For Spanish speakers there is a Slack group ‘Altruismo Eficaz y Racionalidad’ that brings together people interested in EA from around the Spanish-speaking world
Grants
Open Phil have made 14 grants recently with a total value of $70,929,000
$61,218,000 - Global Health & Development
$27,077,000 - Malaria Consortium
$18,683,000 - New Incentives
$8,059,000 - Helen Keller International
$4,103,000 - Evidence Action
$2,796,000 - Sightsavers
$500,000 - Give Directly
$7,500,000 - Centre for Effective Altruism
$1,434,000 - Potential Risks from Advanced AI
$1,430,000 - Adversarial Robustness Research at MIT
EA Updates for May 2021
Meta
Open Philanthropy Project on their progress in 2020 and plans for 2021
Happier Lives Institute with their research agenda for 2021 and review of 2020
For people using Clubhouse there is a space there for people interested in EA
WANBAM with a new video on what their community finds most helpful about the mentorship programme
80,000 Hours have launched a new resource, ten curated podcasts to give people an introduction to effective altruism
EA organisation updates for April
Ben Schifman with the post ‘EA for Jews—Proposal and Request for Comment’
An overview of the EA Debate Championship and lecture series
A quarterly update from the Centre for Effective Altruism
Richard Ngo asking ‘What are your main reservations about identifying as an effective altruist?’
For Spanish speakers there is a Slack group ‘Altruismo Eficaz y Racionalidad’ that brings together people interested in EA from around the Spanish-speaking world
Grants
Open Phil have made 14 grants recently with a total value of $70,929,000
$61,218,000 - Global Health & Development
$27,077,000 - Malaria Consortium
$18,683,000 - New Incentives
$8,059,000 - Helen Keller International
$4,103,000 - Evidence Action
$2,796,000 - Sightsavers
$500,000 - Give Directly
$7,500,000 - Centre for Effective Altruism
$1,434,000 - Potential Risks from Advanced AI
$1,430,000 - Adversarial Robustness Research at MIT
$577,000 - Farm Animal Welfare
$150,000 - Criminal Justice Reform
$50,000 - Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness
Global Development
Kelsey Piper looking at how a new malaria vaccine could make a difference
Sanjay Joshi on why SoGive is not updating charity ratings after malaria vaccine news
Karolina Sarek with a summary of ‘RCTs in Development Economics, Their Critics and Their Evolution’
Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee discussing ways to make capitalism fairer
Think Global Health on the importance of neglected tropical diseases
The BBC looking at how satellite images are used to help distribute cash to people in areas with high poverty
Evidence Action on the ‘evidence to policy pipeline’
A paper looking at the connection between states possessing reconnaissance satellites and militarised interstate disputes
Animal Welfare
An in depth article from Vox looking at wild animal welfare as a cause
Bruce Friedrich and Liz Specht from GFI on the Sam Harris podcast discussing alternative proteins, the environment and pandemic risk
Animal Charity Evaluators with their 2021 goals
Neil Dullaghan with strategic considerations for upcoming EU farmed animal legislation
An overview of a GFI report looking at the current state of the plant based food industry
Vox with an overview of fish welfare
A post on the EA Forum with concerns about Animal Charity Evaluators
Animal Ask on ‘Measuring Animal Welfare: Philosophical Foundations, Practical Indicators, and Overall Assessments’
Jamie Harris with ‘Social Movement Lessons from the Fair Trade Movement’
Existential & Catastrophic Risks
Prevent Epidemics looking at epidemics that didn’t happen
Martin Rees in the Independent writing about existential risks
Jaan Tallinn on the Future of Life Institute podcast talking about ‘Avoiding Civilizational Pitfalls and Surviving the 21st Century’
The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk has released a new report looking at bridging the gap between global risk and policy engagement
Jeff Ohl with a post on international cooperation as a tool to reduce x-risks
Improving Institutions
Vox looking at how the UK’s Covid-19 Recovery Trial has been successful
Brian Resnick looking at how the Psychological Science Accelerator are attempting to improve the psychology field
Eva Vivalt on Hear This Idea discussing evidence-based policy and forecasting social science
Sören Mindermann & Mrinank Sharma are on the Turing podcast discussing research they’ve recently had published on inferring the effectiveness of government interventions against Covid-19
Environment
80,000 Hours podcast with Kelly Wanser on whether to deliberately intervene in the climate
The Breakthrough Institute looking at how accurate claims of economic decoupling from emissions are
A chapter by chapter summary of Bill Gates’s new book ‘How to Avoid a Climate Disaster’
The Roots of Progress asking why nuclear power hasn’t been more successful
Olamide Oguntoye looking into ways technological innovation can be used to make progress on climate change
Our World in Data has a new section on biodiversity
Longtermism
Evelyn with a post on moral pluralism and longtermism
A post introducing the Simon Institute for Longterm Governance
Michael Aird investigating the core reasons why he focuses on longtermism
A post on the longtermist case for working on farmed animals
The Long-Term Future Fund has room for more funding
Emerging Technology
Kelsey Piper with an article on how the US government is thinking about shaping AI policy
The Center for Security and Emerging Technology mapping India’s AI potential
A new website has been set up to inform people interested in reducing the threats from lethal autonomous weapons
Tom Davidson from Open Philanthropy with a report on semi-informative priors as an approach to forecasting artificial general intelligence
Jia Yuan Loke from the Center on Long-Term Risk with case studies of self-governance to reduce technology risk
CSER commenting on the EU’s world-first AI regulation
Beth Barnes discussing debate and imitative generalisation on the AI X-risk research podcast
An interview with Jess Whittlestone discussing her work on AI policy and ethics
Other Links
A look at how Elon Musk has donated $150,000,000 in the first four months of 2021, including $100,000,000 that will be awarded to entrepreneurs who come up with the best technologies to capture carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
A transcript of a talk by Sanjay Joshi and Ellen Quigley on how to improve ESG investing
80,000 Hours podcast with Nina Schick on disinformation and synthetic media
Stefan Schubert and Judith Lichtenberg debating the benefits of effective altruism
The Global Priorities Institute has an essay prize inviting submissions on topics in global priorities research from philosophy graduate students
Spencer Greenberg talking to Julia Galef about her new book—The Scout Mindset
80,000 Hours podcast with Mike Berkowitz on keeping the U.S. a liberal democratic country
Abby Hoskin asking ‘What are the highest impact questions in the behavioural sciences?’
Clearer Thinking are looking for ideas for their second annual micro grants program, with a chance to win $595, closing May 17th
A paper measuring news and its impact on democracy in America, suggesting that fake news is maybe a smaller issue than previously thought
Vaidehi Agarwalla sharing her outlook on discovering EA
Rutger Bregman, Dutch historian and author, has taken the Giving What We Can Pledge
Good News
Cote d’Ivoire has eliminated sleeping sickness as a public health problem
Executions were down last year by 36% compared to 2019