Latest Research and Updates for February 2019

• Open Phil with a $55,000,000 grant to set up the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University

• GiveWell have announced a new approach to their research. Including comprehensively reviewing direct interventions in sectors where impacts are more difficult to measure, investigating opportunities to influence government policy, as well as other areas

• The EA Fund for global health and development had a $1,000,000 donation for J-PAL's Innovation in Government Initiative

• A post on the EA forum about the experience of applying for jobs with effective altruism organisations

• Rachel Glennerster on lessons learnt from a year as chief economist at DFID

• Global Priorities Institute have published their new research agenda

• The Council on Foreign Relations has a new blog series looking at averting global catastrophic risks from an effective altruism perspective

• An article about the history of civilisation collapse by Luke Kemp of CSER for the BBC Deep Civilisation vertical

• OpenAI with a paper arguing that long-term AI safety research needs social scientists

• Saulius Šimčikas looking into whether companies keep their animal welfare commitments

• A BBC Deep Civilisation piece on technology over very long time scales

• Joey Savoie on how to start a new high impact charity

• Elizabeth Barnes, Tom Everitt, Shane Legg and Pedro A.Ortega with a new paper for DeepMind

• Michael reflecting on doing good as a retired person in the UK

• A transcript of an EA Global talk by Rob Mather on the work that Against Malaria Foundation does

• Phil Hewinson documenting their trip to India to see how Aravind Eye Care System restores vision to 500,000 people a year

• Edie Bowles and Jamie Harris on the best ways to use your time as a law student or lawyer to help animals

• John Beshir talking to Vox about how they volunteered to get malaria to help test vaccines

• Matthew on whether there is a market failure in the tech volunteering space

• An NPR piece on why No Lean Season wasn't afraid to say that they failed

• An article in Nature looking at the technical gaps in clean meat research

• GFI awards $3,000,000 in funding to 14 scientists for plant-based and cell-based meat research

• An article looking at how some pro-migrant campaigns can potentially backfire

• A post on good practices to improve your predictions

• One for the World 6 months update

• The Economist looking at how the war on drugs has hurt patients in poorer countries

• A new paper from CSER on bridging the gap between near-term and long-term concerns about AI

• Peter Singer on how grateful giving may not do the most good

• Rob Wiblin on the Rationally Speaking podcast talking about 80,000 Hours

• A funding proposal for supporting a campaign to increase Canadian official development assistance

• Kelsey Piper on the 80,000 Hours podcast talking about Vox and effective careers in journalism

• Our World In Data with a post on how they attempt to track the history of extreme poverty

• GiveWell announced a call for grant applications for outstanding organisations operating in Southeast Asia and Bangladesh. Applications close April 1st

• A report on the BP funded 'Venture Research Unit' in the 1980's that aimed to fund researchers who questioned current thinking without extensive requirements or peer review

• 80,000 Hours podcast on radical institutional reforms that might make capitalism and democracy better

• A 500 word explainer from Vox on the potential for AI to cause harm

• Julia Wise on why it's okay to have goals other than "cost effectiveness"

• A Vox post suggesting that we don't yet know if smartphone use has affected mental health issues and research so far has been inconclusive

• A summary post of lists of open questions in EA

• A podcast looking at the intersection of financial independence and effective altruism

• Open Phil made 4 other grants in January, with $1,625,000 for biosecurity, $333,000 for gene drive regulation research, $150,000 for criminal justice reform and $131,000 for clean meat

• 2018 EA survey posts on where people first hear about EA, geographic differences in EA and group membership

• Brian Tse, from Oxford University’s Center for the Governance of AI, sharing their thoughts on the new American AI Initiative

• Garret M. Broad on how the effective altruism and animal protection movements have contributed to each other

• Chatham House with a paper looking at the EU regulatory landscape and considerations for policy makers dealing with an increase in meat analogue consumption

• Vox covering the recent debate over whether extreme poverty has decreased in the last few decades

• A review of meta studies by Campbell Collaboration suggesting mixed impact for various financial inclusion programmes

• GFI have a new open online course teaching the basics of plant-based and cell-based meat

• Effective altruism in media & blogs - Jacy Reese with a short video on NowThis about the end of animal farming, Haseeb Qureshi on their 2018 donations and how they reduce their social media consumption, Philanthropy Australia looking at the history of EA, CSER on BBC news writing about the biggest threats to humanity

• In a good news roundup Tyson, the second largest meat producer in the world, have announced they will be launching their own animal-free protein products in 2019, new research suggesting that measles vaccines can also help reduce extreme poverty and initial studies reporting that public service announcements can be effective in reducing domestic violence