The part that seems relevant is the charity Imagine Worldwide’s use of the “adaptive software” OneBillion app to teach numeracy and literacy. Despite Vadim’s several discounts and general conservatism throughout his CEA he still gets ~11x GD cost-effectiveness. (I’d honestly thought, given the upvotes and engagement on the post, that Vadim had changed some EAs’ minds on the promisingness of non-deworming education interventions.) The OneBillion app doesn’t seem to use AI, but they already (paraphrasing) use “software to provide a complete, research-based curriculum that adapts to each child’s pace, progress, and cultural and linguistic context”, so I’m not sure how much better Copilot / Rori would be?
Quoting some parts that stood out to me (emphasis mine):
This post argues that if we look at a broad enough evidence base for the long term outcomes of education interventions we can conclude that the best ones are as cost effective as top GiveWell grants. …
… I will argue that the combined evidence for the income impacts of interventions that boost test scores is much stronger than the evidence GiveWell has used to value the income effects of fighting malaria, deworming, or making vaccines, vitamin A, and iodine more available. Even after applying very conservative discounts to expected effect sizes to account for the applicability of the evidence to potential funding opportunities, we find the best education interventions to be in the same range of cost-effectiveness as GiveWell’s top charities. …
When we apply the above recommendations to our median recommended education charity, Imagine Worldwide, we estimate that it is 11x as cost effective as GiveDirectly at boosting well-being through higher income. …
Imagine Worldwide (IW) provides adaptive software to teach numeracy and literacy in Malawi, along with the training, tablets and solar panels required to run it. They plan to fund a six-year scale-up of their currently existing program to cover all 3.5 million children in grades 1-4 by 2028. The Malawi government will provide government employees to help with implementation for the first six years, and will take over the program after 2028. Children from over 250 schools have received instruction through the OneBillion app in Malawi over the past 8 years. Five randomized controlled trials of the program have found learning gains of an average of 0.33 standard deviations. The OneBillion app has also undergone over five additional RCTs in a broad range of contexts with comparable or better results.
This writeup by Vadim Albinsky at Founders Pledge seems related: Are education interventions as cost effective as the top health interventions? Five separate lines of evidence for the income effects of better education [Founders Pledge]
The part that seems relevant is the charity Imagine Worldwide’s use of the “adaptive software” OneBillion app to teach numeracy and literacy. Despite Vadim’s several discounts and general conservatism throughout his CEA he still gets ~11x GD cost-effectiveness. (I’d honestly thought, given the upvotes and engagement on the post, that Vadim had changed some EAs’ minds on the promisingness of non-deworming education interventions.) The OneBillion app doesn’t seem to use AI, but they already (paraphrasing) use “software to provide a complete, research-based curriculum that adapts to each child’s pace, progress, and cultural and linguistic context”, so I’m not sure how much better Copilot / Rori would be?
Quoting some parts that stood out to me (emphasis mine):