Boston-based, Director of Detection at SecureBio, GWWC board member, parent, musician. Switched from earning to give to direct work in pandemic mitigation. Married to Julia Wise. Speaking for myself unless I say otherwise. Full list of EA posts: jefftk.com/news/ea
Jeff Kaufman 🔸
Karma: 18,280
Chicken-Free Egg Whites
I think the highest priority question is probably something about how quickly you expect AI to go. I’m mostly not planning anything 8 years out, because I think the world is likely to be massively different.
The next highest priority question is something about how you expect AI to impact your various potential career options. For example, it seems plausible to me that almost all dental care could be moderately skilled people wearing high resolution cameras and receiving real-time advice from AIs with current tech, let alone near-future tech, and 8 years is a long time for society to catch up. On the other hand, CS is becoming automated even more rapidly!
So this isn’t really the question you’re asking, but I’d prioritize learning how to get the most out of frontier AI systems: getting good at specifying what you want and recognizing whether you’ve received that. A lot of this is traditionally management. I’d try to do as much of this while in college as possible, but not stay any longer than necessary; 4y is already a very long time.
Seems worth doing!
Yup! Linked from the bottom of the post.
Also (not linked; learned about it in comments) a nursing home
Why is it good practice to allow a post to be on the forum for some time before the response is available to readers?
meltblown polypropylene may be more capable of surge than I previously assumed
Note that this factory was just producing polypropylene pellets, not melt-blown fabric or masks themselves.
The pellets also last ~indefinitely if well stored (no UV, no heat, minimal oxygen, low humidity), and so are well suited for stockpiling. But you’d probably want to move up the chain and stockpile the fabric instead, or perhaps N95s themselves, or perhaps reusable respirators, …
Here’s to the Polypropylene Makers
Currently, when I see something that reads as AI written that’s a pretty strong signal that the nominal author doesn’t fully stand behind the post. I really hate it when I engage deeply with the arguments in a post and write a carefully reply, only to learn that the author wasn’t really trying to say that and didn’t review the output of their AI carefully enough.
I think maybe that wasn’t public until 2026-01 with Dario’s “All of Anthropic’s co-founders have pledged to donate 80% of our wealth”?
almost as big as Coefficient Giving
Specifically within animal welfare (this wasn’t immediately clear to me, and I was very confused how CG’s grants could be so low)
Could probably get more support if you presented it as not limited to veganism: a lot of people have dietary restrictions (ex: allergies) and this is a way supermarkets could compete for customers.
It depends a lot on what the org is doing, but my understanding is that even most advocacy 501(c)4 organizations stick to lobbying and not campaigning (which would trigger 527(f) taxes). But you’re right, worth checking!
If you try the steps that follow it’s actually pretty annoying, unfortunately.
Don’t Sell Stock to Donate
Thanks for sharing this! @Julia_Wise🔸 and I also decided to give more in 2025 (or early 2026), from a combination of pressing funding gaps and wanting to pull giving forward because of Anthropic donors.
What kinds of rooms would be better cleaned by the 4 smaller lamps vs. the 1 larger lamp (and whether that’s the most salient difference between Aerolamp and Nukit)?
I think the biggest difference between the Aerolamp and Nukit is the bulb: the Aerolamp uses a Care222 bulb which I expect to last much longer.
When it would be better to invest in a Far-UVC lamp vs. a high-CADR air purifier? I think HouseFresh is fairly trusted as a review site ― to be more concrete, who would you recommend buy a CleanAirKits Luggable over a UVC lamp?
It depends on how important it is to you to minimize noise, and how big the room is (since filter-based purifiers clean a given amount of air per minute while UVC depends on the size of the space). https://illuminate.osluv.org/ is not super user-friendly, but will calculate the CADR-equivalent for you of a given UVC setup.
Thanks for clarifying! I do think in a context like this one, where people are thinking about why offices etc don’t install far-UVC, your friend’s phrasing is likely to confuse people. For example, if I recommended someone not buy a car because it only had a one-year lifespan, I think they’d be grumpy if they later learned I meant it would only last one year of 24⁄7 operation. When we talk about “lifespan” we’re normally bringing in assumptions about expected usage.
most average only 1 year lifetime or less with decreasing efficacy over time, have to replace the entire system when it’s spent, adds to electricity cost when in use, and you need to install a lot of them for it to be effective because when run at too high power levels they produce large amounts of hazardous ozone
I think this is true for many options, but not the Aerolamp:
It is built around the Ushio Care222 B1. This is a long-lasting design, rated for 10,000 hours before falling below 70% output. That’s one year of 24⁄7 usage, five years of working hours, or much longer if run less often.
They do use electricity, but at 11W it’s a negligible 1-2¢ per hour.
Even one Aerolamp cleans a lot of air. You can model efficacy with Illuminate.
Well filtered lamps do not produce a lot of ozone. Unless your building is incredibly well sealed ozone levels would go up if you opened a window. If you’re very concerned you can run an air purifier that includes an activated carbon layer, which many do.
@Ben Kuhn has a log at https://www.benkuhn.net/ea/ , though the last donation is 2019. I don’t know if that’s putting giving on hold vs no longer updating the list?