Jamie_Harris

Karma: 3,454

Jamie is the Courses Project Lead at the Centre for Effective Altruism, leading a team running online programmes that inspire and empower talented people to explore the best ways that they can help others. These courses and fellowships provide structured guidance, information, and support to help people take tailored next steps that set them up for high impact.

He has very light-touch involvement as a Fund Manager at the Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund, which aims to increase the impact of projects that use the principles of effective altruism, by increasing their access to talent, capital, and knowledge.

Lastly, Jamie is President of the board at Leaf, an independent nonprofit that supports exceptional teenagers to explore how they can best save lives, help others, or change the course of history. (Most of the hard work is being done by the wonderful Jonah Boucher though!)

Jamie previously worked as a teacher, as a researcher at the think tank Sentience Institute, as co-founder and researcher at Animal Advocacy Careers (which helps people to maximise their positive impact for animals), and as a Program Associate at Macroscopic Ventures (grantmaking focused on s-risks).

Jamie_Harris 3 Mar 2026 10:59 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: ScienceMon🔸’s comment on: Slaughterbots are super unpopular, and the US Government knows it
Cool, makes sense. To be clear, I think contacting representatives is helpful! I wasn’t trying to question that.
I don’t know anything about the Congress authorisation so will defer on that. I’ll just say that if the legality is in dispute rather than unambiguous/settled, then using the word illegal might be counterproductive/polarising, whereas “unprecedented” seems unambiguously true.

Jamie_Harris 2 Mar 2026 0:06 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Slaughterbots are super unpopular, and the US Government knows it
Nice one for taking action!
What was the illegal part? Isn’t it just unprecedented?
(Checking partly for my own knowledge and also because it seemed quite central to your call to action to the legislators)

Jamie_Harris 23 Feb 2026 22:02 UTC
5 points
0 ∶ 0
on: What Happens After the Career Advice: The Case for a Shared EA Operations Hiring Platform
Cool post! I thought it was well-structured and evidenced, while also recognising limitations and counterarguments etc.

Jamie_Harris 23 Feb 2026 21:59 UTC
3 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: abrahamrowe’s comment on: What Happens After the Career Advice: The Case for a Shared EA Operations Hiring Platform
The organization running it would need to have sufficient credibility for the organizations using it to want to forego their own application processes. I think a random person starting it would have very low credibility. My company, which had run several dozen hiring rounds for many organizations had maybe 50% the credibility necessary. This seems like a hard bar.
I feel like a service that aspires to eventually be a common app could shift towards that incrementally by offering partly-vetted candidates. It’s not a fully centralised common app, but gets customers/sign ups from orgs who just want access to another sour e kf high quality candidates
That might reduce some of the value prop to initial candidates at first, if the service doesn’t have many confirmed clients yet, but I suspect that (1) quite a lot would apply anyway, even without confirmed buy in from orgs, if the pitch was done well, (2) there might be other ways to make it appealing, e.g. finding ways to offer some (automated?) feedback.

Jamie_Harris 18 Feb 2026 22:45 UTC
6 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Is salary a helpful proxy for what type of workers are most needed in the EA movement?
I think this is an interesting question! I think you’re right to point out some of the factors that influence it including cause area, role type (and payment norms for them). I also think organizational cultural norms affect it quite heavily.
My guess is that if you had a large enough dataset and controlled for enough factors, salary would predict ‘role leverage’ quite well. But I don’t expect it to be very useful when choosing between roles to apply for, because the correlation will be weak, your dataset is too small etc. Basically, there are too many predictors and too much noise for it to be very informative. I think you’re better off just reading the descriptions or using other heuristics like cause area, job title etc if you’re trying to filter quickly.

Jamie_Harris 16 Feb 2026 13:13 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: 500k mid-career professionals want to do more good with their careers. Can we help them?
Hi Dom, thanks so much for this post and thinking carefully about this! I just sent you a direct message about potentially collaborating and/or me sharing feedback on your questions here on a call. Thanks!

