EA Updates for January 2022

By DavidNash @ 2022-01-05T11:35 (+37)

Upcoming Virtual Events

• 5th January - Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program: Information Event
• 5th January - Mathematicians and Physicists interested in Effective Altruism - Join the EA Maths and Physics Slack to find out more
• 8th January - C.S. Lewis and Effective Altruism by Mike Morell - Organised by EA for Christians
• 9th January - Giving What We Can Meetup
• 9th January - EA for Jews Virtual Social
• 9th January - Lightning Talks: Life Hacks - Organised by EA NYC
• 16th January - 8760 Hours: How to get the most out of next year - Organised by EA Philadelphia
• 19th January - Doing Good Better Reading Group
• 19th January - Panel Q&A: Working for Animals, and the State of Animal Law in the UK
• 20th January - Giving What We Can Open Forum
• 21st January - Jason Rudall: Altruism in International Law - Organised by Legal Priorities Project
• 22nd January - Pandemic Preparedness and Disease Control by Ana Karina Pitol - Organised by EA for Christians
• 28th January - Natalie Jones: Global Justice and Global Catastrophic Risk - Organised by Legal Priorities Project
• 31st January - 27th March - Alternative Protein Fundamentals Programme - 8 week programme run by the Cambridge University Alt. Protein Society, in collaboration with GFI, including technical and policy/entrepreneurship tracks. Applications close 13th January
• 7th February - 14th March - Intro Fellowship to Risks of Astronomical Suffering - Organised by the Center on Long-Term Risk. Applications close 12th January
• 7th February - 3rd April - EA Virtual Programs - Applications close 31st January
  • Introductory EA Program
  • In-Depth EA Program
  • The Precipice Reading Group

Latest Research and Updates

Meta

• Carla Zoe Cremer and Luke Kemp with the post 'Democratising Risk - or how EA deals with critics'
• The schedule for EA global conferences in 2022 was announced
• WANBAM has been rebranded to Magnify Mentoring, looking to expand their mentorship programmes
• Giving What We Can with their updated Effective Giving Guide
• The EA Forum with a review of the first decade of posts
• Habiba Islam on why 80,000 Hours wants to talk to more people than ever
• A post introducing High-Impact Medicine
• The 2021 EA Funds Donor Lottery is open, and closes on the 10th of January
• A blog post looking at the crux between effective altruism and progress studies
• There is a new EA internships board
• Tessa on why we shouldn't aim for the minimum of self-care
• Ruth Grace on 'Doing more good vs. doing the most good possible'
• Lizka on 'Native languages in the EA community (and issues with assessing promisingness)'
• The winning entries from the creative writing contest on the EA Forum
• Anneke Pogarell and Jona Glade with a series of posts on why and how to run a workplace/professional EA group, including case studies of the UK civil service and London EA finance groups
• Sofia Balderson with three posts
  • 'How to get an EA-aligned job: My experience'
  • 'How to make your first EAG a success'
  • 'Why you should consider skilled volunteering'
• Akash with six takeaways from EA Global and EA retreats
• A post continuing on with a thread of EA Megaprojects
• Alex Holness-Tofts and Joan Gass with a post on EA movement building at top universities
• Richard Ngo asking 'What are some success stories of grant makers beating the wider EA community?
• A post announcing EffectiveCrypto, a donation platform targeting members of the crypto community
• Holden Karnofsky with five different ways that people think that they are improving the world and why this sometimes leads to conflict
• Emily Jennings with the goals of the EA Mental Health Navigator service for the next 6 months
• EA organisation updates for December 2021

Grants

• Open Phil have made 12 grants recently with a total value of $6,000,000
  • $2,700,000 - Animal Welfare
  • $2,600,000 - California YIMBY (Land Use Reform)
  • $700,000 - Potential Risks from Advanced Artificial Intelligence
• The Survival and Flourishing Fund made 19 grants with a total value of $9,600,000
• EA Infrastructure Fund: May–August 2021 grant recommendations, they have made 42 grants with a total value of $1,700,000

Global Development

• The EU has launched a 300 billion euro global development investment plan
• Max Roser investigating global economic inequality
• GiveDirectly on why GiveWell should donate sooner rather than later
• Dylan Matthews looking into the mortality costs of pollution, with estimates that it kills 3,400,000 million people a year
• Kelsey Piper on how faltering global vaccination effort paved the way for new variants
• British International Investment have announced their 5 year strategy, aiming to invest up to £2 billion a year in development projects
• Vox looking at whether charities should spend your money now - or save it to help people later
• A 5-year global study has been started to study human flourishing, with 240,000 individuals in 22 countries
• Matt Yglesias interviewing Elie Hassenfeld about GiveWell
• David Wallace-Wells with an article on how pollution can kill 10 million people a year
• A post on how AI could be used to accurately predict tsunamis
• The Life You Can Save are starting their own in-house charity evaluation
• An article asking 'Does effective altruism drive private cross-border aid? A qualitative study of American donors to grassroots INGOs'
• Bastian Herre looking at how democratic rights have changed over the last 200 years
• The Wellcome Leap Health Breakthrough Network now supports a network of over 650,000 scientists and engineers, aiming to accelerate breakthroughs in human health
• Open Philanthropy with their incoming program officers for South Asian Air Quality and Global Aid Advocacy
• A new paper looking at biometric data and it's connecting to subjective wellbeing

