Giving What We Can have hit the 5,000 member milestone with people pledging to give at least 10% of their lifetime incomes to effective charities. See the update and video message from Giving What We Can here
The Gates Foundation have released their 2020 Goalkeepers report, looking at how we have regressed on many of the sustainable development goals for the first time
An overview of the UK’s Strategic Priorities Fund, consisting of 34 programmes with a combined total investment of around £830,000,000. These cover areas including environment, productivity, AI, infrastructure, health and biology
EA Updates for September 2020
UPCOMING VIRTUAL EVENTS
If you’re interested in finding out about events as they are posted, you can stay up to date with the EA Online Events Facebook group or EA Events Google calendar.
2nd October—How We Can do The Most Good? With Will MacAskill
3rd & 4th October—Giving What We Can 5,000 Member Celebration
7th October—Introduction to Effective Altruism with Will MacAskill and Habiba Islam
7th October—Anthropogenic Biorisks with Chris Bakerlee
16th October—How much can we give? With Julia Wise and Steve Hind
24th − 25th October—EA Student Summit 2020
30th October—What could end the world and what can we do about it? With Toby Ord
2nd November—Animal Advocacy Careers Workshop (One session a week for 9 weeks)
9th November—Chloe Cockburn: Effective Giving and BLM
21st − 22nd November—EAGxAsia-Pacific 2020
LATEST RESEARCH AND UPDATES
META
Giving What We Can have hit the 5,000 member milestone with people pledging to give at least 10% of their lifetime incomes to effective charities. See the update and video message from Giving What We Can here
William MacAskill, Krister Bykvist, and Toby Ord with a new book on moral uncertainty, available to download for free
Benjamin Todd on the core of effective altruism and how to argue for it
80,000 Hours with five philosophies of career success
The Legal Priorities Project has been set up to conduct legal research that tackles some of the world’s most pressing problems
Founders Pledge on their plans for seed funding promising nonprofits
EA organisation updates for August 2020
80,000 Hours with notes on good judgement and how to develop it
A transcript of a talk by Owen Cotton-Barratt on how effective altruism can improve the world, discussing some key EA related concepts
Benjamin Todd with more empirical data on ‘value drift’
David Bernard with an introduction to global priorities research for economists
Marcus Daniell is looking to set up a new organisation for pro-athletes interested in effective altruism
Rachel Baxter on why you should think carefully before setting up a nonprofit
Grayden Reece-Smith on giving now vs later
GRANTS
Open Phil have made 13 grants recently with a total value of $7,004,000
$2,763,000 - Scientific research
$2,000,000 - VST Bio — Stroke Treatment
$415,000 - Universal Flu Drug Research
$1,865,000 - Criminal justice reform
$1,500,000 - Movement Voter Project
$1,389,000 - Farm Animal Welfare
$500,000 - RSPCA—Farm Animal Welfare Advocacy in Asia
$350,000 - Catalyst — Farm Animal Welfare in Thailand
$987,000 - Early-Career Funding for Global Catastrophic Biological Risks — Scholarship Support
Long-Term Future Fund, September 2020 and April 2020 grants
GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT
The Gates Foundation have released their 2020 Goalkeepers report, looking at how we have regressed on many of the sustainable development goals for the first time
The OECD with their State of Fragility 2020 report
Grow is a new job board for opportunities in global health
The Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre has been set up to enhance the understanding of modern slavery and transform the effectiveness of laws and policies designed to overcome it
GiveWell has updated the Maximum Impact Fund, formerly known as “Grants to recommended charities at GiveWell’s discretion”
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation with visualisations of global health financing for 2019 and pandemic preparedness investment
Think Global Health looking at how COVID-19 compares to other causes of death around the world
IHME looking at universal healthcare coverage around the world
EA Global transcript: Rachel Waddell on GiveDirectly’s emergency cash response to COVID-19
Kelsey Piper writing for Vox on how extreme poverty is getting worse across the globe for the first time in decades
Sendwave is expanding to Bangladesh
Saloni Dattani with The story of Viktor Zhdanov, who spearheaded the project to eradicate smallpox
ANIMAL WELFARE
Lewis Bollard looking at political opportunities for farm animals in Europe
Animal Advocacy Careers have an online course looking at the key considerations involved in working to help animals
A new series of the Future Perfect podcast looking at animal welfare
Abraham Rowe looking at the scale of direct human impact on invertebrates
EXISTENTIAL & CATASTROPHIC RISKS
Seth Baum with the paper ‘Quantifying the Probability of Existential Catastrophe: A Reply to Beard et al.’
