks categorised by their cause and risk domain
AI Safety Tokyo has launched
Alex Irpan - I'm Switching Into AI Safety (from GDM robotics)
Survey: How Do Elite Chinese Students Feel About the Risks of AI?
What's important in "AI for epistemics"?
Welcome to Thinking Competition - for Indian professionals and students
Google DeepMind: The Podcast - Season 3
80,000 Hours
- Nick Joseph on whether Anthropic’s AI safety policy is up to the task
- Updates to our research about AI risk and careers
- Why experts and forecasters disagree about AI risk

AI Governance

White House Issues First National Security Memo on AI
Announcement of the Inaugural Convening of International Network of AI Safety Institutes in San Francisco (November 20-21st)
Newsom Vetoes SB 1047
Chips for Peace: how the U.S. and its allies can lead on safe and beneficial AI
Why I joined AISI by Geoffrey Irving
Sharing the AI Windfall: A Strategic Approach to International Benefit-Sharing
Reading list on AI agents and associated policy
The Economist - Is Xi Jinping an AI Doomer?
Kelsey Piper - Inside OpenAI’s multibillion-dollar gambit to become a for-profit company
Concordia AI is hiring for roles across their Beijing and Singapore offices
Soft Nationalisation: How the US Government Will Control AI Labs
U.S. AI Safety Institute signs agreements regarding AI safety research with Anthropic and OpenAI
The Tech Industry is the Biggest Blocker to Meaningful AI Safety Regulations
The Economist has an article about China's top politicians on catastrophic risks from AI, titled "Is Xi Jinping an AI Doomer?"

Progress, Innovation & Metascience

Metascience 101 is a set of interviews on the debates and ideas driving the metascience movement, with Alexander Berger, Patrick Collinson, Heidi Williams, Paul Niehaus, Kelsey Piper, Tyler Cowen, Jacob Trefethen, Emily Oehlsen and more
Science
- Prevention of HIV
- Fraud, So Much Fraud
Metascience at the Progress Conference and how progress studies should be thinking about science
I Went to Berkeley, California, and All I Got Was a Vibe (2024 Progress Conference)
The UK launched a metascience unit. Will other countries follow suit?
Accelerator For Innovation & Research Funding Experimentation (AFIRE) is a new collaboration between RoRI and the Innovation Growth Lab
Abhishaike Mahajan - Things I learned talking to the new breed of scientific institution
Some Are Useful, a living literature review on how ideas from machine learning and artificial intelligence are influencing scientific and technological progress
Stuart Buck - We Should Do More Direct Replications in Science
How to Build the British ARPA
Scott Alexander - Why Does Ozempic Cure All Diseases?
Kelsey Piper - The staggering death toll of scientific lies
Dario Amodei - Machines of Loving Grace - How AI Could Transform the World for the Better

Longtermism

A storage facility in Norway built to safeguard crop diversity recently received more than 30,000 samples
Sensitive assumptions in longtermist modeling
Richard Y Chappell - How Much do Future Generations Matter?
Clearer Thinking podcast - Physical limits and the long-term future (with Anders Sandberg)
New Scientist - Should we put a frozen backup of Earth's life on the moon?

Sentience & Suffering

New Book - The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI
We should prevent the creation of artificial sentience
Introduction to suffering-focused ethics
80,000 Hours
- Jonathan Birch on the edge cases of sentience and why they matter
- Understanding the moral status of digital minds
- Anil Seth on the predictive brain and how to study consciousness

Other Causes

Crowdsourcing The Best Ideas for Structural Democratic Reforms
China confirms pact with India to ‘resolve’ conflict over disputed border
Zion Lights - Organic Farming Activism Threatens Millions—and the Environment
Our World in Data - Cancers are one of the leading causes of death globally. Are we making progress against them?
Hear This Idea - Dan Williams on How Persuasion Works
What is malevolence? On the nature, measurement, and distribution of dark traits
Venki Ramakrishnan on the cutting edge of anti-ageing science
Lauren Gilbert - Europe Should Require Foods Be Fortified With Folate
Bringing the International Space Station down safely: A Billion dollar waste?
Saloni Dattani - How do global statistics on suicide differ between sources?
Tamay Besiroglu on Explosive Growth from AI
Alice Evans - Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally?
Inequality within countries is falling

Stories & EA Around the World

eukaryote - I got dysentery so you don’t have to
Nick Laing - The Protester, Priest and Politician: EA before their time
Retrospective on EA Nigeria Summit: Our Successes and Learnings
EA Brazil 2024 Summit Retrospective
EA South Africa Summit
EA Hong Kong hosting the panel - Rethinking How We Do Good, including Peter Singer
100 people gathered at 7:30am and walked 10km in the Netherlands, raising €31,803 for the Lead Exposure Elimination Project
EA Serbia Retreat

Good News

Egypt is certified malaria-free
Since 2020 the poverty rate has fallen in Uzbekistan from 17% to 11%
Elimination of trachoma as a public health problem in India, Vietnam and Pakistan
Elimination of lymphatic filariasis as a public health problem in Timor-Leste and Brazil
2.45 million Filipinos have been lifted out of poverty since 2021
Jordan eliminates leprosy
Guinea celebrates the elimination of maternal and neonatal tetanus
Ethiopia has achieved a sixfold reduction in the death rate for TB since 1980

Monthly Overload of Effective Altruism

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