I’m a doctor working towards the dream that every human will have access to high quality healthcare. I’m a medic and director of OneDay Health, which has launched 53 simple but comprehensive nurse-led health centers in remote rural Ugandan Villages. A huge thanks to the EA Cambridge student community in 2018 for helping me realise that I could do more good by focusing on providing healthcare in remote places.
NickLaing
Karma: 14,332
Kudos for the economist for my favourite mainstream news article on the Anthropalypse yet
https://www.economist.com/international/2026/08/13/silicon-valleys-ai-boom-is-remaking-american-charity(Behind a paywall)
I think it outlines the issues very well, and you won’t see a mainstream news article start as smart as this very often.
”EACH DOLLAR given to charity may soon do less good. In the coming years the marginal cost of saving a child’s life from disease or starvation could jump from about $5,000 to $15,000, or more. This sounds worrying. In fact it is good news, argues Alexander Berger of Coefficient Giving, one of Silicon Valley’s most influential grantmakers. Non-profits like his spend on cheap, scalable interventions first—say, by buying malaria nets before malaria vaccines. If an influx of donations pays for all the inexpensive ways of doing good, then the rest flows into costlier acts of altruism that can save yet more lives.”
I read this just because of this into “every 5 minutes while writing this post, I had to stop to do 13 push-ups, and when I could no longer complete my required number, I had to upload it.
And I can’t believe you did 468 pushups that’s crazy. I would have published after maybe 10 minutes under these rules?
Good reminder to be a bit more focused with my podcasts/reading. I like to have broad understanding, but its probably going too far that way.
Yeah it might not increase that much or at all (although perhaps lightcone folks are more connected to doers the fund might be funding, which would increase conflict of interest). My point was that especially in AI grantmaking where the field is small, I think it might always be too strong/incorrect to say there might not be even “the perception of conflict of interest”
Conflict of interest is not necessarily a big problem and probably completely unavoidable in the AI safety sphere, but I think it’s good to be honest that it’s a reality.
This is great I love the framing, helps me think more clearly.
For our nurses at OneDay Health, its very much “bar” hiring. We might interview 15 nurses and offer between 1 and 3 jobs. Wheras for management positions its “slot” hiring really.
“Oliver, I, and potentially other LTFF staff will participate in the first round, so routing this money through the Commons means the remaining LTFF balance is still allocated in part by the judgement of the LTFF fund managers at the time the donors made their donation. To avoid any perception of conflict of interest, Lightcone has agreed to waive its administrative fees on this transaction, so the 3% platform fee and 2% evaluator fee will not be charged on the LTFF contribution.”
I think this is a good move, but I think there will remain many genuine conflicts of interests in these grants (which is both inevitable and OK as long as its recognised). Conflict of interest is about more than admin fees—more importantly its about bias towards where money gets allocated. Given how small the field is I’m sure many who get allocated money will be friends and former colleagues of those given the money, whether its former LTFF or Lightcone staff who are giving the money.
Thanks and I should clarify this EXCLUDES people I know pretty well working in GHD grantmaking jobs outside EA, where salaries are often much higher.
#Quickmaths
So researchers have used AI to make new viruses and broadcast the achievement to the world!
This could be fine, but given the commentaries alongside it seems there is some disagreement at least.
“But concerns have already been raised that the same technology could be used maliciously to create new disease“In a commentary accompanying the publication in the journal Science, Dr Thomas Inglesby and Dr Moritz Hanke from the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University wrote that the findings raise “urgent biosafety and biosecurity questions”.
They said it was no longer a question of “whether generative viral genome design will exist” but whether it can be used without “enabling serious harm”.
For example, they said new viruses with the potential to cause disease “should not be pursued”.
The researchers themselves took steps to maximise safety. They excluded viruses that could infect complex organisms from the training database, performed the research on phage rather than viruses that infect people and it all took place in a secure laboratory.”
I’m interested in what biosec people here think. Is making virus’s and publicising the achievement genuinely OK and safe at this point with the safeguards, or could it be net bad?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y3j3ngevmo
I couldn’t see it there on first glance, but I suspect @Gregory Lewis🔸 this would go down well and stimulate more conversation on the dark side.
I mean the LessWrong forum.
A small point on this—the 80,000 hours and probably good jobs board post EA paygrade jobs. The median GHD development worker salary would be WAAAAAAAY below 100k. Of perhaps 30 people I know well working in GHD (not including the majority of jobs which are in-country and way lower) maybe 3 of them have salaries over 100k US. These salaries are kind of wildly high IMO (disagree votes incoming) - apart from the Animal Welfare range of course which from my perspective seems reasonable stand-alone but definitely unreasonably lower than the rest!
I completely agree with you here, you’re exactly right that’s where the money goes and we have no good reason to feel guilty I don’t think.