EA Global transcript: Kevin Esvelt on mitigating catastrophic biorisks
ENVIRONMENT
David Roberts with a road map for building a US energy innovation ecosystem
Our World in Data with an overview of greenhouse gas emissions, they also joined up with Kurzgesagt to make a video about climate change
EA Global transcript: Johannes Ackva on Founders Pledge update to their thinking on climate change
Scott Carpenter writing for Forbes on new nuclear reactor designs
LONG TERM FUTURE
The BBC with an article looking at whether we are living at the ‘hinge of history’
The Open Philanthropy Project have early-career funding for individuals interested in improving the long-term future
80,000 Hours podcast looking at varieties of longtermism
An ask me anything with Tobias Baumann, co-founder of the Center for Reducing Suffering
Sam Hilton looking at potential mistakes that could be made when thinking of an uncertain future
Ben Garfinkel asking ‘Does economic history point toward a singularity?’
An ask me anything with Owen Cotton-Barratt, Research Scholars Programme director at the Future of Humanity Institute
EMERGING TECHNOLOGY
The Future of Life Institute with an overview of lethal autonomous weapons
A podcast with Peter Railton on moral learning and metaethics in AI systems
Dahlia Peterson from Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology discussing facial recognition technology and it’s uses
The National Quantum Computing Centre has been set up with a £93 million investment by UK Research and Innovation
Open Philanthropy with a new report on how much computational power it takes to match the human brain
An ask me anything with Markus Anderljung, project manager at the Centre for the Governance of AI
Allan Defoe with a post on opportunity and theory of impact in AI governance
Julia Chen with an article exploring deepfakes across the United States and China
An interview with Sébastien Krier discussing AI and the UK government
IMPROVING INSTITUTIONS
An overview of the UK’s Strategic Priorities Fund, consisting of 34 programmes with a combined total investment of around £830,000,000. These cover areas including environment, productivity, AI, infrastructure, health and biology
A paper looking at whether laypeople can predict which social-science studies will be replicated successfully
Nick Bostrom, Haydn Belfield and Sam Hilton have submitted written evidence to the UK Parliament Science & Technology Committee’s inquiry on a new UK research funding agency
OTHER LINKS
Clearer Thinking with the principles of prioritisation
José González with a musical livestream raising funds for charities supported by The Life You Can Save
A profile of Chuck Feeney who has given away the vast majority of his wealth, over $8,000,000,000, to charity
Stefan Schubert on how people react when they first encounter global priorities research
A post looking at correlations between cause prioritisation and the big five personality traits
Michelle Hutchinson on asking for advice
Lynette Bye with a post for people trying to improve the world who are burdened with the persistent, negative feeling of never doing enough
Founders Pledge with a report on psychedelic-assisted mental health treatments
Michelle Hutchinson on parenting - ‘Things I wish I could tell my past self’
Rob Wiblin on ‘those tasks you can’t even bear to think about’
Jess Whittlestone on building collaborative research teams
Max Daniel with a post on giving and receiving feedback
GOOD NEWS
Togo is the first African country to end sleeping sickness as a public health problem
Poland is set to ban fur farming
Pneumonia vaccine price has dropped by 43%, expanding the protection against one of the world’s deadliest diseases for millions of children