Quick takes

Bettering social media platforms could be a top-tier systemic intervention. My understanding is that EA puts most systemic change / solutions S-rated in terms of impact but F-rated in terms of neglectedness and tractability. Is this the case for social media? Is it super hard and attempted to make the platforms, either internally or through policy, to not maximize for engagement? What about popularizing (and building if necessary) platforms that reward for what would be "useful" for people (or society at large)? Because I think it's the most impactful systemic leverage I can think of. Unlike reforms to traditional media, entertainment, education and even politics, changes to them would reach and make at least small changes to most most of the demographics of most countries. And we need to add to this that they are not just replacing those sources of influence to individuals (except education I guess?), but also replacing the last bastion of influence: social circles.

  I wanted to make this poll to see how the community views the speed/x-risk tradeoff. I'm personally 99% x-risk and 1% speed, so I would hard agree. My prediction is most people will agree, maybe a 70/30 split, but I'm curious to see.

At what level of compute spending will AI Safety research be cut off from being considered effective altruism (if any)? Of course, saving humanity from misaligned AI could be argued to be close to priceless. But how many experiments have a direct theory of change (ToC) of how it's going to mitigate existential risk?  Perhaps a general one is fine at low compute ("it only costs $10 and 'control research' is generally thought to be a good research agenda").   But what about $5,000? What about $10,000? These numbers start to compare to or surpass what organizations like Giving What We Can receive from someone who donates for a whole year. It also starts to compete with saving a human life via programmes like those in GiveWell's top charities.  What about $20,000? $30,000? $50,000?  Over what time frame are we comfortable spending that much money on compute and still considering that money well (effectively) spent? A year? A month? A single experiment?  What kind of discovery is worth $50,000 in AIS research? Should we expect a clear ToC?  I'm very pro AI Safety, but I'm worried about some of the numbers I'm hearing for compute budgets being thrown around (compared to the information gained). I'm wondering - is anyone else is worried about a movement being (famously) concerned with cost effectiveness continuing on this path? Should we encourage more accountability?   

The 85 million children we cannot count New wars are starting before the old ones have ended. Humanitarian budgets are being cut with a chainsaw. And in this time of ultra-prioritisation, even more than before, we are asked to prove that every euro or dollar is spent on saving lives. I have been working in this sector for 15 years. I have seen its inefficiencies up close. I have also seen what it holds together. For the last few years, I have been exploring Effective Altruism and asking whether its principles can be brought into mainstream humanitarian aid. Whether that is even possible. The global aid cuts are now forcing that question into the open. I find that both necessary and deeply unsettling. Necessary, because the push toward cost-effectiveness is overdue. The tools are strong. Metrics like the Disability-Adjusted Life Year and the Wellbeing-Adjusted Life Year have made trade-offs clearer. Work by GiveWell and Rethink Priorities has improved how we compare and prioritise interventions. Unsettling, because the version of effectiveness thinking now leaking into institutional aid is the narrowest version available. EA itself has internal language for working under uncertainty. Hits-based giving, cluster thinking, and work under deep uncertainty are part of the framework. Funders like Open Philanthropy¹ regularly support areas with long causal chains and incomplete evidence when the potential upside is large. None of that nuance is what is showing up in the rooms where humanitarian budgets are being cut. What is showing up is the most legible version of cost-effectiveness, deployed as a universal filter. There is also a division of labour problem. Effective Altruism began as a framework for philanthropic choice: how should private donors direct marginal giving if they want to do the most good? Official development assistance was meant to do something different. Public funding is supposed to hold up systems, sustain services, and maintain the protective

I'm trying to set up a mentorship scheme matching up experienced social media creators with exceptional communicators interested in learning how to communicate high-impact ideas and information at scale using the medium of social media. This is as part of a wider effort to get more EAs with a diverse but previously under-utilised range of skills started on their impact journey. What are some neglected, academic ideas / bits of knowledge that would benefit from being widely spread to the general public through the medium of social media? and... Do you know anyone who's extremely skilled at social media whom I could approach? Someone who would either be interested in making the content or coaching aspiring content creators? Thanks in advance for your help!

Researchers simulate an entire fly brain on a laptop. Is a human brain next? What is the implication of this for EA thinking? Does the fly that purely exists in the computer warrant moral consideration, and could we increase the overall welfare of the world by making millions of these simulations with ideal fruit-fly conditions?    They fully copied the brain of the fly, so from my understanding it should also feel pleasure and pain in theory, I think this poses a real conundrum for EA morality.

I know EA leads to some weird places, but at the same time I think the EA movement is good at not getting too involved in questions of the day where an EA perspective is not needed, and could repel some from the movement. Presumably peace in the Middle East would be very good from an EA perspective, but there is a lot of debate on the Middle East already, no reason to try to inject a formal EA perspective on it. This is not to say that EA-adjacent individuals can't engage in the debate, as a form of personal hobby maybe. 

It might genuinely be the time to boycott Chat GPT and start campaigns targeting corporate partners. But this isn't yet obvious. Even if so, what would be the appropriate concrete and reasonable asks? I think there is a bit of epistemic crisis emerging at the moment. If there's a case to be made, it needs to be made sooner rather than latter. And then we need coordination.