EA Organization Updates: January 2024

By Toby Tremlett🔹, Dane Valerie @ 2024-01-18T15:28 (+18)

We’re featuring some opportunities and job listings at the top of this post. Some have (very) pressing deadlines. 

• You can see previous updates on the "EA Organization Updates (monthly series)" topic page, or in our repository of past newsletters. Notice that there’s also an “org update” tag, where you can find more news and updates that are not part of this consolidated series. 
• These monthly posts originated as the "Updates" section of the monthly EA Newsletter. Organizations submit their own updates, which we edit for clarity. 
• (If you’d like to share your updates and jobs via this series, please apply here.)

Opportunities and jobs

Opportunities

Consider also checking opportunities listed on the EA Opportunities Board, and the Opportunities to Take Action tag. 

• Applications are open for the following events:
  • EA Global Bay Area (Global Catastrophic Risks), deadline January 21, running February 2-4
  • EAGxLATAM, deadline January 21, running February 16-18
  • EA Global London, deadline May 19, running May 31-June 2
• Charity Entrepreneurship has announced the second edition of the Research Training Program (Read the previous round’s research). This online program is designed to equip participants with the tools and skills needed to identify, compare, and recommend the most effective interventions and organisations. It is a full-time, fully cost-covered program (stipends included) that will run online for 12 weeks between 15 April and 5 July 2024. Apply here by 28 January or register for an online info event on 18 January to learn more.

Job listings

​​Consider also exploring jobs listed on the Job listing (open) tag. For even more roles, check the 80,000 Hours Job Board. 

Future of Life Foundation

• Founder Search and Recruitment Lead (Hybrid/SF Bay Area preferred, $100K - $200K+)
• Researcher, General and Researcher, Specializing in AI Safety (Hybrid in SF Bay Area, $130K - $250K+)

Giving What We Can

• Governance and advisory boards (Remote, unpaid)
• Various Country Director and Director of Development roles for UK, US and Canada (Remote in relevant country)

BlueDot Impact

• Biosecurity Specialist (Hybrid in London, £60K - £80K, rolling applications)
• AI Safety Specialist (Technical) (Hybrid in London, £60K - £90K, rolling applications)
• AI Governance Specialist (Hybrid in London, £60K - £90K, rolling applications)

Charity Entrepreneurship

• Director of Outreach (London/Remote: £34K - £47K, rolling applications)

Anthropic

• Research Engineer for Interpretability team (Hybrid in US/UK, $280K - $520K)
• Research Scientist for Frontier Red Team (Cyber) (Hybrid in SF/London $320K - $600K)
• Research Scientist for Societal Impacts (Hybrid in SF, $280K - $485K)

Epoch

• ML Distributed Systems Senior Researcher (Remote, $150K - $180K, apply by 31 January, rolling applications)

Talos Institute

• Executive Director (Brussels / Remote, competitive salary, apply by 31 January)
• EU Tech Policy Lead (Brussels / Remote, €70K - €90K, apply by 31 January)

Lead Exposure Elimination Project (LEEP)

• Program Managers (Remote, multiple time zones and locations, rolling applications)

Faunalytics

• Projects Manager (Remote in US/Canada, $60,000, apply by 31 January) 

Organization Updates

The organization updates are in alphabetical order (C-Z, 0-A-B)

Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA)

Zach Robinson will be CEA’s next CEO!

Faunalytics

Faunalytics published their annual report, which showcases their research, projects, and other accomplishments. 

Highlights include a 2023 update to their popular Impact Scales focused on animals affected by institutional food purchases, a new Invertebrates Fundamental – the eighth in their Fundamentals series – exploring the vast world of invertebrates, and nine original studies including an analysis of the factors affecting the cost of production for chicken, fish, and eggs. Additionally, Faunalytics has once again been named an Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) Recommended Charity. The organization has also announced their plans and priorities for 2024. 

Faunalytics is now accepting applications for a new Projects Manager role. This individual will work closely with the Research team to bring our original research projects to fruition, ultimately increasing their impact on animals. Applications are due January 31st. 

Fish Welfare Initiative

Fish Welfare Initiative (FWI) recently published the following two updates on their work:

• Their 2024 R&D plans in India.
• Their current and future status in China.

