BrianTan

Karma: 3,215

I’m an Operations Associate at Arcadia Impact, a UK nonprofit that empowers people and organisations to tackle pressing global issues, with a focus on AI safety and governance.

Before joining Arcadia, I:

co-founded EA Philippines and worked full-time as a community builder for EA PH in 2021.
was a Group Support Contractor for the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) for two years, where I helped support EA groups around the world.
co-founded WhiteBox Research and led its operations and marketing. WhiteBox aims to develop more AI interpretability and safety researchers in Asia.

You can reach out to me at brian [at] arcadiaimpact [dot] org or find me on LinkedIn.

BrianTan 9 Nov 2025 18:10 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Jamie_Harris’s comment on: Jamie_Harris’s Shortform
The main URL didn’t work for me, but the backup did. This was fun and useful; it helped me better understand what these different farming systems are like!

BrianTan 31 May 2025 1:29 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: Joseph_Chu’s comment on: akash’s Quick takes
Minor thing, but I don’t remember Dustin being portrayed much in The Social Network? Do you mean Eduardo Saverin?

BrianTan 31 Mar 2025 5:32 UTC
2 points
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on: CoreWeave Is A Time Bomb
Thanks for linking this! I don’t see anything under “Updated notes by me, Remmelt:” though

BrianTan 19 Mar 2025 10:50 UTC
2 points
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on: AIS Netherlands is looking for a Founding Executive Director (EOI form)
Cool initiative! (Btw the last sentence is cut off / doesn’t have a link)

BrianTan 3 Mar 2025 9:19 UTC
4 points
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on: Opinionated take on EA and AI Safety
Minor question: What’s the For Humanity’s AI Safety Special documentary? Is there a way to watch it already? I can’t find it online.

BrianTan 15 Feb 2025 14:45 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Kai Williams’s comment on: Announcing the Q1 2025 Long-Term Future Fund grant round
I’m not from LTFF but I believe you can apply for funding with an end date past Aug 31! The application form now mentions it’s only the EAIF that has that restriction.

BrianTan 10 Feb 2025 10:52 UTC
8 points
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in reply to: PipFoweraker’s comment on: Announcing the Q1 2025 Long-Term Future Fund grant round
@calebp @Linch
1. Can someone from LTFF confirm if this restriction (that the grant period should end on or before Aug 31, 2025) will be set for all applications in this Q1 grant round? (When I first saw the note referenced above around December, I thought it would lift before the Feb 15 deadline, but it seems like it’s not going to be lifted by then?)
2. I also have the same question as Pip above!

BrianTan 6 Jan 2025 13:01 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: EffectiveAdvocate🔸’s comment on: Funding Diversification for Mid-Large EA Organizations is Nearly Impossible in the Short-Medium Term
Thanks for these helpful points! Minor note: Did you mean Schmidt Futures and not Smith Futures?

BrianTan 20 Dec 2024 9:12 UTC
21 points
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on: Announcing the Q1 2025 Long-Term Future Fund grant round
Thanks for the update! I appreciate that decisions will be communicated within 1.5 months of the application deadline.
Btw, this URL (https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/far-future/apply) you link to leads to “Page not found”.

BrianTan 18 Aug 2024 13:32 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: Leo Arruda’s comment on: AEBr 2024 Summit Retrospective
Hey Leo, sorry for the late reply, but thanks for explaining and updating the post!
I understand that you and Juana are funded as national coordinators, but I still think including staff costs in the event budget would give a better picture. Maybe you could estimate the time you and Juana spent on the event to calculate the staff cost and add that to the budget?
I think the cost per attendee would be more realistic and helpful if it included staff costs, or if it was shown both with and without staff costs. This could give others a more realistic idea of what it takes to run an event like this, especially if they need to fundraise or pay for paid organizer/s too.
What do you think about this? Thanks again for being open to feedback!

BrianTan 6 Aug 2024 5:51 UTC
6 points
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on: AEBr 2024 Summit Retrospective
Congrats Leo, Juana, and the rest of the team on the event! I have a minor question about the writeup: It seems that the budget and cost per attendee do not include the team’s salaries, and I assume there were salaries/staff costs incurred. Are there reasons for not including staff costs in the calculations? (I noticed that this was also the case for EAGxLatAm 2024, though that was organized by a different team.)
I think including staff costs provides a better picture of the money spent organizing these events. Of course, there may be considerations I’m not aware of for presenting the budget this way, so I’d be curious to hear those. Thanks for your work and transparency in sharing this retrospective!

BrianTan 25 Mar 2024 10:23 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Dawn Drescher’s comment on: EA Philippines Needs Your Help!
Got it, no problem!

BrianTan 25 Mar 2024 7:09 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Dawn Drescher’s comment on: EA Philippines Needs Your Help!
Hi Dawn, thanks for your interest in donating to EA Philippines! I’m unsure if I understood you correctly, but EA PH’s minimum funding goal on Manifund is $500, as the team would appreciate any amount of funding. So I think if your donation is at least $400, then the project would indeed be funded, and you wouldn’t need to be refunded. Let me know if this answers your concern!

EA Philippines Needs Your Help!

zianbee21 Mar 2024 4:42 UTC

89 points

18 comments13 min readEA link

State of the East and Southeast Asian EAcosystem

Elmerei Cuevas6 Nov 2023 6:55 UTC

184 points

3 comments7 min readEA link

EA Philippines’ Career Planning Retreat for Students and Professionals

Alethea Faye Cendaña31 Aug 2023 5:42 UTC

28 points

5 comments5 min readEA link

BrianTan 17 Aug 2023 9:21 UTC
5 points
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in reply to: James Herbert’s comment on: Growth and engagement in EA groups: 2022 Groups Census results
Hey James, sorry for the late reply, but thanks for the feedback!
Here are the averages across groups by country for each of the group measures:
It would be time-consuming to show how the group measures have changed by country across groups surveys, and some questions in the 2022 census weren’t asked previously, so I hope the above is useful enough for you.
I can share the number of groups founded per country by year since 2011 here though (for groups still currently active):
I only included countries with a minimum of 3 groups that filled out the 2022 census in both images above. I hope this helps!

BrianTan 5 Jul 2023 9:15 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Manuel Allgaier’s comment on: Growth and engagement in EA groups: 2022 Groups Census results
Hey Manuel, sorry for the late reply, but thanks for your comment!
I agree it would be better for the results of EA surveys (including this one) to be published earlier. The reason the census results came out in June was because:
1. In January-March, I had to prioritize other tasks/projects instead of analyzing and writing the census results
2. Analyzing and writing the census results took longer than I expected
We’ll try to publish the results for this year’s census a bit earlier.

Growth and engagement in EA groups: 2022 Groups Census results

BrianTan23 Jun 2023 8:10 UTC

52 points

6 comments13 min readEA link

BrianTan 16 Jun 2023 14:24 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Luke Freeman’s comment on: AMA: Luke Freeman, ED of Giving What We Can (GWWC)
“This post by Joey” returns a 404 page btw!

BrianTan

EA Philip­pines Needs Your Help!

State of the East and South­east Asian EAcosystem

EA Philip­pines’ Ca­reer Plan­ning Re­treat for Stu­dents and Professionals

Growth and en­gage­ment in EA groups: 2022 Groups Cen­sus results

EA Philippines Needs Your Help!

State of the East and Southeast Asian EAcosystem

EA Philippines’ Career Planning Retreat for Students and Professionals

Growth and engagement in EA groups: 2022 Groups Census results