EA Updates for April 2021

Meta

• Jonas Volmer with concerns on 'Effective Altruism' as the main branding and identity for the community
• Probably Good have launched a preliminary website for their work as a new career advising organisation and are looking for feedback
• EA Colabs has been created to help people interested in EA collaborate on potentially impactful projects
• Meg Tong has set up a website for EA Finance
• Sanjay Joshi with a post arguing that environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing should be a top priority as an imapctful career option
• 80,000 Hours with a post on how to identify your personal strengths
• EA Funds has appointed new fund managers
• CEA on their plans for hosting an EA wiki on the forum
• Nuño Sempere attempting to estimate the value of the first 10 EA Forum prize winners
• Cullen O'Keefe looking into why EA outreach is hard towards people on the American political left
• An overview of the work SoGive has been up to over the last few years
• An Ask Me Anything with JP Addison and Sam Deere on software engineering at CEA
• A post looking into whether EA has grown over the last 5 years
• Tyler Maule estimating the total yearly dollars that are aligned with EA by cause area
• Jonas Vollmer writing that the 'EA Funds is more flexible than you might think'
• EA Organisation updates for January 2021

Grants

Open Phil have made 12 grants recently with a total value of $32,320,000

• $19,355,000 - Potential Risks from Advanced AI
  • $11,355,000 - Center for Human-Compatible AI
  • $8,000,000 - Center for Security and Emerging Technology
• $6,651,000 - Global Health & Development
• $3,800,000 - Criminal Justice Reform
• $1,628,000 - Scientific Research
• $508,000 - Farm Animal Welfare
• $202,000 - Macroeconomic Stabilisation Policy
• $176,000 - Global Catastrophic Risks

Global Development

• The Gates Foundation on why they are giving $250,000,000 to fight the pandemic
• A post by Max Roser looking at how much economic growth is necessary to reduce global poverty substantially
• The European Union is looking to consolidate most of its foreign spending via one instrument rather than 10 member states
• Wellcome Leap has launched, describing themselves as DARPA for global health
• A post from JPAL arguing that 'Growth is not enough'
• Our World in Data looking at global poverty lines and what it means for our understanding of poverty
• The Centre for Global Development with a post on 'Allocating Global Aid to Maximize Utility'
• Julian Hazell & David Holmes with a post for Giving What We Can looking at measuring global inequality
• Timothy Liptrot with a post asking whether economic growth causes democratisation

Animal Welfare

• Lewis Bollard on the potential for consumer adoption of alternative proteins
• The Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation has launched its new fish welfare report

Existential & Catastrophic Risks

• 80,000 Hours podcast with Andy Weber on rendering bioweapons obsolete and ending the new nuclear arms race
• Toby Ord in the Guardian asking governments to improve their resilience to prevent catastrophes
• CSER with a paper looking at 'What is Climate Change’s Contribution to Global Catastrophic Risk?'
• The UK government is investing £20 million into the Space Weather Instrumentation Measurement, Modelling and Risk programme to improve the UK’s ability to monitor and predict space weather events
• A podcast with Thomas Moynihan on the history of existential risk
• A post collating analogies & reasons to worry about advanced AI
• Tessa Alexanian with a biosecurity and biorisk reading list

Improving Institutions

• José Luis Ricón looking at potential new models for funding and organising science
• Jason Crawford with a post looking at ways of ending technological stagnation
• Ben Garfinkel with the post 'Is Democracy a Fad?'
• A post introducing Metaforecast, a forecast aggregator and search tool
• An Ask Me Anything with Ian David Moss, strategy consultant to foundations and other institutions

Environment

• The Good Food Institute on the potential environmental benefits of cultivated meat
• China’s coal-fired power plants drop below 50% power generation for first time
• UK Research and Innovation has awarded £171,000,000 in funding across nine significant decarbonisation projects
• Hannah Ritchie looking at what proportion of global greenhouse gas emissions come from food

Longtermism

• Joel Carlsmith with a post 'On future people, looking back at 21st century longtermism'
• Nora with a post looking into patient longtermism
• Haydn Belfield with a response to 'The Case Against Longtermism'
• Joshua Teperowski Monrad has created a syllabus of readings relating to longtermism philosophy
• A post looking at the trade off between the high stakes of the future and declining predictability of actions affecting the future
• Jack Malde on possible misconceptions about (strong) longtermism

Emerging Technology

• 80,000 Hours podcast with Brian Christian discussing the alignment problem
• Future of Life podcast with Stuart Russell and Zachary Kallenborn discussing drone swarms and lethal autonomous weapons
• Charlotte Stix with a paper on actionable principles for AI policy
• Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, on planning for potential future technological unemployment
• Roman Yampolskiy joins FLI to discuss whether AI systems can be controlled, comprehended and explained
• Kat Woods introducing the Nonlinear Fund, who aim to do AI safety research, incubation and funding
• Stefan Torges on 'Coordination challenges for preventing AI conflict'
• Jamie Harris on 'The Importance of Artificial Sentience'

Other Links

• 80,000 Hours podcast with with Ezra Klein on aligning journalism, politics and what matters most
• Project for Awesome have raised nearly $190,000 for seven EA related charities, with members of the EA community contributing 65 videos to this effort
• An interview with Sam Bankman-Fried, a recent blockchain billionaire, on how effective altruism has influenced his donations
• Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's first ever tweet has been sold for the equivalent of $2,900,000 and is planning to donate all of it to GiveDirectly
• Clearer Thinking with '7 reasons why you could be defining a concept ineffectively'
• A look at how Charity Entrepreneurship was founded
• Max Daniel and Benjamin Todd with the post 'How much does performance differ between people?'
• An analysis of the books read by EA Goodreads members
• A post arguing against neutrality about creating happy lives
• Edo Arad summarising chapters 5 and 6 on cause prioritisation from Michael Plant's thesis
• An interview with Igor Kurganov, a former professional poker player who founded Raising for Effective Giving
• An Ask Me Anything on the EA Forum with Tom Chivers, science writer and science editor at UnHerd

Good News

• El Salvador has become the first country in Central America to be certified malaria-free
• The predicted doubling of malaria deaths in Africa due to COVID-19 haven't occurred
• China has banned harsh punishments in schools
• Hepatitis C prevalence in Egypt drops from 7% to 2% since 2018