Upcoming Virtual Events
- 29th November - EA Medicine Networking Event - Organised by EA Medicine
- 30th November - Effective Giving Day - Organised by Giving What We Can
- 2nd December - What Good is Crypto: Crypto-Philanthropy, Poverty and Financial Inclusion - Organised by GiveDirectly and The Life You Can Save, with a panel including Peter Singer and Sam Bankman-Fried
- 3rd December - Legible normativity for AI alignment - Organised by Legal Priorities Project
- 4th December- Salary Negotiation Training Programme
- 4-12th December - Vision Weekend - Organised by Foresight Institute, with talks from Anders Sandberg, Jaan Tallinn, Tom Kalil and Jose Luis Ricon
- 10th December - Rachel Stern: Automating fairness? AI in the Chinese courts - Organised by Legal Priorities Project
- 11th December - Q&A with EAs in policy - Organised by Training for Good
- 12th December - EA Finance Meetup - sign up here to find out more
- 13th December - Maximising your charitable ROI like a consultant
- 13-15th December - Interpretability, Safety, and Security in AI - A conference organised by the Alan Turing Institute
- 16th December - GiveDirectly End of Year Update
- 19th December - Good News on Climate Change + What is a Worst-Case Scenario? - Organised by Effective Environmentalism
- January 2022 - AGI Safety Fundamentals - 8 week course organised by EA Cambridge, applications close 15th December
Latest Research and Updates
Meta
- There are new EA Slack workspaces for people interested in the below areas
- The EA Finance network now has a form for people who are interested in joining
- EA Giving Tuesday have guides for people who want to take advantage of Facebook's $8 million match on the 30th November
- The Centre for Effective Altruism with updates from each of their teams on their progress in 2021
- Benjamin Todd with a post 'Be more ambitious: a rational case for dreaming big (if you want to do good)'
- Astral Codex Ten is giving out grants in a similar way to the Fast Grants project
- There is now an EA Behavioural Science Newsletter
- Effektiv Spenden on how they have been able to raise donations of more than 4.3 million euros in 2021 and their plans for 2022
- Our World In Data have asked for input from the EA community on how they can improve their website
- 80,000 Hours on 'The growth of effective altruism: what does it mean for our priorities and level of ambition?'
- Effective Altruism for Jews has launched with a new website
- The recordings of talks from EA Global London 2021 are now available to watch
- Open Philanthropy are turning their criminal justice program into an independent organisation
- Nuño Sempere and Philip Trammell with a 'Model of Patient Spending and Movement Building'
- An updated 80,000 Hours post on what the research says about how much to explore in your career
- EA funds now accepts more crypto currencies with lower fees
- Ben West has a list of EA communication project ideas
- Philip Trammell is considering running a two week summer course in 'economic theory and global prioritisation'
- Ozzie Gooen with the post 'Ambitious Altruistic Software Engineering Efforts: Opportunities and Benefits'
- Rethink Priorities with their 2021 Impact and 2022 Strategy and with a recent Ask Me Anything
- A post looking at EA aligned impact investing
- There are new Effective Thesis services and opportunities to get involved
- Michael Dickens with a post asking whether earners-to-give should work at start ups instead of big companies
- EA organisation updates for October
- The Business Growth Agency is offering pro bono business coaching for EA organisations
- Akhil Bansal has founded Hi-Med, a new local community oriented organisation for EA-aligned medics, new and existing, currently starting up in Cambridge, London and Oxford
- Benjamin Todd on how small donors can still have a significant impact, and a post disagreeing with that
Grants
Open Phil have made 42 grants recently with a total value of $124,000,000
- $56,000,000 - Criminal Justice Reform
- $50,000,000 - Just Impact
- $55,000,000 - Global Development
- $51,000,000 - Malaria Consortium
- $5,000,000 - Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness
- $5,000,000 - Animal Welfare
- $1,500,000 - Scientific Research
- $700,000 - Potential Risks from Advanced Artificial Intelligence
- $600,000 - Immigration Policy
Global Development
- GiveWell giving recommendations for 2021
- Open Philanthropy on their increase in giving to GiveWell recommended charities, up from $100 million last year to $300 million this year
- Max Roser on 'Extreme poverty: how far have we come, how far do we still have to go?'
