BrianTan

Karma: 3,218

I’m a Headhunting Product Specialist at 80,000 Hours. I help impactful orgs find good candidates to help make AI go well.

Some things I previously did:

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

You can find me on LinkedIn.

BrianTan 29 May 2026 11:11 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Sudhanshu Kasewa’s comment on: Sudhanshu Kasewa’s Quick takes
I plan to use the Fireflies mobile app if people consent and just put my phone on the table (since I don’t have a mic). I briefly tested the Fireflies desktop and phone app now with two speakers (me and a video playing with someone talking) and the phone app is pretty good at distinguishing between me and the video, even with me playing some background noise. It also records the audio itself, so I can play back and confirm what was actually said. It seems better than Granola, which I think doesn’t record the audio or distinguish between speakers for in-person meetings. cc @Toby Tremlett🔹

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!

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.

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 2 Jun 2023 2:56 UTC
13 points
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on: An Earn to Learn Pledge
I agree that it seems good for EA to have a career-focused pledge, and I wrote up a similar idea here on the Forum two years ago, which had mixed feedback then. I think some people thought it was a bad idea because of the “maximizing” language in the pledge’s name and the post though, but they may still be sympathetic to the idea of a career-focused pledge. I now think that a “do the most good” pledge is not an ideal name, and I’ve updated the post to say this.
One difference between your pledge idea and mine is that yours doesn’t sound like a lifetime pledge—it sounds focused on being taken and adhered to during the phase where they’re building career capital. Maybe that’s intentional and good, but possibly a lifetime career-focused pledge might be better?

BrianTan 4 Jan 2023 1:52 UTC
2 points
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on: “AI” is an indexical
The link to the Substack page at the top doesn’t work for me for some reason, even if it works on LessWrong. Maybe it’s a bug. Maybe you could get the link to work somehow?

BrianTan 12 Oct 2022 14:42 UTC
10 points
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on: What makes a good 1-1? How important are they as a CB strategy?
In case you haven’t seen it, the Resource Centre has advice on doing 1-1′s! It also links some resources on 1-1′s, including the Global Challenges Project’s guide.