EA Updates for March 2022
This is a streamlined version of the EA London Newsletter.
Upcoming Virtual Events
25th February—The Maastricht Principles on the Human Rights of Future Generations—Organised by the Legal Priorities Project
27th February—Designing the Terawatt Transition: Repowering Coal—Organised by Effective Environmentalism
27th February—How Asia Works Reading Group—Organised by EA Anywhere
27th February—EA for Jews Volunteers meeting—Organised by EA for Jews
2nd March—Impactful Forecasting Prize meetup
6th March—Giving What We Can Meetup
7th March − 1st May—EA Virtual Programs—Applications close 27th February
Introductory EA Program
In-Depth EA Program
The Precipice Reading Group
10th March—Power-Seeking AI and X-risk Mitigation—A talk by Joseph Carlsmith from Open Philanthropy
13th March—Electricity Production & Use in Decarbonisation Scenarios—Organised by Effective Environmentalism
15th March—Panel Q&A: Regulating AI—Why, How, and When? - Organised by Beyond Human Rights
16th March—Habiba Islam: How to Have a High Impact Career + Q&A—Organised by EA Denmark
17th March—Scaling Laws in Neural Networks—A talk by Jared Kaplan from Johns Hopkins/Anthropics
Latest Research and Updates
Meta
Open Philanthropy have a new grantmaking program aimed at supporting the effective altruism community around global health and wellbeing
Julia Wise on why it’s okay to leave EA
Joey Savoie on why ‘we need more nuance regarding funding gaps’
There is a new forum for people who have a basic understanding of the core ideas of global priorities research/longtermism/EA (~20 hours+ engagement), and are interested in identifying/pursuing high-impact China-related opportunities
Benjamin Todd on how founding a new organisation to tackle a pressing global problem can be extremely high impact
Elizabeth Cox introducing Should We Studio, who aim to create high-quality, EA-aligned video content
EA Angels has been launched to help EA founders get startup funding
Rose Hadshar with reflections on testing fit for research
Open Philanthropy is running a $150 million Regranting Challenge, aiming to add funding to the grantmaking budgets of outstanding programs at other foundations
Lucius Caviola & Joshua Greene with an update on Giving Multiplier after 14 months
80,000 Hours are running a book giveaway for anyone that signs up to their newsletter
Martyna with a post arguing for more career advice for mid and late career people
Charity Entrepreneurship have a released a new book ‘How to Launch a High-Impact Nonprofit’
Jack Lewars on why EA should promote effective giving more
Neel Nanda suggesting that EA pitches should be focused more on existential risks
A summary of the Global Priorities Institute’s activities from 2021 and plans for 2022
Training for Good are offering 1-to-1 coaching for EA professionals
A post looking at which EA organisations give feedback when hiring
Benjamin Hilton with an update to the 80,000 Hours career profile on software engineering
Pablo with a bibliography of EA writings about fields and movements of interest to EA
Grants
Open Phil have made 24 grants recently with a total value of $46,700,000
$15,800,000 - Farm Animal Welfare
$10,000,000 - Good Food Institute
$3,000,000 - Animal Equality
$1,000,000 - Dao Foods—Plant-Based Startup Incubator
$11,100,000 - Scientific Research
$10,200,000 - UC Davis—Malaria Gene Drive Feasibility Analysis
$800,000 - University of Washington—Syphilis Vaccine Development
$10,600,000 - Potential Risks from Advanced AI
$9,400,000 - Redwood Research
$3,900,000 - Other Areas
$2,300,000 - Should We Studio LLC—Video Production
$1,600,000 - Institute For Progress
$2,000,000 - Criminal Justice Reform
$1,100,000 - Global Health & Development
$1,000,000 - Land Use Reform
$900,000 - Biosecurity
$200,000 - Global Catastrophic Risks
Global Development
Devex covering Open Philanthropy as they launch programs for South Asia development
There is new research suggesting that further intervention methods may be required to reduce the transmission of malaria to combat the daytime-biting species of mosquitos
Siobhan McDonough on how to clear the air in the most polluted cities
Wellcome Leap announces over $300M in additional funding for catalysing breakthroughs in human health
Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention have said that the African continent is on course to vaccinate at least 70% of its population against COVID-19 by the end of 2022
Think Global Health with an article on how we are near to eliminating blindness from trachoma
The Centre for Global Development with the paper ‘COVID-19 Vaccine Development and Rollout in Historical Perspective’
The Happier Lives Institute with a report on ‘The challenge of predicting future feelings and the implications for global priorities research’
An article looking at how there are 11 million severe burn cases every year globally, with 95% in low- and middle-income countries
Akhil Bansal with a post suggesting that equity should be a part of effectiveness evaluations
Saloni Dattani on ‘Why randomized controlled trials matter and the procedures that strengthen them’
Animal Welfare
James Ozden looking at possible Theories of Change for the animal advocacy movement
China’s five-year agricultural plan includes cultivated meat for the first time
Richard Ngo with thoughts on individual vegetarianism and veganism
George Stiffman with the case for rare Chinese tofus as a way to reduce meat consumption
Existential & Catastrophic Risks
Rumtin Sepasspour, Richard Kresina and Avital Balwit have created an existential risk policy database
An article on how progress in biotechnology will advance pandemic defences in coming decades
Stephen Clare modelling great power conflict as an existential risk factor
Mike Cassidy and Lara Mani with ‘What can we learn from a short preview of a super-eruption and what are some tractable ways of mitigating it’
Fin Moorhouse writing about the risks from asteroids
A post announcing Alvea—an EA COVID vaccine project
Rose Hadshar looking at ‘How big are risks from non-state actors?’
