EA Updates for January 2021

By DavidNash @ 2021-01-04T17:09 (+19)

Meta

• The Global Priorities Institute is running the Early Career Conference Programme and Global Priorities Fellowship. The application closes on the 10th of January
• Denise Melchin writing about her mistakes on the path to having a more impactful career
• EA Asia has a new directory for their members
• The Centre for Effective Altruism with a review of 2020, and plans for 2021
• 80,000 Hours with a podcast collection to help people learn about effective altruism
• Holly Morgan has created a new group for people who want to discuss spirituality in a broad sense in a way that's compatible with effective altruism
• You can buy Giving What We Can facemasks, t-shirts and various other items for people who want to promote the pledge
• EA Oxford Remote In-Depth Fellowship - Applications close 18th Jan
• 80,000 Hours with an update to their post on how to have impact as a volunteer
• Charity Entrepreneurship with a post on lessons learnt by their charity founders
• Giving What We Can have curated a list of useful videos, books and articles for people interested in effective altruism
• EA organisation updates for November
• Giving What We Can and the EA Funds are now operating independently of the Centre for Effective Altruism
• Charity Entrepreneurship with a survey on the most promising areas to start new EA meta charities
• 80,000 Hours have updated their career planning guide
• Nuño Sempere with a long list of potential new cause areas
• Devon Fritz and Steve Thompson with a request for feedback on their plan for an organisation to help mid-career professionals with career advice
• Rethink Priorities with an ask me anything
• 80,000 Hours have an open career questions thread on the EA Forum
• An interview with Marcus Daniell on why he set up an EA related organisation for athletes. This now includes tennis player Stefanos Tsitsipasm, currently ranked 6th in the world

Grants

• Open Phil have made 14 grants recently with a total value of $5,175,000
  • $2,299,000 - Scientific research
  • $1,665,000 - Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness
  • $500,000 - Centre for Effective Altruism - Longtermist Incubator
  • $311,000 - Farm animal welfare
  • $275,000 - Potential risks from advanced AI
  • $125,000 - Criminal justice reform
• The Survival and Flourishing Fund has made 29 grants with a total value of $3,605,000
• The Long-Term Future Fund has made 10 grants with a total value of $355,000
• The Animal Welfare Fund has made 13 grants with a total value of $781,000
• The EA Infrastructure Fund has made 8 grants with a total value of $434,000

Global Development

• France is launching a development innovation fund chaired by Esther Duflo
• Derek Foster has a new in depth series of posts looking at how we could improve the way we measure health and wellbeing
• GiveWell with an overview of the $150,000,000 they moved in 2019
• The Overseas Development Institute on a new approach to estimate a country's need for external finance
• Open Philanthropy on their 2020 allocation of $100,000,000 to GiveWell charities
• Evidence Action has an accelerator, aiming to scale up new interventions
• GiveWell report on a new standout charity, Precision Agriculture for Development
• A post introducing Family Empowerment Media, an organisation incubated at Charity Entrepreneurship

Animal Welfare

• Lewis Bollard with 7 big wins for farm animals in 2020
• Animal Advocacy Careers with their career planning process
• Singapore is the first country in the world to approve lab-grown chicken products
• Leah Edgerton and Manja Gärtner on animal charity evaluation
• Faunalytics looking at European attitudes towards fish welfare
• Animal Advocacy Careers with an overview of careers in the animal product alternatives for-profit world
• An overview of Animal Ethics in 2020
• Animal Advocacy Africa has launched
• Animal Advocacy Careers' introductory course - Applications close 10th Jan

Existential & Catastrophic Risks

• Global Challenges with a poll tracking attitudes to global risks and cooperation
• An interview with Martin Rees on why he believes the 21st century will be a crucial test of humanity’s ability to manage a wide range of existential threats
• Owen Cotton-Barratt on epistemic systems and layers of defence against potential global catastrophes
• The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk with a four month overview
• Luisa Rodriguez with a post asking 'What is the likelihood that civilizational collapse would directly lead to human extinction (within decades)?'

Improving Institutions

• A post describing recent and planned efforts to develop improving institutional decision-making as a cause area within and beyond the effective altruism movement
• Nintil looking at whether it's better to fund people or projects by seeing how Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators (who are funded for a longer term and in a more open ended way) outperform those of the National Institutes of Health
• The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council is funding more than 100 projects through a programme designed to support adventurous, high-risk research
• Denise Melchin with the question 'How high impact are UK policy career paths?'

Environment

• Founders Pledge on the implications of the US election for impact-focused climate philanthropy
• The Atlantic looking at Stripe Climate and their focus on carbon removal
• Our World in Data looking at global energy
• Sindi on why they are giving to Giving Green this year
• Ann Garth with an argument that EA should focus more on climate change

Longtermism

• Owen Cotton-Barratt on the question 'What does longtermism recommend doing in all sorts of everyday situations?'
• Founders Pledge with their case for longtermism and donation recommendations
• The BBC looking at the benefits of embracing 'deep time'
• The Legal Priorities Summer Research Fellowship is open for applications
• Forethought Foundation are running the Global Priorities Fellowship and Early Career Conference Programme, applications close 10th January
• The Center on Long-Term Risk with their plans for 2021 & review of 2020
• Vaden Masrani with a critical review of longtermism
• Ben Chugg with a critique of longtermism
• Owen Cotton-Barratt on why "Patient vs urgent longtermism" has little direct bearing on giving now vs later
• An ask me anything with the Long-Term Future Fund

Emerging Technology

• 80,000 Hours with a new post on the case for building expertise to work on US AI policy, and how to do it
• 2020 AI alignment literature review and charity comparison
• Daniel Filan is launching the AI X-risk Research podcast, the first three guests are Adam Gleave, Rohin Shah, and Andrew Critch
• The BBC looking at DeepMind's work on protein folding
• Open Philanthropy with an overview of their AI governance grant making in 2020

Other Links

• Julia Galef and Angus Deaton discussing effective altruism and randomised experiments
• Luke Freeman on a podcast discussing Giving What We Can and community building
• A podcast with Peter Singer on speciesism, lockdown ethics and controversial ideas
• Zach Freitas-Groff on his giving in 2020
• 80,000 Hours podcast with Tristan Harris on the need to change the incentives of social media companies
• Vox interviewing Toby Ord, co-founder of Giving What We Can
• Nuño Sempere has a monthly forecasting newsletter
• A writeup by the $500,000 donor lottery winner on how they decided to give