Latest EA Updates for May 2019

Organisation Updates

• CSER have a report on what they’ve done over the last 6 months

• Givewell with a review of 2018, including directing $65,000,000 and making key hires. Also their plans for 2019

• 80,000 Hours with their annual review

• A post on how the Giving Games project tracks its impact

• Effective Thesis with an annual update

• The Global Catastrophic Risk Institute has an open call for people who are interested in seeking their advice or collaborating on projects

Grants

• Open Phil have made 14 more grants, with recent grants including $4,750,000 on scientific research, $2,000,000 for the Open Phil AI fellowship, $700,000 for macroeconomic stabilisation policy, $715,000 on farm animal welfare, $460,000 on criminal justice reform and $400,000 on land use reform

• GFI have awarded $3,000,000 to 14 scientists to research plant-based and cell-based meats

• The Global Challenge Foundation is offering 10 grants of €10,000 each for reports that provide an overview of the current research in either ‘the drivers of global catastrophic risks’ or ‘global governance gaps’

Research

• Lewis Bollard with a post on whether we could help animals by focusing more on climate change

• A summary from GiveWell on why they decided to give a grant to IDInsight—New Incentives RCT

• Charity Entrepreneurship with 35 pieces of evidence for why new corporate campaigns may or may not work for animal welfare

• Catherine Low with an overview of various EA school outreach programmes and their impact

• Animal Charity Evaluators with a comprehensive overview of animal advocacy in Brazil

• A paper called “Effective Altruism: How Big Should the Tent Be?” arguing that EA isn’t compatible with members giving in the way that most effectively promotes their values, when doing so isn’t overall-effective

• Jamie Harris with research on how tractable it is to change the course of history

• A summary from JPAL on new research about interventions to reduce violence against women

• Marc Gunther with an overview of the intersection of effective altruism and psychedelic research

Vox

• A new economics journal that only publishes results that are expected to overcome publication bias

• Britain’s youngest billionaire on why he is giving most of his money away to effective altruism related areas

• Coverage on the rise of meatless meat, including Beyond Meat having a market capitalisation of $5,000,000,000 and Impossible Foods raising $300,000,000 in funding

Podcasts

• Helen Toner from Open Phil discussing misconceptions about China and AI on the rationally speaking podcast

• A BBC radio programme on whether 21st century technology will avert or accelerate an apocalypse

• Chloe Cockburn from Open Phil discussing criminal justice reform

• Will MacAskill on the Jolly Swagmen podcast

Effective altruism in media & blogs

• Peter Singer being interviewed on animal rights, politics and AI

• Brain Kateman writing in Fast Company on why wild animal suffering is important to consider

• Notes and questions from Will MacAskill’s 2018 EAG keynote, how can effective altruism stay curious?

Miscellaneous

• A fireside chat from EA Global with Rachel Glennerster, chief economist at the Department for International Development

• Stefan Schubert with a talk at EAGx Nordics exploring the psychological obstacles that stop us from maximising our moral impact and suggests strategies to overcome them

• Karolina Sarek with a post on systematic approaches to sustainably increasing work output

• Jade Leung with a talk from EA Global looking at AI governance

• A post by me on the landscape of effective altruism in London

• Lauren Holt from CSER writing in the BBC about the long term future of bio-engineering, rewilding and synthetic organisms

• Another article in the BBC Deep Civilisation section on how art and culture can influence the long term future

• Hauke Hillebrandt and Henry Stanley have a new crowdfunding campaign for effective environmental policy

• Peter Singer and Agata Sagan in the New Statesman on whether humans should be allowed to colonise outer space

• Our World in Data with projections on how the world’s poorest economies are stagnating and half a billion people are expected to be in extreme poverty in 2030

• A look at how early experimentation with preregistration in psychology hasn’t gone smoothly

• A case study of behavioural insights being used to improve tuberculosis care

• The Centre for Global Development with a post on the lessons from Ebola for the next pandemic

• Data visualisations on why more funding is needed to eliminate malaria

• A new app called Sparrow, which allows you to set up donations automatically when you get paid, buy a round of drinks or watch 30 minutes of Netflix, is looking for people to test it, see this Facebook link to find out more

Good news roundup

• Algeria and Argentina have been certified malaria-free by the World Health Organisation, taking us to 38 countries globally that are malaria-free

• 19 more philanthropists have joined the Giving Pledge, to give away at least half their wealth to charitable causes

• Washington state has a new law increasing welfare requirements for egg-laying hens