alene's Quick takes

Advanced AI could unlock an era of enlightened and competent government action. But without smart, active investment, we’ll squander that opportunity and barrel blindly into danger. Executive summary See also a summary on Twitter / X. The US federal government is falling behind the private sector on AI adoption. As AI improves, a growing gap would leave the government unable to effectively respond to AI-driven existential challenges and threaten the legitimacy of its democratic institutions. A dual imperative → Government adoption of AI can’t wait. Making steady progress is critical to: * Boost the government’s capacity to effectively respond to AI-driven existential challenges * Help democratic oversight keep up with the technological power of other groups * Defuse the risk of rushed AI adoption in a crisis → But hasty AI adoption could backfire. Without care, integration of AI could: * Be exploited, subverting independent government action * Lead to unsafe deployment of AI systems * Accelerate arms races or compress safety research timelines Summary of the recommendations 1. Work with the US federal government to help it effectively adopt AI Simplistic “pro-security” or “pro-speed” attitudes miss the point. Both are important — and many interventions would help with both. We should: * Invest in win-win measures that both facilitate adoption and reduce the risks involved, e.g.: * Build technical expertise within government (invest in AI and technical talent, ensure NIST is well resourced) * Streamline procurement processes for AI products and related tech (like cloud services) * Modernize the government’s digital infrastructure and data management practices * Prioritize high-leverage interventions that have strong adoption-boosting benefits with minor security costs or vice versa, e.g.: * On the security side: investing in cyber security, pre-deployment testing of AI in high-stakes areas, and advancing research on mitigating the ris

In our recent strategy retreat, the GWWC Leadership Team recognised that by spreading our limited resources across too many projects, we are unable to deliver the level of excellence and impact that our mission demands. True to our value of being mission accountable, we've therefore made the difficult but necessary decision to discontinue a total of 10 initiatives. By focusing our energy on fewer, more strategically aligned initiatives, we think we’ll be more likely to ultimately achieve our Big Hairy Audacious Goal of 1 million pledgers donating $3B USD to high-impact charities annually. (See our 2025 strategy.) We’d like to be transparent about the choices we made, both to hold ourselves accountable and so other organisations can take the gaps we leave into account when planning their work. As such, this post aims to: * Inform the broader EA community about changes to projects & highlight opportunities to carry these projects forward * Provide timelines for project transitions * Explain our rationale for discontinuing certain initiatives What’s changing  We've identified 10 initiatives[1] to wind down or transition. These are: * GWWC Canada * Effective Altruism Australia funding partnership * GWWC Groups * Giving Games * Charity Elections * Effective Giving Meta evaluation and grantmaking * The Donor Lottery * Translations * Hosted Funds * New licensing of the GWWC brand  Each of these is detailed in the sections below, with timelines and transition plans where applicable. How this is relevant to you  We still believe in the impact potential of many of these projects. Our decision doesn’t necessarily reflect their lack of value, but rather our need to focus at this juncture of GWWC's development.  Thus, we are actively looking for organisations and individuals interested in taking on some of these projects. If that’s you, please do reach out: see each project's section for specific contact details. Thank you for your continued support as we

We are excited to share a summary of our 2025 strategy, which builds on our work in 2024 and provides a vision through 2027 and beyond! Background Giving What We Can (GWWC) is working towards a world without preventable suffering or existential risk, where everyone is able to flourish. We do this by making giving effectively and significantly a cultural norm. Focus on pledges Based on our last impact evaluation[1], we have made our pledges –  and in particular the 🔸10% Pledge – the core focus of GWWC’s work.[2] We know the 🔸10% Pledge is a powerful institution, as we’ve seen almost 10,000 people take it and give nearly $50M USD to high-impact charities annually. We believe it could become a norm among at least the richest 1% — and likely a much wider segment of the population — which would cumulatively direct an enormous quantity of financial resources towards tackling the world’s most pressing problems.  We initiated this focus on pledges in early 2024, and are doubling down on it in 2025. In line with this, we are retiring various other initiatives we were previously running and which are not consistent with our new strategy. Introducing our BHAG We are setting ourselves a long-term Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) of 1 million pledgers donating $3B USD to high-impact charities annually, which we will start working towards in 2025. 1 million pledgers donating $3B USD to high-impact charities annually would be roughly equivalent to ~100x GWWC’s current scale, and could be achieved by 1% of the world’s richest 1% pledging and giving effectively. Achieving this would imply the equivalent of nearly 1 million lives being saved[3] every year. See the BHAG FAQ for more info. Working towards our BHAG Over the coming years, we expect to test various growth pathways and interventions that could get us to our BHAG, including digital marketing, partnerships with aligned organisations, community advocacy, media/PR, and direct outreach to potential pledgers. We thin