EA Updates for November 2021

By DavidNash @ 2021-11-01T11:15 (+24)

Events

In Person Events

• 3-5th December - EAGxPrague

Virtual Events

• 2nd November - Discussion Group for Improving Institutional Decision Making - 6 weekly discussions organised by the Effective Institutions Project
• 5th November - Future-proofing global health: Governance of priorities - Organised by the Legal Priorities Project
• 7th November - Giving What We Can Meetup
• 7th November - EA For Christians Weekly Discussion
• 10th November - Cognition, Welfare, and the Problem of Interspecies Comparisons - Organised by Rethink Priorities
• 10th November - Q&A with Mirasbek Kuterbekov from Hoxton Farms - Organised by Cellular Agriculture UK
• Mid November - Animal Advocacy Careers Introductory Course - Apply by November 10th
• 15-18th November - The Aquatic Life Conference - Organised by The Aquatic Life Institute
• 18th November - Effective Giving Open Forum - Organised by GWWC
• 18th November - Artificial intelligence and worker activism - Organised by the Legal Priorities Project
• 26th November - Altruism in international law - Organised by the Legal Priorities Project
• 4th December- Salary Negotiation Training Programme
• 4-12th December - Vision Weekend - Organised by Foresight Institute, with talks from Anders Sandberg, Jaan Tallinn, Tom Kalil and Jose Luis Ricon
• 6-8th December - 8th Oxford Workshop on Global Priorities Research - Apply by November 14th, Organised by the Global Priorities Institute
• Mid December - Impactful Policy Careers (training programme)
• 13-15th December - Interpretability, Safety, and Security in AI - A conference organised by the Alan Turing Institute
• January 2022 - AGI Safety Fundamentals - 8 week course organised by EA Cambridge

Latest Research and Updates
 

Meta

• A post introducing High Impact Professionals, a new organisation aiming to enable working professionals interested in EA to have the biggest positive impact possible
• A post on the cost of rejection in EA
• There is a new beta version of the Probably Good website, an EA careers organisation
• Cristina Schmidt Ibáñez and Vaidehi Agarwalla with a post looking at 'Coordination within EA: Community & Ecosystems'
• Bill Zito suggests that early career people interested in EA should consider joining fast-growing start-ups in emerging technologies
• Michael Aird with advice for apply to EA Funds
• Charity Entrepreneurship introducing their 2021 incubated charities
• Effective Thesis offer free coaching and guidance to students who want to begin research careers that improve the world
• 80,000 with the post 'Effective altruism in a nutshell'
• A post announcing the launch of EA for Jews, and a call for volunteers
• FTX is funding EA Fellowships for people that want to work in the Bahamas remotely
• A post introducing The Nonlinear Library, aiming to help people listen to more EA content
• Ozzie Gooen with 'Prioritization Research for Advancing Wisdom and Intelligence'
• Mathieu Putz suggesting that more people should aim to become billionaires
• Michael Dickens with a post suggesting 'Future Funding/Talent/Capacity Constraints Matter, Too'
• Aaron Gertler with an update on the creative writing contest taking place on the EA Forum
• Devin Kalish with a critique of EA being less responsive to critiques than in the past
• A post introducing Training for Good, a new effective altruism training organisation
• EA Survey 2020: Geography
• EA Survey 2020: Donation Data
• 80,000 Hours have launched a new podcast series 'Effective Altruism: Ten Global Problems'
• Michael Aird with a list of EA funding opportunities
• If you're planning on running a fundraising campaign at your organisation this year, High Impact Professionals are providing resources and advice. You can also arrange a chat with them here
• Jamie Harris asking whether you should run experiments when doing EA movement building
• Training for Good are running a needs survey for current and aspiring policy makers in the UK and Europe
• An EA Forum user offering free coaching for software developers in the EA community

Grants

• Open Phil have made 8 grants recently with a total value of $7,100,000
  • $3,570,000 - Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness
    • $3,330,000 - Center for Security and Emerging Technology
  • $1,770,000 - Scientific Research
  • $1,560,000 - Farm Animal Welfare

Global Development

• GiveWell with their initial thoughts on malaria vaccine approval
• Kelsey Piper looking into the WHO approving the first malaria vaccine
• A post for UK Research & Innovation on helping mosquitoes fight back against the diseases they spread
• Sean Mayberry, the CEO of StrongMinds, looking at mental health in Africa
• GiveDirectly with a write up of their financial situation
• 130 countries have reached a global deal for 15 per cent minimum corporate tax rate
• New research suggesting that StrongMinds is 12 times more cost-effective than GiveDirectly in terms of subjective well-being
• A post with concerns about AMF from GiveWell reading
• Varsha Venugopal on the 80,000 Hours podcast discussing using gossip to help vaccinate every child in India
• Saloni Dattani discusses progress and mental health on this podcast

