Topics in Need of Work
Far-UVC (also far-UV or far-UV-C) is light with a wavelength of 200–235 nm. It is a type of germicidal ultraviolet (GUV) light, which includes the whole UVC and parts of the UVB spectrum. Far-UVC has emerged as a highly promising approach to indoor air disinfection, offering enhanced effectiveness and safety compared to conventional 254 nm upper-room GUV systems...
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...
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
Reasoning transparency is a form of transparency that prioritizes the sharing of information about underlying general thinking processes and philosophy and the communication of this information in ways that make it easier for the recipient to determine what updates to make in response to it.
Further reading
Muehlhauser, Luke (2017) Reasoning transparency, Open...
A technology race is a competitive dynamic between rival teams to first develop a powerful technology, such as weapons of mass destruction, advanced artificial intelligence, or spaceflight capability.
Terminology
The expression arms race is often used to describe technology races, though the expression is also used to describe a specific type of technology race...
Topic Voting Activity
| User | Post Title | Topic | Pow | When | Vote |
Recent Topic Activity
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.
The next Draft Amnesty event will be held during the week starting February 23rd. Draft Amnesty is an event where Forum users can post scrappy, draft-y, or incomplete posts with impunity.
How to format your Draft Amnesty post
Draft Amnesty posts will differentiated on the Forum Frontpage (with a "draft amnesty week" tag visible), as long as they are tagged with this tag.
You can include this table at the start of your post:
| This is a Draft Amnesty Week draft. It may not be polished, up to my usual standards, fully thought through, or fully fact-checked. |
Commenting and feedback guidelines:
|
Related entries
Effective Altruism Forum | Draft Amnesty Day (2022) | Draft Amnesty Week (2024) | Draft Amnesty Week (2025) | Writing advice | Discussion norms |
The next Draft Amnesty event will be held during the week starting February 23rd. Draft Amnesty is an event where Forum users can post scrappy, draft-y, or incomplete posts with impunity.
How to format your Draft Amnesty post
Draft Amnesty posts will differentiated on the Forum Frontpage (with a "draft amnesty week" tag visible), as long as they are tagged with this tag.
You can include this table at the start of your post:...
Mission and approach
FarmKind guides donors to a curated set of animal welfare and environmental charities working on corporate reforms, public policy, and alternatives to intensive animal agriculture. The platform does not take a percentage of donations; it is grant-funded to maintain independence from the charities it recommends.
Operations
Donors can give either to an “Impact Fund,” which is distributed across six selected charities, or to individual organizations on the platform, such as The Humane League. Donation processing is handled by Every.org, with the intent that 100% of donations reach recipient charities aside from standard payment processing fees.
Background
FarmKind launched in 2024 following incubation by Charity Entrepreneurship and AIM. The organization’s stated goal is to generate substantial new funding for farmed animal welfare, with internal targets for fundraising leverage over time. It has received positive attention from prominent advocates of animal welfare and effective philanthropy.
External links
FarmKind. Official website.
Related entries
Farmed animal welfare | Corporate animal welfare campaigns | Effective giving
The Center for Wild Animal Welfare (CWAW) is a new policy advocacy organization, working to improve the lives of wild animals today and build support for wild animal welfare policy. Its work emphasizes near-term policy change while aiming to build longer-term recognition of wild animal welfare as a legitimate area of public policy.
Mission and approach
CWAW seeks to ensure that policymakers consider the welfare of individual wild animals affected by public decisions, including those related to urban infrastructure, fertility control, and pesticide use. The organization prioritizes interventions it views as tractable within existing policy processes, alongside broader efforts to expand political and institutional support for wild animal welfare.
Background
CWAW launched in late 2025. It was co-founded by Richard Parr MBE, a former UK Prime Minister’s policy adviser, and Ben Stevenson, a researcher with Animal Ask. CWAW operates with fiscal sponsorship from Rethink Priorities and has received support from organizations including Wild Animal Initiative and NYU’s Wild Animal Welfare Program.
Activities
CWAW engages with policymakers, politicians, media, and civil society organizations, and produces policy-relevant research and reports, including work on the current state of wild animal welfare policy. Its initial focus is on the United Kingdom, with the possibility of expanding to other jurisdictions in the future.
Related topics
Bostrom, Nick (2014) Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Leverage Research describes itself as a nonprofit research institute that conducts research in early stage science. However, Leverage Research has been credibly accused of serious wrongdoing[1][2] and has been described by the rationalist blogger Ozy Brennan as a "cult"[3] and by a pseudonymous LessWrong poster as having the characteristics of a "high-demand group", which is a technical term for a cult.[4] The belief that Leverage Research is a cult or high-demand group is widely held in the effective altruism community.[5]
Leverage Research has a sister organization called Paradigm Academy. Paradigm describes itself as providing training to individuals and incubates startups.[6]
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 soilanimalsinvertebrates 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 soilanimals,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 soilanimals,invertebrates, whether they have positive or negative welfare, and what increases or decreases their population. So Vasco advocated for more researchoninforming how to increase the welfare of soilanimalsinvertebrates over pursuing whatever land use change interventions naively seem to achieve that the most cost-effectively.