Topics in Need of Work
Value erosion refers to a process by which competitive dynamics could eventually lead to "the proliferation of forms of life (countries, companies, autonomous AIs) which lock-in bad values", if those forms of life outcompete others (Dafoe, 2020).
Further reading
Dafoe, Allan (2019) Value erosion for FHI July 2019, July 25.
Bostrom, Nick (2004) The...
When human-level AI will emerge (AI timelines) is a consideration for both AI risk interventions and other interventions. For example, one's AI timelines affect how much to discount interventions that have a delayed effect.
Related entries
This topic is for posts discussing Large Language Models (LLMs) -- for example, the GPT models produced by OpenAI.
Related Entries
AI safety | Artificial intelligence | AI governance | AI forecasting
Benchmarks are tests which enable us to measure the progress of AI capabilities, and test for characteristics which might pose safety risks.
Further reading
BASALT: A Benchmark for Learning from Human Feedback - AI Alignment Forum
Misaligned Powerseeking — SERI ML Alignment Theory Scholars Program | Summer 2022
Proliferation is the spread of weapons, technologies, or things useful in producing weapons or technologies to actors who did not previously have those things. The term "proliferation" is especially associated with the spread of weapons of mass destruction - such as nuclear weapons - or of technologies or materials useful in producing them. The term diffusion...
Imposter syndrome is a prevalent psychological phenomenon characterized by persistent feelings of self-doubt and inadequacy, often experienced by individuals in high-achieving environments. In the context of effective altruism—a movement focused on using evidence and reason to determine the most effective ways to benefit others—imposter syndrome can be particularly...
Equal consideration of interests is the view according to which the interests of every moral patient matter equally. An early proponent of equal consideration of interests was Jeremy Bentham, who popularized the dictum, "everybody to count for one, nobody for more than one".[1]
The equal consideration of interests view can be contrasted with views that accord...
Metagenomics is the analysis of genetic material obtained from an environmental sample.
Further reading
Moorhouse, Fin & Luca Righetti (2022) Ajay Karpur on metagenomic sequencing, Hear This Idea, June 13.
Related entries
The Center for Space Governance is a non-profit research organization dedicated to exploring issues in space governance.
External links
Center for Space Governance. Official website.
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The Atlas Fellowship is a summer program in California open to talented high school students globally aimed at helping these students with thinking tools, a scholarship, and funding and support for their projects.
As of November 2023, they are ceasing to operate the fellowship.[1]
Funding
As of July 2022, the Atlas Fellowship has received $5 million in funding ...
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Menopause refers to the menopause transition (or climacteric), including perimenopause, menopause, and postmenopause. This topic covers posts on the psychological, social, economic, and health impacts of menopause, as well as interventions, research, policy, and workplace implications related to this life stage.
Recent discussion on the EA Forum has framed menopause as a potentially neglected area within global health and wellbeing, especially in low- and middle-income countries where access to evidence-based support is limited. Posts under this topic discuss questions such as:
- the scale and neglectedness of menopause-related suffering,
- impacts on mental health, cognition, sleep, and workforce participation,
- spillover effects on families and caregiving systems,
- workplace and productivity effects,
- and the cost-effectiveness of scalable interventions such as digital cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).
Several posts focus on Lunava, a Spanish-language guided internet-based CBT intervention for depression and anxiety during the menopause transition in Latin America. These posts explore the potential for low-cost, scalable mental health support targeted at women experiencing climacteric symptoms, as well as broader questions about caregiver burden and indirect household effects.
The topic may also include discussion of:
- menopause-related public health policy,
- workplace accommodations and advocacy,
- research gaps in women’s health,
- menopause and aging-related disease risk,
- caregiver mental health,
- and the economic consequences of untreated symptoms.
Related entries
Women’s health and welfare | Mental health (cause area) | Subjective wellbeing | Psychotherapy | Workplace advocacy | Global health and wellbeing | StrongMinds | Low- and middle-income countries | Cost-effectiveness analysis | Neglectedness
Menopause refers to the menopause transition (or climacteric), including perimenopause, menopause, and postmenopause. This topic covers posts on the psychological, social, economic, and health impacts of menopause, as well as interventions, research, policy, and workplace implications related to this life stage.