Alongside research, FWI has been working on implementing welfare improvements via its farmer program in India. This program has to date improved the lives of an estimated 1.5M farmed fish, although it is still somewhat experimental.

GiveDirectly   

GiveDirectly has published a blog post on Tech improvements made in 2023. These improvements include speeding up eligibility checks using machine learning, and testing a new system to distribute money when flooding is forecast. 

Giving What We Can

GWWC is seeking dedicated individuals to join their governance and advisory boards across their current projects, as well as multiple newly formed or soon-to-be-formed entities in different countries. Apply here.

GWWC is running a donation match for their operations until the 31st of January - for every dollar donated to their operations, funders will match it up to $200,000. Supporting GWWC now to fill the match will help them get close to filling the gap for their baseline operations in 2024. 

GWWC also announced their plan to spin out of its parent organisation, Effective Ventures, and establish their own independent legal structure.

The Humane League

A year after the launch of the Animal Policy Alliance (APA), important legislative wins for animals raised for food are being seen. In December, Pittsburgh City Council passed a city-wide foie gras ban (foie gras is liver from force-fed ducks and geese). This was thanks to the efforts of APA member Humane Action Pittsburgh, who successfully advocated for this ban. The Humane League, provided Humane Action Pittsburgh a grant, research, and expertise on policy language and strategy to make sure the ban passed.  

This month, The Humane League is celebrating the full implementation of California’s Proposition 12—which reduces suffering for an estimated 40 million farm animals every year—after it was upheld in an historic Supreme Court ruling last May. As of 2024, food produced from mother pigs confined to gestation crates, metal cages so small that pigs can’t even turn around, is now prohibited from being sold across the state. The Humane League, their volunteers, and animal protection groups throughout the US defended Proposition 12 all the way to the Supreme Court. And they’re continuing to do so, against dangerous legislation like the EATS Act.

Rethink Priorities (RP)

Recent research from RP’s Animal Welfare Department has investigated: 

• How might different risk aversion frameworks help wild animal welfare advocates increase reasoning transparency as they consider potential interventions? 
• How effective are corporate campaigns for cage-free egg commitments? (Given the number of hens in the industry, a few commitments per year may have a substantial impact.)
• What are the welfare threats facing farmed shrimps? (The report examines why a large percentage of shrimps die before they are old enough to be slaughtered, as well as other overlooked welfare issues. See RP’s webinar for further discussion.)
• What are the current and future welfare threats facing farmed yellow mealworms?

Global health and development: The research team has developed recommendations for interventions to further improve vaccine delivery in low- and middle-income countries. They also looked into the effectiveness of Priority Review Vouchers (PRV) that the US government has issued under its Tropical Disease PRV Program.  

Global catastrophic risks: Based on their previous research, RP published a blog post sharing a proposal for a potential project to establish a scenario analysis group for AI safety strategy.

Rethink is seeking high impact projects to support. If your project is a good fit, RP may offer fiscal support or operations assistance. If you are interested, fill in this expression of interest form, or find out more.

Training for Good

The Talos Institute is spinning out of Training for Good. Talos is a talent development organisation for European AI policy careers, aiming to reduce risks from advanced AI.

Talos will launch in 2024 with the EU Tech Policy Fellowship as its flagship programme. They envision Talos expanding its activities and quickly growing into a key organisation in the AI governance landscape.

To help found the organisation, they’re hiring for two exciting roles:

• Executive Director (job description)
• EU Tech Policy Lead (job description)

80,000 Hours

80,000 Hours released a new series on their site focused on building useful skills early in your career. They give advice on why each skill is valuable, as well as how to evaluate your personal fit, develop the skills, and deploy them for impact in later career stages. Recommended skills include Policy and political skills, Organisation-building and Research skills. 

And they released an update to their problem profile on preventing catastrophic pandemics, which they rank second in their list of the most pressing world problems.  

The 80,000 Hours Podcast released:

• An interview with Nathan Labenz on the final push for AGI, understanding OpenAI's leadership drama, and red-teaming frontier models 
• A special holiday episode with one highlight from every episode in 2023

80,000 Hours also announced their plan to spin out of its parent organisation Effective Ventures and establish their own independent legal structure.

Anima International

Anima International has recently published a post summarizing the outcomes of the parliamentary elections in Poland and the potential implications for animals in Poland and in Europe.