Animal Welfare

• Vox covering the European Commission announcing a ban on cages for a number of animals in 27 countries
• Nicole Rawling, CEO of the Material Innovation Initiative, on the MII's first podcast episode
• Denmark announces €168 million in funding to advance plant-based foods
• A post introducing Healthier Hens, a new EA-aligned animal welfare organisation
• The Cultured Meat Conference is taking place between the 29th Nov -1st Dec this year

Existential & Catastrophic Risks

• 80,000 Hours podcast with Carl Shulman on the common-sense case for existential risk work and its practical implications
• The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk with a call for lightning talks at the CSER 2022 Conference. Submission deadline is 15th November
• Mike Cassidy and Lara Mani on the assessment of volcanic eruptions as global catastrophic or existential risks
• David Manheim with a paper called 'High-risk human-caused pathogen exposure events from 1975-2016'
• Filippa Lentzos discussing global catastrophic biological risks on the Future of Life Institute podcast
• The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk submitted evidence to the UK Government’s National Resilience Strategy
• Asaf Tzachor and Catherine Richards have published a new article on the future of food
• A post called 'Feedback on Meta Policy Research Questions to Help Improve the X/GCR Field’s Policy Engagement'
• The Nuclear Threat Initiative have updated their website

Improving Institutions

• Maha Rehman on the 80,000 Hours podcast talking about working with governments to rapidly deliver masks to millions of people
• A paper called 'Training effective altruism: Experimental evidence from Pakistan'
• Lizka with a post collecting possible issues with futarchy, a proposed form of governance based on prediction markets

Environment

• Vox on how the ozone hole problem was solved
• The Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance has launched six finance solutions to drive private capital to climate action in poorer economies
• Daniel Stein, founder of Giving Green, writing about how donors can maximize impact for fighting climate change

Longtermism

• Eric Martínez and Christoph Winter with the paper 'Protecting Future Generations: A Global Survey of Legal Academics'
• The Ezra Klein podcast with Holden Karnofsky
• Samuel Hilton with 'A practical guide to long-term planning – and suggestions for longtermism'
• Krister Bykvist on moral uncertainty, rationality, metaethics, AI and future populations
• David Manheim with a post about recent critiques of longtermism
• Robin Hanson with criticism of the 'Long Reflection' idea
• The APPG for Future Generations with an impact report for 2020 - 2021
• Sjir Hoeijmaker from Founders Pledge on a podcast discussing longtermism
• Hear This Idea podcast with Christoph Winter on the Legal Priorities Project
• Legal Priorities Project with an overview of their 'Working Paper Series'

Emerging Technology

• Nathan Benaich and Ian Hogarth with their 2021 State of AI Report
• A summary of 'Truthful AI: Developing and governing AI that does not lie' by Owen Cotton-Barratt, Lukas Finnveden and Avital Balwit
• Jason Crawford with Matt Clifford discussing how technology collides with politics, culture and society
• Phil Trammell on economic growth under transformative AI
• AGI Safety Fundamentals curriculum posted to the EA Forum
• An ask me anything with Redwood Research, who do applied alignment research
• Alex Lintz with a collection of AI governance-related podcasts, newsletters and blogs
• Sam Clarke with lessons learned running the survey on AI existential risk scenarios

Other Links

• Vox looking into how ethical 'ethical investing' is
• Peter Wildeford with notes on the book 'Managing to Change the World'
• A Forbes overview of Sam Bankman-Fried, the worlds richest under 30 year old, covering his interest in effective altruism
• An interview with Rutger Bregman on effective altruism and why he took the GWWC pledge
• Spencer Greenberg in discussion with Daniel Kahneman on 'Beyond cognitive biases: improving judgment by reducing noise'
• A suffering-focused ethics FAQ
• Sebastian Schmidt and Henning Bartsch with a post on coaching as a way to reduce struggle and develop talent
• Giving What We Can podcast with Geetanjali Basarkod on how to talk about effective altruism and giving effectively
• José González on a podcast discussing Effective Altruism
• Holden Karnofsky with a post asking 'Has Life Gotten Better?'
• Benjamin Todd on the Clearer Thinking podcast discussing 'How to use your career to have a large impact'
• Alan Taylor with 'A Duty to Look After Yourself'
• Taylor Jones has a website for the design work he can do for EA related organisations and projects
• Sam Enright with a book review of Open Borders by Bryan Caplan
• Michael Plant on the Clearer Thinking podcast discussing 'How to measure impact, and why we may have all been doing it wrong'
• A post by Khorton looking at counterfactual impact when your co-workers share your values

Good News

• A global total of 135.1 square kilometres was cleared of unexploded submunitions in 2020, a new annual record. This leaves 29 areas that are suspected to have cluster munition remnants-contaminated areas under their jurisdiction