Recent discussion on the EA Forum has framed menopause as a potentially neglected area within global health and wellbeing, especially in low- and middle-income countries where access to evidence-based support is limited. Posts under this topic discuss questions such as:
- the scale and neglectedness of menopause-related suffering,
- impacts on mental health, cognition, sleep, and workforce participation,
- spillover effects on families and caregiving systems,
- workplace and productivity effects,
- and the cost-effectiveness of scalable interventions such as digital cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).
Several posts focus on Lunava, a Spanish-language guided internet-based CBT intervention for depression and anxiety during the menopause transition in Latin America. These posts explore the potential for low-cost, scalable mental health support targeted at women experiencing climacteric symptoms, as well as broader questions about caregiver burden and indirect household effects....
To make the future go better, we can either work to avoid near-term catastrophes like human extinction or improve the futures where we survive. This series from Forethought explores that second option. The essays are designed to be read in order, beginning with "Introducing Better Futures".
This week, Fin Moorhouse, one of the authors of these essays, will be available to answer your questions in the discussion thread.
You can see all the posts here.
To make the future go better, we can either work to avoid near-term catastrophes like human extinction or improve the futures where we survive. This series from Forethought explores that second option. The essays are designed to be read in order, beginning with "Introducing Better Futures".
This week, Fin Moorhouse, one of the authors of these essays, will be available to answer your questions in the discussion thread.
You can see all the posts here.
Macroscopic Ventures is a nonprofit focused on reducing s-existential risks (suffering)from conflict (e.g., including by reducingvia cooperative AI), catastrophic AI misuse by malevolent or fanatical actors (e.g., via compute governance or information security), avoiding conflict (e.g., via cooperative AI) and improving AI welfare. It gave around $10$30 million in grants in 2024.2025.
Past grants include to the NYU Mind, Ethics, and Policy Program, the Center on Long-Term Risk, the Cooperative AI Foundation, and the Institute for Law and AI. Past investments include Anthropic's Series A and Series B.
Macroscopic Ventures was founded in 2019 under the name Center for Emerging Risk Research (CERR) and adopted its current name in February 2025.
Althaus, David, & Baumann, Tobias (2020). Reducing long-term risks from malevolent actors, Effective Altruism Forum, April 2929, 2020.
S-risks | AI governance| Reducing long-term risks from malevolent actors | Cooperative AI | Artificial sentience | Cause prioritization | Longtermism
Soil animalsinvertebrates are terrestrial invertebrates that spend most of their life in soil or litter. They influence nutrient cycling, plant growth, and carbon dynamics. Examples of soil animalsinvertebrates include soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes. Each of these groups is much more numerous, and has many more neurons in total than wild vertebrates and farmed animals. Vasco Grilo hasargued that overall changes in welfare may be determined by effects on soil animals, invertebrates, even accounting for soil ants and termites only, instead of effects on the beneficiaries targeted by interventions. However, there is large uncertainty about the expected intensity of the subjective experiences of soil animals,invertebrates, whether they have positive or negative welfare, and what increases or decreases their population. So Vasco advocated for more research on informing how to increase the welfare of soil animalsinvertebrates over pursuing whatever land use change interventions naively seem to achieve that the most cost-effectively.
NOTE: Please refrain from tagging posts with this tag on April 1st (it ruins the joke). However, on April 2nd, please do!
Original ResearchResearch:: Faunalytics conducts several original research studies each year that are likely to have a high impact on animals. They identify research projects through a 4-stage prioritization process, which includes gathering input from advocates and topic experts to find knowledge gaps and conducting assessments to verify the potential for impact.
Research LibraryLibrary:: They host the world’s largest open-access collection of animal advocacy research. By curating 6,000+ research summaries, blogs, report translations for impactful regions, and visualizations such as infographics and videos, they ensure that advocates can access the research needed to make their efforts more effective. They have developed research synthesis pages to ensure advocates are improving their advocacy tactics. Their library receives hundreds of thousands of pageviews each year.
Research SupportSupport:: Beyond providing research, Faunalytics ensures advocates have the support they need to apply research to their work. Faunalytics has directly advised hundreds of advocates through their Office HoursHours and Research Ambassador project. They also host an annual online research symposium, Fauna Connections, to connect advocates with the latest research from the academic community.
Faunalytics' research and data empower animal protection organizations to make effective decisions and spend their limited resources wisely. Historically, there has been little capacity for research within the advocacy movement, and it is still a neglected issue due to the limited funding for farmed animals. Faunalytics addresses this gap by conducting and curating shared research resources and providing support to build capacity within organizations.
