This is a linkpost for https://animalcharityevaluators.org/blog/announcing-our-2018-charity-recommendations/
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I wonder, what were the obstacles that didn't allow you to make cost-effectiveness analysis for ProVeg?: "For ProVeg in particular, we believe that our best estimate of their cost effectiveness is too speculative to feature in our review or include as a significant factor in our evaluation of their effectiveness." Is this supported by a promise that they will measure the cost-effectiveness in the future? And why it was possible to do the evaluation for other stand out charities and not for this particular one? Finally why do you think a cost-effectiveness analysis is not "a significant factor in our evaluation of their effectiveness".
Our cost-effectiveness estimates are for the relatively short-term, direct impact of each charity. They are estimates of the average cost-effectiveness of a charity over the last year. If the majority of a charity’s programs (by budget) are indirect and/or long-term in their outcomes, we’ve found that our cost-effectiveness estimates for that charity are too uncertain to be useful. (We would not publish a cost-effectiveness estimate for only some of their programs, so as not to risk that estimate being taken as an estimate of the cost-effectiveness of the charities activities as a whole.) This was the case with ProVeg; most of their programs have relatively indirect and/or long-term impact. ProVeg is something of a unique case however, as their V-labelling program, which makes up a significant proportion of their expenditure, is mostly indirect in impact, but is also revenue generating.
Speaking more generally, when making recommendation decisions to donors, we are most interested in marginal cost-effectiveness, or the cost-effectiveness of additional funding to a charity. All of our evaluation criteria are indicators of marginal cost-effectiveness. Our quantitative cost-effectiveness estimates are an important indicator of marginal cost-effectiveness, but they are not necessary or sufficient for estimating marginal cost-effectiveness. If we were to only recommend charities for which we could produce these estimates, we would be biasing ourselves in favor of more measurable short-term outcomes, at the cost of promising long-term or indirect change.
As more research becomes available, we hope to have a better understanding of the long-term and less direct outcomes of different interventions. At that point, we will be able to produce more useful estimates for long-term and indirect change.
In terms of cost effectiveness it's relevant to consider that ProVeg set up a UK operation despite the organisational space appearing relatively saturated in the UK. It's an interesting situation because as far as i can tell The Vegan Society has largely been directed on ProVeg grounds since co-founder of ProVeg International Jasmijn de Boo was CEO of The Vegan Society (2011-2016), it seems to me it has largely continued along those lines. I'm also not sure what level of consultation took place in relation to VeggieWorld London, the veg festival space isn't operated by the larger conventional organisations, so i would wonder what sort of consultation took place there or whether it was something more speculative.
Separate to that there remain issues as to why ProVeg (at least Tobias Leenaert, Melanie Joy and Sebastian Joy) set up the ideological ProVeg organisation Centre for Effective Vegan Advocacy (CEVA) under Beyond Carnism rather than ProVeg or VEBU (as it was formerly known). This organisation is supported by several of the other top and standout charities and seeks to influence the animal movement more broadly. There is no assessment of the impact of this organisation on EAA generally or the animal movement.
I would also disagree that ProVeg is medium to long term. It's ideologically short term around promoting "veg" and focussing on "mainstreamness". It doesn't reflect or promote a broader and inclusive perspective in relation to speciesism or animal rights. ProVeg seems to believe it is too soon to talk about such issues, so focusses on short term gains (in a de-politicised way), whilst stressing the medium to long term approaches more commonly found in the grassroots animal rights movement. But there has been no consultation here.
I have more to say about how ProVeg functions within the broader animal movement, but these types of issue aren't given much weight in decision making terms. Something which in my view functions to undermine the recommendation process. Overall i remain sceptical of the value of a "top" and "standout" charity system and would favour compartmentalising recommendations in relation to the approach of organisations, and then making meaningful comparisons between those organisations, whilst weighting the different compartments. There isn't really any discussion about the utility of different systems of recommendation as far as i can tell. Presumably this happened originally with 80,000 hours, but i'm not sure if it has been reviewed.
Curated and popular this week
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Note: I am not a malaria expert. This is my best-faith attempt at answering a question that was bothering me, but this field is a large and complex field, and I’ve almost certainly misunderstood something somewhere along the way.
Summary
While the world made incredible progress in reducing malaria cases from 2000 to 2015, the past 10 years have seen malaria cases stop declining and start rising. I investigated potential reasons behind this increase through reading the existing literature and looking at publicly available data, and I identified three key factors explaining the rise:
1. Population Growth: Africa's population has increased by approximately 75% since 2000. This alone explains most of the increase in absolute case numbers, while cases per capita have remained relatively flat since 2015.
2. Stagnant Funding: After rapid growth starting in 2000, funding for malaria prevention plateaued around 2010.
3. Insecticide Resistance: Mosquitoes have become increasingly resistant to the insecticides used in bednets over the past 20 years. This has made older models of bednets less effective, although they still have some effect. Newer models of bednets developed in response to insecticide resistance are more effective but still not widely deployed.
