EA Updates for December 2021

[DavidNash]

Upcoming Virtual Events

• 29th November—EA Medicine Networking Event—Organised by EA Medicine

• 30th November—Effective Giving Day—Organised by Giving What We Can

• 2nd December—What Good is Crypto: Crypto-Philanthropy, Poverty and Financial Inclusion—Organised by GiveDirectly and The Life You Can Save, with a panel including Peter Singer and Sam Bankman-Fried

• 3rd December—Legible normativity for AI alignment—Organised by Legal Priorities Project

• 4th December- Salary Negotiation Training Programme

• 4-12th December—Vision Weekend—Organised by Foresight Institute, with talks from Anders Sandberg, Jaan Tallinn, Tom Kalil and Jose Luis Ricon

• 10th December—Rachel Stern: Automating fairness? AI in the Chinese courts—Organised by Legal Priorities Project

• 11th December—Q&A with EAs in policy—Organised by Training for Good

• 12th December—EA Finance Meetup—sign up here to find out more

• 13th December—Maximising your charitable ROI like a consultant

• 13-15th December—Interpretability, Safety, and Security in AI—A conference organised by the Alan Turing Institute

• 16th December—GiveDirectly End of Year Update

• 19th December—Good News on Climate Change + What is a Worst-Case Scenario? - Organised by Effective Environmentalism

• January 2022 - AGI Safety Fundamentals − 8 week course organised by EA Cambridge, applications close 15th December

Latest Research and Updates

Meta

• There are new EA Slack workspaces for people interested in the below areas

  • Entrepreneurship

  • Mental Health

  • Software & Tech

• The EA Finance network now has a form for people who are interested in joining

• EA Giving Tuesday have guides for people who want to take advantage of Facebook’s $8 million match on the 30th November

• The Centre for Effective Altruism with updates from each of their teams on their progress in 2021

• Benjamin Todd with a post ‘Be more ambitious: a rational case for dreaming big (if you want to do good)’

• Astral Codex Ten is giving out grants in a similar way to the Fast Grants project

• There is now an EA Behavioural Science Newsletter

• Effektiv Spenden on how they have been able to raise donations of more than 4.3 million euros in 2021 and their plans for 2022

• Our World In Data have asked for input from the EA community on how they can improve their website

• 80,000 Hours on ‘The growth of effective altruism: what does it mean for our priorities and level of ambition?’

• Effective Altruism for Jews has launched with a new website

• The recordings of talks from EA Global London 2021 are now available to watch

• Open Philanthropy are turning their criminal justice program into an independent organisation

• Nuño Sempere and Philip Trammell with a ‘Model of Patient Spending and Movement Building’

• An updated 80,000 Hours post on what the research says about how much to explore in your career

• EA funds now accepts more crypto currencies with lower fees

• Ben West has a list of EA communication project ideas

• Philip Trammell is considering running a two week summer course in ‘economic theory and global prioritisation’

• Ozzie Gooen with the post ‘Ambitious Altruistic Software Engineering Efforts: Opportunities and Benefits’

• Rethink Priorities with their 2021 Impact and 2022 Strategy and with a recent Ask Me Anything

• A post looking at EA aligned impact investing

• There are new Effective Thesis services and opportunities to get involved

• Michael Dickens with a post asking whether earners-to-give should work at start ups instead of big companies

• EA organisation updates for October

• The Business Growth Agency is offering pro bono business coaching for EA organisations

• Akhil Bansal has founded Hi-Med, a new local community oriented organisation for EA-aligned medics, new and existing, currently starting up in Cambridge, London and Oxford

• Benjamin Todd on how small donors can still have a significant impact, and a post disagreeing with that

Grants

Open Phil have made 42 grants recently with a total value of $124,000,000

• $56,000,000 - Criminal Justice Reform

  • $50,000,000 - Just Impact

• $55,000,000 - Global Development

  • $51,000,000 - Malaria Consortium

• $5,000,000 - Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness

• $5,000,000 - Animal Welfare

• $1,500,000 - Scientific Research

• $700,000 - Potential Risks from Advanced Artificial Intelligence

• $600,000 - Immigration Policy

Global Development

• GiveWell giving recommendations for 2021

• Open Philanthropy on their increase in giving to GiveWell recommended charities, up from $100 million last year to $300 million this year

• Max Roser on ‘Extreme poverty: how far have we come, how far do we still have to go?’