- Holden Karnofsky with a post looking at five clashing pictures on how to help the world
- Vox reporting the case for making mental health a priority in global development
- GiveDirectly on why funds should be given now and not rolled over to future years
- A post on Our World in Data looking at access to basic education
- Vox with an article 'How a simple solution slashed child mortality in rural Kenyan villages'
- Open Philanthropy with technical updates to their global health and wellbeing cause prioritisation framework
- Our World in Data now have a natural disasters data explorer
- Josh Morrison on why more money should be spent on curing infectious diseases
Animal Welfare
- Animal Charity Evaluator with their charity recommendations for 2021
- The Good Food Institute with an overview of cultivated meat in China
- Jamie Harris with a post looking at animal rights vs animal welfare
- The virtual Material Innovation Conference will be held on the 18th and 19th of May 2022
- The UK government has recognised lobsters, octopus and crabs as sentient beings
- Karthik Sekar has written After Meat, arguing for technologies to replace animals in the food production system
- Alice Ravenscroft writing about how food and agriculture was a neglected topic at COP26
Existential & Catastrophic Risks
- Aaron Tang and Luke Kemp with a paper in Frontiers in Climate about stratospheric aerosol injection
- Luisa Rodriguez on why global catastrophes seem unlikely to kill us all
- Wellcome Leap has a new $60 million program focused on RNA readiness and response
- The Pentagon has increased its estimates of China's projected nuclear weapons arsenal over the coming years
- A transcript of a talk on nuclear safety by Joan Rohlfing at EA Global
- A summary of the 2021 accomplishments and 2022 plans for the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute
- Vitalik Buterin on why cryptoeconomics and existential researchers should listen to each other more
- 2021 ALLFED Highlights
- Seth Baum with advice for students and early-career professionals interested in global catastrophic risk
Improving Institutions
- New Science has a science summer fellowship for 2022, a 12 week program where life scientists will work on their most ambitious research ideas
Environment
- Giving Green with their climate giving recommendations for 2021
- Johannes Ackva on how to take action to reduce extreme risks from catastrophic climate change
- Subak is a new non-profit aiming to connect climate data to projects that need it
- Matt Clifford with Michelle You discussing her carbon removal startup
- Founders Pledge with two new climate donation recommendations
- Our World in Data have a carbon emissions data explorer
- Hannah Ritchie from Our World in Data on why we should 'stop telling kids they'll die from climate change'
Longtermism
- Tatsuyoshi Saijo on whether people can be encouraged to consider the needs of their distant descendants
- Vox covering the new patient philanthropy fund created by Founders Pledge
- Michael Aird has created a database of organisations related to longtermism and existential risks
- Jaime Sevilla analyses econometric papers studying intergenerational persistence
Emerging Technology
- Applications are open for the GovAI 2022 Summer Fellowship, deadline 1st January
- Deepmind with an article looking at real world challenges for AGI
- 80,000 Hours with a career profile on China-related AI safety and governance paths
- Iason Gabriel with a paper exploring the relationship between AI and principles of distributive justice
- CSER with a report on an international horizon scanning exercise on emerging technologies and dual-use concerns, organised by WHO
- Deepmind have introduced Isomorphic Labs, an organisation focused on the drug discovery process from first principles with an AI-first approach
- The Guardian covering Stuart Russel on the dangers of unaligned AI
- Azeem Azhar explores the use of AI in defence and medical biology
- Sigal Samuel looking at whether brain stimulation, neurofeedback and synthetic psychedelics could increase wellbeing
- A series of conversations between Eliezer Yudkowsky, Carl Shulman, Rohin Shah, Richard Ngo, Ajeya Cotra and Paul Christiano on AI alignment
- Andy Jones on why AI safety needs software engineers
- Shin-Shin Hua and Haydn Belfield with a paper on AI & Antitrust published in the Yale Journal of Law and Technology
- Rohin Shah on the Future of Life Podcast discussing the State of AGI Safety Research in 2021
Other Links
- Anya Marchenko on what she learned from the EA Global conference
- Holden Karnofsky on 'minimal-trust investigations' that he describes as the single activity that seems to have been most formative for the way he thinks
- 80,000 Hours podcast with David Wallace on the many-worlds theory of quantum mechanics and its implications
- Peter Singer and Yascha Mounk in conversation on how to reduce suffering
- Hear This Idea podcast with Keith Frankish on illusionism about consciousness
- Michael Aird with readings & notes on how to do high-quality, efficient research
- Jamie Harris with a literature review of effective strategies for changing public opinion
Good News
- The BBC looking at environmental issues that have mainly been fixed
- An article on how the COVID-19 pandemic drove flu to historic lows, and may have eliminated one virus type completely
- The fourth WHO global tobacco trends report shows that there are 1.3 billion tobacco users globally compared to 1.32 billion in 2015
- The Kenyan government has signed a new law that will give a half-million refugees in the country an opportunity to earn a living, instead of depending on aid agencies