Evaluation
Since 2015, Faunalytics has been named a “Recommended Charity” by Animal Charity Evaluators. ACE considers Faunalytics "an excellent giving opportunity because of their strong programs aimed at strengthening the animal advocacy movement."
You can visit Faunalytics’ Impact Center (linked below) to read more about their successes.
Animal Charity Evaluators (2023)Faunalytics’ 2025 Year In Review & 2026 Plans
Faunalytics’ 2026-2030 Strategic Plan
The final vote at the end of the week is below:
During the week, the Forum features a frontpage debate slider where users can register their view on the statement and optionally leave comments. In parallel, users contribute posts that aim to inform or shift views on the debate.
Anti-natalism is athe philosophical position that view procreation as unethical, often based on the belief that bringing new life into the world results in more harm than good.
Anti-natalism is a philosophical position that argues against human reproduction,view procreation as unethical, often based on the belief that bringing new life into the world results in more harm than good.
Soil animals are terrestrial invertebrates that spend most of their life in soil or litter. They influence nutrient cycling, plant growth, and carbon dynamics. Examples of soil animals include soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes. Each of these groups is much more numerous, and has many more neurons in total than wild vertebrates and farmed animals. Vasco Grilo argued overall changes in welfare may be determined by effects on soil animals, even accounting for soil ants and termites only, instead of effects on the beneficiaries targeted by interventions. However, there is large uncertainty about the expected intensity of the subjective experiences of soil animals, whether they have positive or negative experiences,welfare, and what increases or decreases their population. So Vasco advocated for more research on informing how to increase the welfare of soil animals over pursuing whatever land use change interventions naively seem to achieve that the most cost-effectively.
Soil animals are terrestrial invertebrates that spend most of their life in soil or litter. They influence nutrient cycling, plant growth, and carbon dynamics. Examples of soil animals include soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes. Each of these groups is much more numerous, and has many more neurons in total than wild vertebrates and farmed animals. Vasco Grilo argued overall changes in welfare may be determined by effects on soil animals, even accounting for soil ants and termites only, instead of effects on the beneficiaries targeted by interventions. However, there is large uncertainty about the expected intensity of the subjective experiences of soil animals, whether they have positive or negative, experiences, and what increases or decreases their population. So Vasco advocated for more research on informing how to increase the welfare of soil animals over pursuing whatever land use change interventions naively seem to achieve that the most cost-effectively.
AGI & Animals Debate Week (March 23–29, 2026) is an EA Forum debate week centered on the statement:
If AGI goes well for humans, it’ll go well for animals.
This tag is for posts and discussions that engage with this question, including arguments, cruxes, and related considerations about how advanced AI systems may affect non-human animals.
During the week, the Forum features a frontpage debate slider where users can register their view on the statement and optionally leave comments. In parallel, users contribute posts that aim to inform or shift views on the debate.
The topic focuses on a relatively neglected question: how outcomes for animals may differ in worlds where AGI is successfully aligned with human values. Key considerations include whether human-aligned AGI would adequately account for animal welfare, how transformative AGI is expected to be, and what a “good” outcome for animals entails in post-AGI futures.
This tag can be applied to:
- Posts directly addressing the debate statement
- Analyses of AGI’s potential impact on animals
- Arguments about moral consideration of animals in AI-aligned futures
- Reflections on strategy, prioritization, or advocacy related to animals in transformative AI scenarios
Read more in the announcement post.
Related entries
Artificial intelligence | Animal welfare | AI safety | AI x Animals | AI Welfare Debate Week | Animal Welfare vs Global Health Debate Week | Existential Choices Debate Week | AI alignment | Transformative artificial intelligence | Moral circle expansion | Non-humans and the long-term future | S-risk | Events on the EA Forum
AGI & Animals Debate Week (March 23–29, 2026) is an EA Forum debate week centered on the statement:
If AGI goes well for humans, it’ll go well for animals.
The final vote at the end of the week is below:
Altruismo Eficaz. A repository of translated EA articles.
AltruismeEfficace.net. A repository of translated articles.
Note that this notion is relative to the agent's situation: for example, a technology that would allow one to dominate the world in year 1000 might no longer be sufficient today. In particular, domination may be a much higher bar than (threat of) destruction, perhaps requiring unassailability by existing or future attacks.
cost-benefit analysis |
cost-effectiveness|distribution of cost-effectiveness | intervention evaluation | ITN framework | cause priotization