Quick takes
There's lots of talk about how more EA-aligned funding will attract grifters. The Robin Hanson in me wondered what expensive or hard-to-fake signals exist for (human) alignment.
The first ideas that came to mind:
- donating a kidney
- vegan/vegetarian
- non-profit work
- donating a lot to effective charities
- community engagement
I don't know whether folks should weight these highly in funding decisions. Probably they all collapse under sufficient pressure.
I think a lot of ppl studying empirical persuasion results of AI tend to overestimate the ecological validity and generalizability of those results. This isn't to say that studying empirical persuasion results is useless, just a) we should move towards better study designs in the future, and b) when looking at empirical persuasion studies you need to think carefully about not just the methodology and results but also what's reasonable to generalize and not.
I think a lot of people understand in the abstract that "ecological validity is important" but don't ...
If there's so much EA-ish money coming, how does one "put out buckets" to collect it?
I am very concerned about relative cause prioritization among the alleged wave of philanthropy. (Personally, I expect it to me smaller than many do.) How does one shape this? For example, I really want efforts of the shape "raise the salience of AI pause as a political issue among the US public, particularly the religious mainstream." How do I influence the amount of funding that goes to that, if there's a big anticipated wave?
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EAs are often good at maths/technology and less good at leadership and governance skills. This is an excellent match for (non-EA) trustee governance boards, that often have committed older people with good leadership and governance but who struggle with use of tech and maths. There are a lot of trustee vacancies around - highly absorbable - and it's an easy way to get started on tackling real issues with charities big and small!
You can help your charity act more e...
Just under a month until the Cluelessness Critiques Competition deadline. How's it going? Any hints on what people are writing about?
The Fallacy of Similar Magnitudes
A name I came up with for a pattern that comes up often enough to deserve one. Here’s a particular instance:
Suppose you're a longtermist who thinks the vast majority of the (net positive) moral weight is in the far future, that AI existential risk is above 1%, and that it's reasonably tractable to reduce. Some people who hold all three premises still say things like: "AI safety has maybe two orders of magnitude more resources than animal welfare, so the marginal dollar is better spent on animal welfare."
This is the fallacy...
Hot take: When Anthropic IPO money starts flowing into AI safety, the ecosystem should consider operating more outside charitable structures. Charities get an indirect public subsidy via tax-deductible donations, but the trade-off is greater compliance burden and cost, restrictions on spending, and a greater reliance on public goodwill. As the world gets weirder from AI-driven job losses and political shifts, taxpayers may be less happy to see their foregone tax dollars going to China dialogues or high salaries for technical AI safety researchers. (Not legal or financial advice.)
Mental health is one of the most widespread, impactable, yet neglected global health issues of our time. Even knowing mental health conditions are generally under-reported and/ or misrepresented, evidence still shows widespread effects of mental wellbeing on physical health, life satisfaction, and productivity, however it has still not taken off as a major cause area in many EA organizations I have talked to. Why is this?
In addition to @huw's great comment, there's a branch of EA which focuses on well-being, and with that focus mental health interventions often look really effective. Check out the happier lives institute Huw mentioned, times the "WELLBY" and @MichaelPlant
In 2023-2024, it seemed a very strong bias from the EA community and the core AI safety funders that Anthropic not to be argued against or funding diverted to anything that was critical of them (directly or indirectly).
I wonder how the community and funders have updated their beliefs and behaviours?
And while ongoing commentary on their safety/policy actions might not count for your criteria, this paper has been influential enough with policymakers that it probably counts (and goes against aspects of Anthropic's stance on China that underlies a lot of their positions). https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=5278644
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I hastily vibecoded a ~live-updating EA Forum (posts + comments; I think users are static) database + semantic search because software is ~free now. I haven't rigorously checked anything over because it was/is just a random side project so use at your own risk and discretion. Enjoy!
Full database is ~17GB
I'm recording a podcast (TWCBB) with @Lauren Gilbert [edit: we had to reschedule so I can still collect questions]. If there's anything you'd like us to ask her, comment here.
Does anyone have good resources on where value might accrue in worlds where AI can do most (or all) cognitive labour (this Q also applies to physical labour, but is harder)?
Context is I’m interested in learning more about the question of whether “all/most value accrues to AI companies”. My current guess is that value probably just accrues to whatever remains hard to replicate, not necessarily to the model layer.
If you follow this line of reasoning, here are some candidates for where value might end up:
- Distribution and customer trust (I'd assume there
Can we bring back the old comment collapse behavior, ie collapsing a top level comment collapses the subreplies? I find it much harder to go through the comments section without this.
(perhaps @Toby Tremlett🔹 ?)
Hi!
I haven't been very active on the Forum recently, so I thought I'd just pop in to remind people that I offer various editing-related services as a freelancer.
I'm based in London, but most of my work is remote. I offer copyediting, proofreading, substantive editing, conceptual support, review, and coaching. I've worked with many individuals and organisations in the EA and AI safety worlds: for example, I copyedited METR's recent Frontier Risk Report and the International AI Safety Report (2025 and 2026).
If you'd like to work with me, book a short meeting or email me at [email protected].
"I understand sports really well, really well."
Nope.
The President of the United States of Advertising had an eight-minute episode on the subject of soccerball. Who am I to let that pitch go by?
Come for the satire, stay for the realisation none of us know much better, about football or about the rest of life.
From The 1001, an EA sports blog.
I think EAG/EAGx conferences should try (if possible) to avoid venues under active corporate campaign targeting for animal welfare failures.
I recently went to a protest against Marriott over their unfulfilled cage-free egg commitment and couldn't help but think back to EAGxDC which was held at one of their hotels in May.
I don't think the EAGxDC organizers intentionally ignored this; they probably didn't know, or the venue was just very logistically convenient (which I think outweighs this concern).
But I wonder whether organizers generally consider this when choosing venues. I feel like they should, assuming there are other options not under campaign targeting.