I very crudely estimate that without any of these factors, there would be 55% fewer malaria cases in the world than what we see today. I think all three of these factors are roughly equally important in explaining the difference.
Alternative explanations like removal of PFAS, climate change, or invasive mosquito species don't appear to be major contributors.
Overall this investigation made me more convinced that bednets are an effective global health intervention.
Introduction
In 2015, malaria rates were down, and EAs were celebrating. Giving What We Can posted this incredible gif showing the decrease in malaria cases across Africa since 2000:
Giving What We Can said that
> The reduction in malaria has be
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"Part one of our challenge is to solve the technical alignment problem, and that’s what everybody focuses on, but part two is: to whose values do you align the system once you’re capable of doing that, and that may turn out to be an even harder problem", Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO (Link).
In this post, I argue that:
1. "To whose values do you align the system" is a critically neglected space I termed “Moral Alignment.” Only a few organizations work for non-humans in this field, with a total budget of 4-5 million USD (not accounting for academic work). The scale of this space couldn’t be any bigger - the intersection between the most revolutionary technology ever and all sentient beings. While tractability remains uncertain, there is some promising positive evidence (See “The Tractability Open Question” section).
2. Given the first point, our movement must attract more resources, talent, and funding to address it. The goal is to value align AI with caring about all sentient beings: humans, animals, and potential future digital minds. In other words, I argue we should invest much more in promoting a sentient-centric AI.
The problem
What is Moral Alignment?
AI alignment focuses on ensuring AI systems act according to human intentions, emphasizing controllability and corrigibility (adaptability to changing human preferences). However, traditional alignment often ignores the ethical implications for all sentient beings. Moral Alignment, as part of the broader AI alignment and AI safety spaces, is a field focused on the values we aim to instill in AI. I argue that our goal should be to ensure AI is a positive force for all sentient beings.
Currently, as far as I know, no overarching organization, terms, or community unifies Moral Alignment (MA) as a field with a clear umbrella identity. While specific groups focus individually on animals, humans, or digital minds, such as AI for Animals, which does excellent community-building work around AI and animal welfare while
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Many thanks to Constance Li, Rachel Mason, Ronen Bar, Sam Tucker-Davis, and Yip Fai Tse for providing valuable feedback. This post does not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.
Artificial General Intelligence (basically, ‘AI that is as good as, or better than, humans at most intellectual tasks’) seems increasingly likely to be developed in the next 5-10 years. As others have written, this has major implications for EA priorities, including animal advocacy, but it’s hard to know how this should shape our strategy. This post sets out a few starting points and I’m really interested in hearing others’ ideas, even if they’re very uncertain and half-baked.
Is AGI coming in the next 5-10 years?
This is very well covered elsewhere but basically it looks increasingly likely, e.g.:
* The Metaculus and Manifold forecasting platforms predict we’ll see AGI in 2030 and 2031, respectively.
* The heads of Anthropic and OpenAI think we’ll see it by 2027 and 2035, respectively.
* A 2024 survey of AI researchers put a 50% chance of AGI by 2047, but this is 13 years earlier than predicted in the 2023 version of the survey.
* These predictions seem feasible given the explosive rate of change we’ve been seeing in computing power available to models, algorithmic efficiencies, and actual model performance (e.g., look at how far Large Language Models and AI image generators have come just in the last three years).
* Based on this, organisations (both new ones, like Forethought, and existing ones, like 80,000 Hours) are taking the prospect of near-term AGI increasingly seriously.
What could AGI mean for animals?
AGI’s implications for animals depend heavily on who controls the AGI models. For example:
* AGI might be controlled by a handful of AI companies and/or governments, either in alliance or in competition.
* For example, maybe two government-owned companies separately develop AGI then restrict others from developing it.
* These actors’ use of AGI might be dr
I wonder, what were the obstacles that didn't allow you to make cost-effectiveness analysis for ProVeg?: "For ProVeg in particular, we believe that our best estimate of their cost effectiveness is too speculative to feature in our review or include as a significant factor in our evaluation of their effectiveness." Is this supported by a promise that they will measure the cost-effectiveness in the future? And why it was possible to do the evaluation for other stand out charities and not for this particular one? Finally why do you think a cost-effectiveness analysis is not "a significant factor in our evaluation of their effectiveness".
Our cost-effectiveness estimates are for the relatively short-term, direct impact of each charity. They are estimates of the average cost-effectiveness of a charity over the last year. If the majority of a charity’s programs (by budget) are indirect and/or long-term in their outcomes, we’ve found that our cost-effectiveness estimates for that charity are too uncertain to be useful. (We would not publish a cost-effectiveness estimate for only some of their programs, so as not to risk that estimate being taken as an estimate of the cost-effectiveness of the
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