Just a very quick answer from me to your first question.
At 80k we rate climate change ahead of global health since it seems more pressing from a longtermist perspective (e.g. Toby Ord thinks it’s a significant existential risk factor).
So, I would say that longtermists should donate to climate change over global health from an impact perspective, if choosing equally good charities from each cause (though I think it would be even better to donate to GCBRs of AI safety).
One might think that GiveWell is better at selecting charities than FP (and they’ve certainly done more research), but I think the edge on charity selection is unlikely to be big enough to offset the difference in cause area.
Another difference is that GiveWell focuses on evidence-backed interventions, whereas FP takes more of a hits based approach, but that seems like another advantage of the FP picks to me.
Finally, I’m focusing more on direct impact above. There could be other reasons to donate to global health (e.g. for advocacy reasons—since lots of great people have entered EA via global health), though I’m pretty unsure those factors would tell in favour of global health going forward (e.g. it seems plausible to me that EA should make climate change our standard ‘mainstream’ cause rather than global health).
PS Hauke’s post is comparing GiveWell recommendations to climate change on a neartermist perspective, so doesn’t answer your question.
Thanks so much for writing this answer Ben! And yes thanks for clarifying that Hauke’s post is comparing GiveWell recommendations to climate change on a neartermist perspective. I didn’t know that because I didn’t read the full thing yet (and I think it would be quite difficult for me to fully understand).
Are you willing to share your views Ben of whether a longtermist should donate to a top biorisk organization (i.e. Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security) versus a top AI safety organization (i.e. the Centre for Human Compatible AI)?
Both of the sample organizations I mentioned above are recommended by Founders Pledge, although I don’t know how much to trust their recommendations in the x-risk space (I have read more about their research into climate change than x-risk organizations).
Given that Toby Ord thinks that the chance of an existential catastrophe from unaligned AI is 10% and from biorisk is 3.33%, then I might reasonably conclude that as long as CHAI is not 3x worse than JHU CHS, it would be more effective to donate to CHAI. I’m not sure how to trade off the efforts of organizations between those two spaces though, or if people should even do that—maybe it’s just robustly good to donate to either, and that there’s not much point trading off between the two causes. What do you think?
We’re somewhat more keen to see additional resources on AI safety compared to GCBRs, but the difference seems fairly narrow, so we’re keen to see people take unusually good opportunities to help reduce GCBRs (or to work on it if they have better personal fit). More here: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/global-catastrophic-biological-risks/
(e.g. it seems plausible to me that EA should make climate change our standard ‘mainstream’ cause rather than global health).
This is really interesting to hear from you. I wonder if community builders and people leading fundraising organizations should think about this more, and if they are willing to shift their focus and marketing to effective climate change charities than GiveWell charities.
Some fundraising-focused EA organizations still focus on global health ones only (i.e. Ayuda Efectiva from Spain and EA Norway’s initiative, gieffektivt.no).
If you have time to answer, what further work do you think has to be done in this area before more EAs decide that climate change donations should be our “mainstream cause”? Or do you think more EAs should already be mainstreaming effective climate change charities more than GiveWell’s already?
Hey Brian,
Just a very quick answer from me to your first question.
At 80k we rate climate change ahead of global health since it seems more pressing from a longtermist perspective (e.g. Toby Ord thinks it’s a significant existential risk factor).
https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/
https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/climate-change/
So, I would say that longtermists should donate to climate change over global health from an impact perspective, if choosing equally good charities from each cause (though I think it would be even better to donate to GCBRs of AI safety).
One might think that GiveWell is better at selecting charities than FP (and they’ve certainly done more research), but I think the edge on charity selection is unlikely to be big enough to offset the difference in cause area.
Another difference is that GiveWell focuses on evidence-backed interventions, whereas FP takes more of a hits based approach, but that seems like another advantage of the FP picks to me.
Finally, I’m focusing more on direct impact above. There could be other reasons to donate to global health (e.g. for advocacy reasons—since lots of great people have entered EA via global health), though I’m pretty unsure those factors would tell in favour of global health going forward (e.g. it seems plausible to me that EA should make climate change our standard ‘mainstream’ cause rather than global health).
PS Hauke’s post is comparing GiveWell recommendations to climate change on a neartermist perspective, so doesn’t answer your question.
Thanks so much for writing this answer Ben! And yes thanks for clarifying that Hauke’s post is comparing GiveWell recommendations to climate change on a neartermist perspective. I didn’t know that because I didn’t read the full thing yet (and I think it would be quite difficult for me to fully understand).
Are you willing to share your views Ben of whether a longtermist should donate to a top biorisk organization (i.e. Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security) versus a top AI safety organization (i.e. the Centre for Human Compatible AI)?
Both of the sample organizations I mentioned above are recommended by Founders Pledge, although I don’t know how much to trust their recommendations in the x-risk space (I have read more about their research into climate change than x-risk organizations).
Given that Toby Ord thinks that the chance of an existential catastrophe from unaligned AI is 10% and from biorisk is 3.33%, then I might reasonably conclude that as long as CHAI is not 3x worse than JHU CHS, it would be more effective to donate to CHAI. I’m not sure how to trade off the efforts of organizations between those two spaces though, or if people should even do that—maybe it’s just robustly good to donate to either, and that there’s not much point trading off between the two causes. What do you think?
Hey Brian,
We’re somewhat more keen to see additional resources on AI safety compared to GCBRs, but the difference seems fairly narrow, so we’re keen to see people take unusually good opportunities to help reduce GCBRs (or to work on it if they have better personal fit). More here: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/global-catastrophic-biological-risks/
This is really interesting to hear from you. I wonder if community builders and people leading fundraising organizations should think about this more, and if they are willing to shift their focus and marketing to effective climate change charities than GiveWell charities.
Some fundraising-focused EA organizations still focus on global health ones only (i.e. Ayuda Efectiva from Spain and EA Norway’s initiative, gieffektivt.no).
If you have time to answer, what further work do you think has to be done in this area before more EAs decide that climate change donations should be our “mainstream cause”? Or do you think more EAs should already be mainstreaming effective climate change charities more than GiveWell’s already?
I think it’s a good question, but it’s pretty complex, so it would take me a while to elaborate, sorry!