Jamie_Harris 13 Feb 2026 20:25 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: EA entrepreneurship opportunities—worth putting together?
What do you have in mind about where this might live or what it might contain?
I’m excited about opportunities to support more impact-focused entrepreneurship.
But I’m wondering especially… Did you just already create the full list in this post above, pretty much? (CE and Catalyze)

Long-term risks from ideological fanaticism

David_Althaus12 Feb 2026 23:25 UTC

190 points

30 comments84 min readEA link

Jamie_Harris 25 Jan 2026 11:17 UTC
5 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Releasing TakeOverBench.com: a benchmark, for AI takeover
I think this is pretty cool. Good to see some relevant benchmarks collected in the same place, and I can see how this is handy as a communication tool.
From a quick skim I wasn’t really sure how to interpret the main graph, and there didn’t seem to be an explanation. In particular, the Y axis is a percentage, but a percentage of what? Some of the benchmarks are projected to reach 100% in a year, does that mean you project AI takeover in a year etc?
(Sharing less as ‘please answer my question’ and more as ‘user feedback’—if I’m confused by this, I imagine lots of people who know (even) less than me about AI (safety) will also be confused; though maybe they’re not your target audience)

Jamie_Harris 18 Jan 2026 19:52 UTC
1 point
4 ∶ 4
on: Has EA given up on politics?
Interesting question. Sorry not to answer directly, but some questions that would help clarify your question:
What is “the geopolitical situation of the world”, and how does one improve it? Why is that plausibly one of the top most useful/cost-effective things one can do with their time/money?
(And who is this EA of which you speak? I haven’t met them. EA is a community and a question, not a single hierarchical organisation. Although if you think there is something that is important and neglected, the Forum is a handy platform to make the case!)

Jamie_Harris 10 Jan 2026 15:35 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Will Aldred’s comment on: Public intellectuals need to say what they actually believe
Wait why was What We Owe the Future low integrity (according to this definition of integrity, which strikes me as an unusual usage, for what it’s worth)?

Jamie_Harris 10 Jan 2026 8:26 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: EA San Francisco Needs a New Lead Organizer
This is a very cool opportunity! And a nice, clear, writeup.
I want to add that I think there’s a much more “maximal” version that could be a great option, too; working full-time on trying to make this super impactful. I agree that some of the opportunities you mention seem very promising and it is likely worth someone really investing in trying to take advantage of them!
See also this “playbook for new groups”.

Jamie_Harris 6 Jan 2026 21:43 UTC
4 points
2 ∶ 0
on: Where do AI Safety Fellows go? Analyzing a dataset of 600+ alumni
Cool! How were you defining/measuring working in AI safety? (I’m very surprised the percentage is so high!)

Jamie_Harris 31 Dec 2025 14:14 UTC
6 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Aidan Kankyoku’s comment on: Announcing RoastMyPost: LLMs Eval Blog Posts and More
I just tried it out and had a similar impression. I think this is a cool idea and am excited Ozzie created it, but suspect it needs active development (and/or improvements in the underlying models over time) before it’s useful to me, due to similarish issues to what you found. I’ll likely try a couple more times with drafts though!

Jamie_Harris 30 Nov 2025 18:43 UTC
6 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Jamie_Harris’s comment on: Jamie_Harris’s Shortform
Thanks so much to everyone who took the time to play through this and provide such thoughtful feedback! I really appreciate it, and apologies for the delay in implementing these changes.
Here’s what I’ve updated based on your suggestions:
Bug Fixes:
- URL (@BrianTan ): Thanks for flagging! I think this should be fixed globally now.
- Perching bug (@Ben Stewart ): You can now press P again to exit perching—no more getting stuck!
- Arrow keys (@Sanjay): Fixed—they now work
- Battery cage crowding (Ben): Adjusted the spacing to show the realistic density—you should now see 6-8 hens in the cage matching the “5-10 hens” description
UX Improvements:
- Upfront explanation (Sanjay): Added a “Think you know the difference?” challenge box on the welcome screen so players understand they’ll be quizzed afterward
- Homepage clarity: Changed from “cage-free or pasture-raised” to “cage-free or free-range” since those are more ambiguous and better convey the challenge
- Visual cage surroundings (Ben): Enhanced the battery cage scenario—all surrounding cages now show detailed, properly-sized chickens with more subtle movement to better convey the industrial scale and crowding without as much weird flashing. (I didn’t fully fix it, but I think it’s a lot better)
Accuracy: Pasture-raised labeling (@david_reinstein): Added “Certified Humane” specification throughout and included a disclaimer that “pasture-raised” isn’t USDA-regulated for eggs, so uncertified products may vary significantly

I do agree with several of you (Sanjay, Ben) that full gamification would make it a lot better. This just seems like a change too far for my meagre vibe-coding capabilities and limited time availability for a spare time/fun project. If someone wanted to take it this on and run with it further and make it actually good, I’d be excited about that though! I’d be happy to hand over code etc.
The updated version is live at the same link. Thanks again for helping make this better! I also just posted on LinkedIn if anyone wants to share etc from there.

