2022 EA conference talks are now live

By Eli_Nathan, Charlotte Darnell @ 2023-01-18T17:25 (+82)

Recordings from various 2022 EA conferences are now live on our YouTube channel, these include talks from London, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., EAGxBoston, EAGxOxford, EAGxBerlin, and EAGxVirtual (alongside many other talks from previous years).

Listening to talks can be a great way to learn more about EA and stay up to date on EA cause areas, and recording them allows people who couldn’t attend (or who were busy in 1:1 meetings) to watch them in their own time. Recordings from other EA conferences will likely be live on our channel soon, and we recommend subscribing if you’d like to be notified of these.

Some highlighted talks are displayed below:

EA Global: London

Presenting big ideas & complex data to the public | Edouard Mathieu and Hannah Ritchie

In this talk, Edouard Mathieu discusses the lessons of data communication in the COVID-19 pandemic. Hannah and Edouard then have a fireside chat and Q&A on Our World in Data and how it fits with the EA framework.

The state of aquatic animal advocacy | Sophika Kostyniuk, Andrés Jiménez Zorrilla, Alex Holst, and Bruce Friedrich

Addressing aquatic animal welfare is important, as it is highly neglected, and tractable. Estimates vary, but there are approximately 100 billion fin fish and 350–400 billion shrimps farmed annually, which is far more than all of the land animals combined (more than 7x as many at the upper estimation). For the most part, farmed aquatic animals are treated like inanimate objects — their suffering is almost unimaginable.

This session discusses why aquatic animal welfare is critical to address, and some of the priority interventions that can alleviate vast amounts of suffering.

EA Global: San Francisco

Betting on AI is like betting on semiconductors in the 70's | Danny Hernandez

Danny discusses the three exponentials driving AI progress: hardware, algorithmic, and spending. He considers extrapolating these trends 10–20 years out and translates effective compute progress into GPT-2 to GPT-3 sized jumps and builds an intuition for such jumps. Danny uses the extrapolations and jump intuitions to think about what capabilities normal progress in effective compute are likely to yield. This session is likely to be particularly relevant to people very concerned about AI, considering working in AI, or choosing an agenda within AI.

Science of scaling | Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak and Heidi McAnnally-Linz

Mushfiq Mobarak and Heidi McAnnally-Linz speak to learning from cutting edge research on the science of scaling using examples from scaling interventions targeted at addressing seasonal poverty and from the NORM model targeted at increasing community-level mask wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic. They draw on these experiences to make the case for innovation through research as well as working with existing at-scale partners. They emphasize the importance of using direct evidence from RCTs as well as exploring other complexities of scale such as national impacts, spillovers, etc.

EA Global: Washington, D.C.

Safeguarding modern bioscience & biotechnology to prevent catastrophic biological events | Jaime Yassif, Beth Cameron, and Jaspreet Pannu

Bioscience and biotechnology advances are vital for fighting disease, protecting the environment, and promoting economic development — and they hold incredible promise. However, these innovations can also pose unique challenges — increasing the risks of accidental misuse or deliberate abuse with potentially catastrophic global consequences.

This session begins with a talk by Dr. Jaime Yassif highlighting these issues and discussing effective strategies for improving bioscience governance and reducing emerging biorisks — including through the establishment of the International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science (IBBIS). The talk is then followed by a fireside chat with senior experts in the field, including Dr. Beth Cameron.

Scaling Effective Causes: Cash Transfers | Michael Kayemba

Cash transfers are the most scalable intervention to support people living in extreme poverty that we have today. Michael Kayemba runs through some of the technological innovations that have made this possible.

EAGxBoston

The importance of building EA communities at universities | Jessica McCurdy

For many high impact opportunities, individuals have to spend decades developing their expertise and influence. In this talk, Jessica claims that building EA communities on university campuses may be an exception to this general principle. These opportunities provide outsized impact for individuals in their early twenties. In addition, she outlines career capital and personal development benefits of these roles, and provides advice for how an individual might know if they are a good fit. Slides for the presentation are here.

Lessons from building a vaccine (and company) in 3 months | Ethan Alley

In this talk, Ethan talks about Alvea, a new EA vaccination organization of drug developers, logistics experts, physicians and operators working around the clock to develop and rigorously test a simple, scalable and shelf-stable vaccine that is easy to adapt to new COVID-19 variants and pathogens.