In saying that, I would challenge you to stay in that room and walk over those people sleeping on the floor without feeling guilty. I think its good that us humans often have a sense of empathy and guilt about our relative privilege, regardless of how rational our actions might be.
I agree its great, why do you think it is scary in particular?
I think its easy to underrate how much the moral compass of humanity can change over 75 years. And when it changes it can happen fast—thinking of civil rights movement and LGBTQ+ rights as well.
I think Alternative proteins could well become almost indistinguishable from meat, there will still need to be social/moral changes to encourage uptake, because people find it weird and unnatural. So mot sure how to weight on that front too.
Thanks for this ace article Morgan, I especially like “Fight against a sense of urgency when it builds up.”
I love this a lot and can already feel this among other orgs. A few people have said “Nick, think about how you could absorb more money soon” and I’ve been asked 3 times in the last 6 months by donors something like “could you take an extra 3-5 million dollars right now”.
These questions aren’t unreasonable, but the donors also need to be careful to not ramp up that urgency too much among us doers.
I feel like a lot of orgs will scramble to find ways to “absorb” money and grow. I think this will be a far bigger problem with the already-big BINGOs more than smaller orgs, because their claims to be able to absorb an extra 500 million or whatever will be both more public and more plausible.
We should be especially suspicious of orgs proposing brand new activities in the midst of this felt urgency that deviate from what they have been doing for some time.
My one disagreement is that “vaccine uptake and cash transfer programs in themselves could absorb a huge proportion of these funds, through government spending, GAVI, and organizations such as GiveDirectly.” I don’t think the Math maths on this front, and the CDG article doesn’t answer this question well either.
Looking at GiveDirectly specifically who might be the best placed org in the whole world to absorb lots of money cost-effectively and quickly, they say on their website they could spend 1.4 Billion in the next 3 years (sounds reasonable). The most they have ever spent in a year is 250 million dollars—I wouldn’t think more than doubling this year on year would be realistic.
The last thing I would want to do is give money to low-income governments to give away. This would be an absolute corruption fest and extremely poorly targeted. There’s already good evidence of this—look at Uganda’s recent cash giveaway program… GAVI could probably absorb a decent chunk, but we also don’t want to disrupt their program of forcing countries to slowly take over their own vaccine spend.
Super cool! Love the dashboard like @Mo Putera said, how did you make that beast?
Nice detailed feedback, makes a lot of sense. The 100 Karma cuttoff makes sense to me too, although I think reaching 100 Karma might be harder if posts are not displayed by default on the front page (but I’m sure you’ll see that). Can always change the threshold...
Yeah he’s doing great thanks @SiobhanBall. Good point about the economic system in behind which allows these innovations to flourish as well.
I don’t mind the idea, although I’m skeptical of this criteria ‘Selected posts to help us answer: how can we do the most good with our resources?’ For a start why not use the better-polling “selected posts that help us do more good”, which also helps with consistent CEA messaging.
I think many of the best posts don’t strictly follow that criteria. I agree it might be good to deprioritise these types of posts a bit you discuss...”EA community issues, share jobs, updates from organisations, ask for support with new projects, meet people ” but there are many others that inspire us or help us think differently that don’t stricly meet that criteria
These posts below for example are amazing (including classic posts), but don’t necessarily meet that criteria
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wTXAbzbkAxZrLv5Cg/why-are-longtermists-so-much-less-focused-on-human
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/XuNBJL3EHqhFKLEGn/impact-requires-implementation-what-dispensers-for-safe
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CmGPp5p9RvTLuuzbt/aim-high-even-if-you-fall-short
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/FpjQMYQmS3rWewZ83/effective-altruism-is-a-question-not-an-ideologyhttps://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MGTzcHtwxpL6iXLJd/if-far-uv-is-so-great-why-isn-t-it-everywhere
I suppose it depends how widely that criteria is interpreted. Any great post can potentiall shift our hearts and actions to using resources better.
Thanks for this great write up, and it all sounds very reasonable. I really respect that the orgs here didn’t go crazy claiming they could spend ludicrous amounts of money straight away. I agree with @MichaelDickens that is crazy how little funding there is in this area, and that’s from someone who might rate animal welfare stuff 1000x less important than him haha.
As a rule of thumb in the global health world at least, I think there are few orgs it’s where it makes sense to increase spending than 2x − 3x funding year on year, scaling up orgs and operations isn’t easy.
I think I said this on another post, but in the wild animal welfare space I would love to see a couple of clear practical wins, even if really small to show that change is possible here, and learn how to make change. Even if it’s more token than meaningful. Most of these orgs seem heavily focused on research which is helpful, but I think we can learn a lot as well from doing things and seeing what happens.