Question from a newbie. I am constantly seeing negative references to the gutting of US foreign aid. It seems pretty clear that global development-focused EAs generally view the change in policy to be a bad thing. But I do not think I have once seen any discussion at all about how to reverse this state of affairs. Building on a running theme as of recently, it seems like political giving may have an outsize effectiveness, due to the relatively sparse funding in the space. So, naively, it would seem like you probably could get a great rate of return on efforts to reinstate USAID. I understand that political coalition building and organizing is not easy, etc. I'm not someone with those skills, just a rando. But I'm a little surprised that I don't think I've ever seen it taken up here when it seems like the downstream effects are making our goals harder to achieve. Basically, not only is it at face value cost effective, but also, we are collectively burning a lot of human capital working around this problem. Why not confront it head on?

I was excited to hear about this "Claude Corps" initiative for NGOs, which helps orgs supercharge their benefits from AI then gutted to hear that its only going to be in the USA. Apparently they want to extend it overseas later, but the impact an intern li this could have right now for orgnisations like us at OneDay Health in Uganda would be mind-blowing. I hope they can expand the program overseas sooner rather than later! - 150 million dollar program - Intern works for 12 months with the NGO to supercharge AI use - $85,000 payment to intern for the year https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-corps  

If you're (re)starting a local EA group or running a local EA event, consider reaching out to people nearby according to the people directory or an EAG Swapcard. There will be people who do not know about a local group or event and otherwise wouldn't hear about it, and it's pretty painless on both ends! Obviously don't spam them, so (probably) only do this when (re)starting. I did this for an EA Edinburgh event and immediately got some responses. To make this easier: Put your (approximate) location on the people directory so people can tell you about nearby events and you get them suggested by the forum, especially if you're not in a hub!

Lots of people in the Bay seem to be thinking about/preparing for/making funding decisions based on the idea that lots of philanthropy will be given to AIS/EA cause areas very soon (i.e. end of year-ish). I would love for someone to write the comprehensive steel man case against this, as I think it’s probably underrated (some reasons to think they won’t give the money/it won’t be as much as some assume. Happy to comment/ speak to whoever is interested in doing this.  

Me and @Fran are co-hosting a podcast, The World Can Be Better! (hosted on Substack, also on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube) In our first co-hosted episode we interview @finm about better futures, the intelligence explosion, and Fin's underrated post 'No ghost in the machine'.  We'll be recording more episodes soon. We're aiming to a) keep it accessible to an interested but non-specialist audience, and b) to talk to cool people who are working on making the world better. This is on top of full time jobs for both of us, so we're not promising weekly uploads or anything too fancy.  LMK in the comments or dm if there is someone you'd love to be a guest on our podcast! The ideal guest is a) doing good effectively in an interesting way and b) is down to joke around a bit.