• Holden Karnofsky with a post looking at five clashing pictures on how to help the world

• Vox reporting the case for making mental health a priority in global development

• GiveDirectly on why funds should be given now and not rolled over to future years

• A post on Our World in Data looking at access to basic education

• Vox with an article ‘How a simple solution slashed child mortality in rural Kenyan villages’

• Open Philanthropy with technical updates to their global health and wellbeing cause prioritisation framework

• Our World in Data now have a natural disasters data explorer

• Josh Morrison on why more money should be spent on curing infectious diseases

Animal Welfare

• Animal Charity Evaluator with their charity recommendations for 2021

• The Good Food Institute with an overview of cultivated meat in China

• Jamie Harris with a post looking at animal rights vs animal welfare

• The virtual Material Innovation Conference will be held on the 18th and 19th of May 2022

• The UK government has recognised lobsters, octopus and crabs as sentient beings

• Karthik Sekar has written After Meat, arguing for technologies to replace animals in the food production system

• Alice Ravenscroft writing about how food and agriculture was a neglected topic at COP26

Existential & Catastrophic Risks

• Aaron Tang and Luke Kemp with a paper in Frontiers in Climate about stratospheric aerosol injection

• Luisa Rodriguez on why global catastrophes seem unlikely to kill us all

• Wellcome Leap has a new $60 million program focused on RNA readiness and response

• The Pentagon has increased its estimates of China’s projected nuclear weapons arsenal over the coming years

• A transcript of a talk on nuclear safety by Joan Rohlfing at EA Global

• A summary of the 2021 accomplishments and 2022 plans for the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute

• Vitalik Buterin on why cryptoeconomics and existential researchers should listen to each other more

• 2021 ALLFED Highlights

• Seth Baum with advice for students and early-career professionals interested in global catastrophic risk

Improving Institutions

• New Science has a science summer fellowship for 2022, a 12 week program where life scientists will work on their most ambitious research ideas

Environment

• Giving Green with their climate giving recommendations for 2021

• Johannes Ackva on how to take action to reduce extreme risks from catastrophic climate change

• Subak is a new non-profit aiming to connect climate data to projects that need it

• Matt Clifford with Michelle You discussing her carbon removal startup

• Founders Pledge with two new climate donation recommendations

• Our World in Data have a carbon emissions data explorer

• Hannah Ritchie from Our World in Data on why we should ‘stop telling kids they’ll die from climate change’

Longtermism

• Tatsuyoshi Saijo on whether people can be encouraged to consider the needs of their distant descendants

• Vox covering the new patient philanthropy fund created by Founders Pledge

• Michael Aird has created a database of organisations related to longtermism and existential risks

• Jaime Sevilla analyses econometric papers studying intergenerational persistence

Emerging Technology

• Applications are open for the GovAI 2022 Summer Fellowship, deadline 1st January

• Deepmind with an article looking at real world challenges for AGI

• 80,000 Hours with a career profile on China-related AI safety and governance paths

• Iason Gabriel with a paper exploring the relationship between AI and principles of distributive justice

• CSER with a report on an international horizon scanning exercise on emerging technologies and dual-use concerns, organised by WHO

• Deepmind have introduced Isomorphic Labs, an organisation focused on the drug discovery process from first principles with an AI-first approach

• The Guardian covering Stuart Russel on the dangers of unaligned AI

• Azeem Azhar explores the use of AI in defence and medical biology

• Sigal Samuel looking at whether brain stimulation, neurofeedback and synthetic psychedelics could increase wellbeing

• A series of conversations between Eliezer Yudkowsky, Carl Shulman, Rohin Shah, Richard Ngo, Ajeya Cotra and Paul Christiano on AI alignment

• Andy Jones on why AI safety needs software engineers

• Shin-Shin Hua and Haydn Belfield with a paper on AI & Antitrust published in the Yale Journal of Law and Technology

• Rohin Shah on the Future of Life Podcast discussing the State of AGI Safety Research in 2021

Other Links

• Anya Marchenko on what she learned from the EA Global conference

• Holden Karnofsky on ‘minimal-trust investigations’ that he describes as the single activity that seems to have been most formative for the way he thinks

• 80,000 Hours podcast with David Wallace on the many-worlds theory of quantum mechanics and its implications

• Peter Singer and Yascha Mounk in conversation on how to reduce suffering

• Hear This Idea podcast with Keith Frankish on illusionism about consciousness

• Michael Aird with readings & notes on how to do high-quality, efficient research

• Jamie Harris with a literature review of effective strategies for changing public opinion

Good News

• The BBC looking at environmental issues that have mainly been fixed

• An article on how the COVID-19 pandemic drove flu to historic lows, and may have eliminated one virus type completely

• The fourth WHO global tobacco trends report shows that there are 1.3 billion tobacco users globally compared to 1.32 billion in 2015

• The Kenyan government has signed a new law that will give a half-million refugees in the country an opportunity to earn a living, instead of depending on aid agencies