Animal Welfare

• Marc Gunther on why the future of animal welfare lies beyond the US and Europe
• Future Meat Technologies raises $347 million in funding, the largest investment ever made in the cultivated meat industry
• Cellular Agriculture Europe has recently launched to represent the cell ag industry in Europe
• The Good Food Institute Europe with their favourite moments from 2021
• A post introducing the Shrimp Welfare Project
• Lewis Bollard with 'Ten big wins for farm animals in 2021'
• A post looking at the world's first octopus farm
• Mosa Meat with an assessment of cultivated meat progress, including response to a recent sceptical article in The Counter
• Haven King-Nobles with a 2.5 year retrospective on Fish Welfare Initiative
• The BBC looking into insect suffering

Existential & Catastrophic Risks

• NASA has started it's first trial of the 'kinetic impact' technique as a planetary defence strategy against asteroids
• 80,000 Hours Podcast with Jaime Yassif on safeguarding bioscience to prevent catastrophic lab accidents and bioweapons development
• An Ask Me Anything with Seth Baum, executive director of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute
• Paul Ingram with the report 'The Stepping Stones Approach to Nuclear disarmament diplomacy'
• An updated Global Health Security index, measuring the capacities of 195 countries to prepare for epidemics and pandemics
• An Ask Me Anything with Joan Rohlfing, President and COO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative

Improving Institutions

• Kelsey Piper on 'How bad research clouded our understanding of Covid-19'
• Robert Downey Jr. introducing a new way to crowdfund science projects
• The Research on Research Institute with a report on their randomisation of funding project
• C Tilli with a post on 'Improving science: Influencing the direction of research and the choice of research questions'
• Vox looking at a new biomedical research institute, called the Arc Institute, an experiment in how science is conducted and funded
• Ozzie Gooen asking why there is a lack of 'red teaming' in a lot of ambitious projects
• Misha Yagudin, Nuño Sempere and Eli Lifland on 'Prediction Markets in The Corporate Setting'

Environment

• Luisa Sandkuehler, Violet Buxton-Walsh and Johannes Ackva with a report on 'Navigating the changing landscape of climate philanthropy'
• Giving Green with donation recommendations for combatting climate change in Australia
• Azeem Azhar podcast with Nick hawker, discussing nuclear fusion
• PWC report on the state of climate tech, with the proportion of venture capital dollars going into climate tech rising from around 6% to ~14%
• Hannah Ritchie looking into 'How much energy do countries consume when we take offshoring into account?'

Longtermism

• Avital Balwit responding to recent criticisms of longtermism
• Richard Fisher on why 'long rituals' matter
• A post on the law and longtermism network, set up by the Legal Priorities Project
• A post on 'Convergence thesis between longtermism and neartermism'
• The Global Priorities Fellowship and the Early Career Conference Programme are both open for applications. Deadline is 14th January

Emerging Technology

• The Future of Life Institute with an introduction to autonomous weapons and why they matter
• Ozzie Gooen with a post outlining 13 different stances on AGI
• Ross Gruetzemacher and Jess Whittlestone wrote a paper in Futures exploring the transformative potential of AI
• Larks with a 2021 AI alignment literature review and charity comparison
• Will Bradshaw with a post suggesting that biosecurity needs engineers and materials scientists
• Between June and August this year, Principles of Intelligent Behavior in Biological and Social Systems are running a summer research fellowship, application deadline is January 1 6th
• A new paper on 'Filling gaps in trustworthy development of AI'
• Azeem Azhar discussing with Murray Shanahan where AI has exceeded and where it has fallen short of expectations
• Neel Nanda with an overview of the AI alignment landscape
• Stuart Russell was chosen to give the Reith Lectures for the BBC, looking at how AI could change the world

Other Links

• Holden Karnofsky on the 'Bayesian Mindset'
• Spencer Greenberg on 'Anchor Beliefs'
• James Ozden with 'A case for the effectiveness of protest'
• Stephen Clare with giving recommendations for people interested in preventing great power conflicts
• A post with thoughts on 'Technocracy vs populism'
• A report on how there may be less polarisation on issues than people think
• Stijn with 'The case against degrowth'
• 80,000 Hours interviewing U.S. presidential candidate Andrew Yang
• Sam Harris interviewing Sam Bankman-Fried about EA
• John Buridan with a post on how high school seniors react to advice from 80,000 Hours
• Zvi Mowshowitz with thoughts on the Survival and Flourishing fund
• John G. Halstead looking into whether we are going to run out of phosphorous
• A psychology paper looking at intuitions around population ethics
• An interview with Sophie Rose, co-founder of 1Day Sooner
• An interview with Alexander Berger on philanthropic opportunities
• Giving What We Can featured on the BBC
• A paper looking at 'How effective altruism can help psychologists maximize their impact'
• Marcus Daniell named 2021 Arthur Ashe humanitarian of the year
• Lynette Bye with the post 'Want to be an expert? Build deep models'

Good News

• 99 good news stories from 2021 by Future Crunch, including one of the four major flu viruses going extinct, a malaria vaccine, decline in HIV infections, decline in smoking and India doubling it's public healthcare spending
• Spain passes a new law recognising animals as sentient beings