EA Updates for May 2021

By DavidNash @ 2021-04-30T16:50 (+29)

Meta

• Open Philanthropy Project on their progress in 2020 and plans for 2021
• Happier Lives Institute with their research agenda for 2021 and review of 2020
• For people using Clubhouse there is a space there for people interested in EA
• WANBAM with a new video on what their community finds most helpful about the mentorship programme
• 80,000 Hours have launched a new resource, ten curated podcasts to give people an introduction to effective altruism
• EA organisation updates for April
• Ben Schifman with the post 'EA for Jews - Proposal and Request for Comment'
• An overview of the EA Debate Championship and lecture series
• A quarterly update from the Centre for Effective Altruism
• Richard Ngo asking 'What are your main reservations about identifying as an effective altruist?'
• For Spanish speakers there is a Slack group 'Altruismo Eficaz y Racionalidad' that brings together people interested in EA from around the Spanish-speaking world

Grants

Open Phil have made 14 grants recently with a total value of $70,929,000

• $61,218,000 - Global Health & Development
  • $27,077,000 - Malaria Consortium
  • $18,683,000 - New Incentives
  • $8,059,000 - Helen Keller International
  • $4,103,000 - Evidence Action
  • $2,796,000 - Sightsavers
  • $500,000 - Give Directly
• $7,500,000 - Centre for Effective Altruism
• $1,434,000 - Potential Risks from Advanced AI
• $1,430,000 - Adversarial Robustness Research at MIT
• $577,000 - Farm Animal Welfare
• $150,000 - Criminal Justice Reform
• $50,000 - Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness

Global Development

• Kelsey Piper looking at how a new malaria vaccine could make a difference
• Sanjay Joshi on why SoGive is not updating charity ratings after malaria vaccine news
• Karolina Sarek with a summary of 'RCTs in Development Economics, Their Critics and Their Evolution'
• Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee discussing ways to make capitalism fairer
• Think Global Health on the importance of neglected tropical diseases
• The BBC looking at how satellite images are used to help distribute cash to people in areas with high poverty
• Evidence Action on the 'evidence to policy pipeline'
• A paper looking at the connection between states possessing reconnaissance satellites and militarised interstate disputes

Animal Welfare

• An in depth article from Vox looking at wild animal welfare as a cause
• Bruce Friedrich and Liz Specht from GFI on the Sam Harris podcast discussing alternative proteins, the environment and pandemic risk
• Animal Charity Evaluators with their 2021 goals
• Neil Dullaghan with strategic considerations for upcoming EU farmed animal legislation
• An overview of a GFI report looking at the current state of the plant based food industry
• Vox with an overview of fish welfare
• A post on the EA Forum with concerns about Animal Charity Evaluators
• Animal Ask on 'Measuring Animal Welfare: Philosophical Foundations, Practical Indicators, and Overall Assessments'
• Jamie Harris with 'Social Movement Lessons from the Fair Trade Movement'

Existential & Catastrophic Risks

• Prevent Epidemics looking at epidemics that didn't happen
• Martin Rees in the Independent writing about existential risks
• Jaan Tallinn on the Future of Life Institute podcast talking about 'Avoiding Civilizational Pitfalls and Surviving the 21st Century'
• The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk has released a new report looking at bridging the gap between global risk and policy engagement
• Jeff Ohl with a post on international cooperation as a tool to reduce x-risks

Improving Institutions

• Vox looking at how the UK’s Covid-19 Recovery Trial has been successful
• Brian Resnick looking at how the Psychological Science Accelerator are attempting to improve the psychology field
• Eva Vivalt on Hear This Idea discussing evidence-based policy and forecasting social science
• Sören Mindermann & Mrinank Sharma are on the Turing podcast discussing research they've recently had published on inferring the effectiveness of government interventions against Covid-19

Environment

• 80,000 Hours podcast with Kelly Wanser on whether to deliberately intervene in the climate
• The Breakthrough Institute looking at how accurate claims of economic decoupling from emissions are
• A chapter by chapter summary of Bill Gates's new book 'How to Avoid a Climate Disaster'
• The Roots of Progress asking why nuclear power hasn't been more successful
• Olamide Oguntoye looking into ways technological innovation can be used to make progress on climate change
• Our World in Data has a new section on biodiversity

Longtermism

• Evelyn with a post on moral pluralism and longtermism
• A post introducing the Simon Institute for Longterm Governance
• Michael Aird investigating the core reasons why he focuses on longtermism
• A post on the longtermist case for working on farmed animals
• The Long-Term Future Fund has room for more funding

Emerging Technology

• Kelsey Piper with an article on how the US government is thinking about shaping AI policy
• The Center for Security and Emerging Technology mapping India’s AI potential
• A new website has been set up to inform people interested in reducing the threats from lethal autonomous weapons
• Tom Davidson from Open Philanthropy with a report on semi-informative priors as an approach to forecasting artificial general intelligence
• Jia Yuan Loke from the Center on Long-Term Risk with case studies of self-governance to reduce technology risk
• CSER commenting on the EU's world-first AI regulation
• Beth Barnes discussing debate and imitative generalisation on the AI X-risk research podcast
• An interview with Jess Whittlestone discussing her work on AI policy and ethics

Other Links

• A look at how Elon Musk has donated $150,000,000 in the first four months of 2021, including $100,000,000 that will be awarded to entrepreneurs who come up with the best technologies to capture carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
• A transcript of a talk by Sanjay Joshi and Ellen Quigley on how to improve ESG investing
• 80,000 Hours podcast with Nina Schick on disinformation and synthetic media
• Stefan Schubert and Judith Lichtenberg debating the benefits of effective altruism
• The Global Priorities Institute has an essay prize inviting submissions on topics in global priorities research from philosophy graduate students
• Spencer Greenberg talking to Julia Galef about her new book - The Scout Mindset
• 80,000 Hours podcast with Mike Berkowitz on keeping the U.S. a liberal democratic country
• Abby Hoskin asking 'What are the highest impact questions in the behavioural sciences?'
• Clearer Thinking are looking for ideas for their second annual micro grants program, with a chance to win $595, closing May 17th
• A paper measuring news and its impact on democracy in America, suggesting that fake news is maybe a smaller issue than previously thought
• Vaidehi Agarwalla sharing her outlook on discovering EA
• Rutger Bregman, Dutch historian and author, has taken the Giving What We Can Pledge

Good News

• Cote d’Ivoire has eliminated sleeping sickness as a public health problem
• Executions were down last year by 36% compared to 2019