Latest EA Updates for April 2019

Effective altruism in media & blogs

• A BBC article by Seth Baum on how global disasters can change the course of humanity

• Fast Company asking whether you should donate to animal shelters or elsewhere if you care about animals

• The Spin Off looking at EA New Zealand and the history of EA

• A look at Yale EA society from the New Journal

• A research fellow from Kings looking at whether Open Philanthropy Project will cause the biosecurity field to focus on the wrong risks

Organisation Updates

• Local Effective Altruism Network have launched the EA Hub, hoping to enable collaboration between people interested in EA

• GiveWell post on the process they use to allocate funds given to them for granting at their discretion

• Open Phil with an overview of 2018 and plans for 2019, having granted over $170 million last year

• The Life You Can Save with their annual report

• ACE with an analysis of their donor survey

• CSER have an overview of their ground zero art exhibition, as well as contributing to the EU High-Level Expert Group on AI ethics guidelines for trustworthy AI and have published videos of 11 talks that were given at the 2018 Cambridge Conference on Catastrophic Risk

Grants

• Open Phil have made 25 grants so far this year, totalling almost $120 million, with recent grants including $4,000,000 for research into reproductive biology at Kyoto University, $17,500,000 for research on viral diagnostics, $2,000,000 on criminal justice reform and $1,700,000 on immigration reform

• ACE have granted $1,400,000 to 49 different animal focused charities

• The EA Long-Term Future Fund has granted $923,150, with their reasoning highlighted in this post

• The EA Meta Fund with $512,000 in grants to 10 projects

• The EA Animal Welfare Fund with $445,000 paid out to 6 projects

• TED has raised $280 million for 8 projects, including the END fund, which aims to deworm millions of people

• The Indian government has granted $640,000 to two institutions to research cell-based meat

Research

• Charity Entrepreneurship with their top charity ideas for 2019

• A report on how there are now more people in Africa escaping extreme poverty than falling back or being born into it, although this reduction could be much faster

Thoughts on 80,000 hours careers advice, looking at how people may undervalue impactful roles outside EA organisations

• The Alan Turing institute with a report on how AI might affect the global financial industry

• A report on fish stocking, the practise of farming fish to be released into the wild to increase catches

• Inside Philanthropy reporting on how philanthropy in China is increasing and where this money is going

• A post on whether climate change deserves more attention within EA

• The Humane League Labs on how ranking advocacy strategies can mislead

• Our World in Data tracking the progress in reducing child mortality around the world over the last 30 years

Vox

• Coverage of a new trial being rolled out in Malawi for a malaria vaccine

• An interview with the founders of OpenAI and their shift from nonprofit to limited partnership

• David Goldberg talking about how tech founders are pledging to give their money away

• How warning people off drinking tainted drinking water may have resulted in more harm

• The Future of Life Institute will give its annual award to Matthew Meselson, who led the campaign against bio-weapons 50 years ago

• How humanity’s idea of who deserves moral concern has grown and may keep growing

Podcasts

• Tom Kalil on 80,000 Hours discussing how to have impact in government based on 16 years experience in the White House

Bryan Caplan on the Harvard EA podcast

• Persis Eskander on 80,000 Hours looking at what, if anything, we should do about animals that suffer in the wild?

• Mission Daily interviewing Will MacAskill, Elie Hassenfeld and Rob Wiblin

• 80,000 Hours with the team trying to end poverty by founding well-governed ‘charter’ cities

Miscellaneous

• Elliot Jones has started a newsletter focusing on AI policy developments in the UK, including government, business, academia and NGOs

• 80,000 Hours with “career advice I wish I’d been given when I was young” from someone with a potentially high impact career

• An interview with biologist Jon Mallett on the likelihood of invertebrate consciousness

• GiveDirectly on how they solve the last mile payment challenge in Liberia

• A post in Brookings on the out sized focus on cash transfers in development

• Inside Philanthropy on what critics of the Notre-Dame fundraising may be getting wrong

• Bill Gates on what areas are neglected when thinking about climate change

• The World Economic Forum with a post visualising the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement now that 22 countries have ratified it

• WeWork have decided to set up an accelerator program to support early-stage sustainable food startups in clean and plant based meat as well as subsidise work space

Good news roundup

• After trialling the impossible whopper at 59 Burger King locations in early April, they have announced that they will expand it to all 7000+ locations across America