Jamie_Harris 22 Nov 2025 16:36 UTC
4 points
2 ∶ 1
in reply to: Marcus Abramovitch 🔸’s comment on: High-impact projects fighting biodiversity loss
I agree with the first half of your comment. Do you think that the EA community (or the EA Forum) should solely focus on cause prioritisation though?
I feel excited about scope sensitive decision-making and evidence-based prioritisation being used at various levels of abstraction/concreteness, e.g. cause prioritisation, intervention prioritisation, organisation prioritisation.
I welcome/encourage this being done carefully and well (and discussed on the Forum) even if I disagree with someone’s prioritisation at another level of abstraction, and I don’t think we should expect someone to justify their prioritisation at other levels.
I.e. I think this is a cool post, even though I don’t prioritise biodiversity and the post doesn’t explain why the authors prioritise it.

Jamie_Harris 16 Nov 2025 0:12 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: How U.S. Voters Respond To Candidates Making Farmed Animal Policy Proposals
Seems like a cool study! I tried to check the full report (because I wasn’t sure if unde stood the methodology from this summary) and FYI I got an error message: “this site can’t be reached. Osf.io unexpectedly closed the connection.” Maybe worth checking if the link is down

Jamie_Harris 12 Nov 2025 8:38 UTC
16 points
5 ∶ 0
on: The Crisis EA Cannot Afford to Ignore
Thank you for sharing Allegra! Welcome to the Forum, and congrats on writing and sharing this.
I think this is well written and engaging! I agree it seems a real shame for these people and for the world that the existing services have been cut. And I do think that your bullet point list suggests it’s worth considering/evaluating.
I think a stronger case would delve into more detail on these claims, which aren’t currently substantiated: “Sudan ranks extraordinarily high on scale, neglect, and tractability”, and “Emergency networks, women’s coalitions, and independent media have proven they can reach people effectively”, then compare explicitly and quantitatively to other candidates for top cause areas and interventions. Is the problem area more promising than others? Are the available interventions more cost-effective? (Or in the same ballpark?)

Jamie_Harris 9 Nov 2025 10:21 UTC
50 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Jamie_Harris’s Shortform
I built an interactive chicken welfare experience—try it and let me know what you think
Ever wondered what “cage-free” actually means versus “free-range”? I just launched A Chicken’s World—a 5-minute interactive game where you experience four different farming systems from an egg-laying hen’s perspective, then guess which one you just lived through and how common that system is.
Reading “67 square inches per hen” is one thing, but actually trying to move around in that space is another. My hope is that the interactive format makes welfare conditions visceral in a way that statistics don’t capture.
The experience includes:
- Walking through battery cage, cage-free, free-range, and pasture-raised systems
- Cost-effectiveness data based on Rethink Priorities’ research on corporate campaigns
- A willingness-to-pay element leading to an optional donation to THL via Farmkind
I’d welcome feedback:
- Any factual errors I should correct? (The comparative advantage of early adopters here! Most of the fact-finding and red-teaming was done by LLMs.)
- What would make it more useful to you personally? (You’ll probably give me more useful feedback this way than if you try to model other users.)
- What would make it work better as an outreach tool? (I built this with non-EA audiences in mind.)
Try it: https://achickens.world/. (Backup link here if that doesn’t work.)
PS thanks Claude for the code, plus THL, RP, Farmkind for doing the actual important work; I’m just making a fun tool. This was a misc personal project, nothing to do with my employer.

Jamie_Harris 30 Sep 2025 20:04 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: How cost-effective are AI safety YouTubers?
Very cool! No reply needed/expected, just sharing a few misc reflections:
I didn’t follow the reason for excluding Dwarkesh; you already have quality adjustments multipliers so you can just include him and apply the adjustments. (Id be interested to see, since I think it’s relevant, he has an influential audience, and he has solid revenue, which I think will lead to high cost-effectiveness in your model.)
In the other direction: I’m not sure if your goal was to compare most cost-effective opportunities among current/established YouTubers, but if you’re trying to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the overall intervention instead/as well, then you’ll of course need to account for efforts that started but collapsed or didn’t gain much traction.
Cool to see this analysis here though, and will likely be a useful reference/comparison for some apps that the EA Infrastructure Fund gets!

Jamie_Harris

Long-term risks from ide­olog­i­cal fanaticism

Long-term risks from ideological fanaticism