Improving Institutions
The Effective Institutions Project has launched with a new website
The Institute for Progress with ‘A Roadmap to Improving Research Funding Efficiencies and Proposal Diversity’
Tom Kalil interviewing Martin Borch Jensen on launching a $26 million competition called Longevity Impetus Grants and novel ways to fund science
Michael Nielsen and Kanjun Qiu with a post on ‘The trouble in comparing different approaches to science funding’
José Luis Ricón looking at how meta science is used in practice
Matt Clifford interviews complexity scientist Sam Arbesman, discussing science, institutional innovation and long term thinking
80,000 Hours podcast with Audrey Tang on what we can learn from Taiwan’s experiments with how to do democracy
Environment
The FTX Foundation have launched FTX Climate, aiming to spend at least one million dollars a year on impactful solutions
A study finding that eradicating extreme poverty would raise global emissions by less than 1%
The Centre for Science and Policy looking at the risks and benefits of geoengineering
Longtermism
Holden Karnofsky with a post on future-proof ethics
On the 9-11th June there is a Longtermism and the Law conference in Germany, organised by the University of Hamburg and the Legal Priorities Project
The Eon Essay Contest has launched with a $15,000 first prize for students, with the contest closing on June 15th
SJ Beard appeared on the 21st Talks podcast to talk about the far future of humanity, ethical growth through generations, and the psychology behind striving to do the most good
Emerging Technology
Stuart Armstrong on why he is co-founding Aligned AI
DeepMind with a post on accelerating fusion science through learned plasma control
Ryan Lowe and Jan Leike with a post for OpenAI on how they are aligning language models to follow instructions
Future of Life podcast with David Chalmers on reality+, virtual worlds and the problems of philosophy
Risto Uuk has started the EU AI Act Newsletter for the Future of Life Institute
A post asking if the European Union is relevant for AGI governance
Other Causes
Dylan Matthews on great power conflicts
Fin Moorhouse writing a cause profile for 80,000 Hours on space governance
Matthew Yglesias looking into whether misinformation is a significant issue
Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg on antibiotic resistance
Stephen Clare with a post on ‘How likely is World War III?’
Madhav Malhotra on antifungal resistance
Marius Hobbhahn asking if GMOs should be a cause area
Other Links
Rose Hadshar on ‘Trading time in an EA relationship’
Kelsey Piper with an overview of the Progress Studies movement
Britney Budiman writing about her early explorations of effective altruism
Elon Musk has hired Igor Kurganov, co-founder of Raising for Effective Giving, to help give away $5.7 billion
Julia Wise with an overview of donations and budget for a household that donates half their income
Nuño Sempere with the latest forecasting newsletter, looking back at 2021
Scott Alexander on the issues with running a microgrants program
Holden Karnofsky on ‘Learning By Writing’
Joe Carlsmith on infinite ethics
Vitalik Buterin has created a $100m organisation to fund Covid science and relief projects worldwide
A post asking if deontological ethics are incompatible with progress
Spencer Greenberg and Tom Chivers in discussion on rationalism and effective altruism
Joey Savoie has set up the website Good Enough, a place for content aimed at getting optimised
Michelle Hutchinson with a post on managing people with ‘imposter syndrome’
Nuño Sempere with ‘Five steps for quantifying speculative interventions’
80,000 Hours podcast with Matthew Yglesias on avoiding the pundit’s fallacy and how much military intervention can be used for good
Australian entrepreneur Sarah Wilson on selling her business and donating 100% of profits using EA as a guide
Good News
There were just 14 guinea worm cases last year, a massive drop from 3.5 million cases in 1986
Germany has banned the culling of male chicks
South Korea will ban bear farming by 2026
The BBC on how HIV elimination is within Australia’s reach
Thanks for this!
Typo: it’s not “Stuart Russell on why he is co-founding Aligned AI” but Stuart Armstrong.