EA Organization Updates: September 2019

By Aaron Gertler 🔸 @ 2019-10-10T10:05 (+33)

These monthly posts originated as the "Updates" section of the Effective Altruism Newsletter.

You can also see last month's updates, or a repository of past newsletters (including past organization updates).

Organization Updates

80,000 Hours

80,000 Hours released:

• 233 new promising vacancies on their job board, with a focus on AI strategy and governance, global development, and factory farming.
• Their most popular podcast episode so far: Vitalik Buterin on effective altruism, better ways to fund public goods, the blockchain’s problems so far, and how it could yet change the world.
• The first entry in a series featuring anonymous advice from people whose work they respect. Their first topic: career advice that participants wouldn't publish in their own name.
• A review of whether it's useful to make a long-term career plan.
• Two interviews with Rob Wiblin, their director of research, covering effective altruism and a range of other topics.

Internally, they've been working on quantifying their impact through their annual impact survey.

The team was joined by a new research hire, Arden Koehler, and María Gutiérrez Rojas increased her work hours in order to spend more time improving the job board.

Animal Charity Evaluators

Animal Charity Evaluators published part one in a series of roundtable posts about remote organizational culture. It addresses how organizations can effectively hire and onboard employees at remote organizations. They also published an interview with Eve Samyuktha, Founder of Vegans of Shanghai (VoS) and Senior Sales Consultant of Plant Based Consulting China.

Centre for Effective Altruism

CEA published a report on their plans for the Community Building Grants program.

Centre for the Study of Existential Risk

CSER released their latest Six Month Review. They also organized an AI Safety workshop at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ICJAI) conference. Partha Dasgupta released two books: one on the sixth mass extinction and the other on population ethics. CSER researchers published papers on machine learning release norms and the malicious use of AI, as well as a review of the book Climate Justice: Integrating Economics and Philosophy. Adrian Currie gave a 30-minute TV interview on existential risk.

Charity Entrepreneurship

Karolina Sarek, Director of Research at CE, published a guide on increasing the impact of your research by involving decision-makers. You can read about the experience of participating in CE’s charity incubation program in the first post by the Happier Lives Institute.

Future of Humanity Institute

Two FHI researchers recently appeared on the AI Alignment Podcast: Stuart Armstrong and Jeffrey Ding.

Future of Life Institute

FLI launched a new podcast series on climate change: Not Cool. They’ll be releasing new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday, each featuring a climate expert from a different subfield.

GiveWell

GiveWell recently published its 2018 metrics report, which summarizes how its research has influenced charitable giving. In 2018, GiveWell tracked more than $140 million in money moved to its recommended charities and via its Incubation Grants program.

Global Catastrophic Risk Institute

GCRI Executive Director Seth Baum will be in Philadelphia to give a talk on global catastrophic risks, hosted by Penn EA and Effective Altruism Philadelphia, on Sunday, 27 October. Baum recently reviewed Bryan Walsh’s new book End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World for Science.

Global Priorities Institute

The Global Priorities Institute (GPI) published a range of working papers on its website, including some of its newest research, such as Hilary Greaves and Will MacAskill’s The case for strong longtermism, Andreas Mogensen’s ‘The only ethical argument for positive 𝛿’?, and Christian Tarsney’s The epistemic challenge to longtermism.

The Good Food Institute

“The Good Food Conference, a meeting of more than 800 plant-based and cell-based protein entrepreneurs, scientists, investors, and marketers, was the most upbeat, joyful, and youthful American agriculture gathering in years.”

— Jerry Hagstrom, National Journal Daily

Open Philanthropy Project

The Open Philanthropy Project announced grants including $5M to the Justice Collaborative, $4.7M to Mercy for Animals, $3M to the Center for Global Development, $2M to Founders Pledge, and $1.6M to the Albert Schweitzer Foundation. A Q&A about funding global health was published in Barron's Penta Magazine.

The Life You Can Save

Giving Games started their fall program with One For The World (OFTW), facilitating and sponsoring events with The University of Melbourne, the Wharton School, and George Washington University. They also commenced their partnership with Manhattan College, with whom they will run a year-long academic program focused on introducing students to effective altruism.

Wild Animal Initiative

Dr. Will Bradshaw assessed biomarkers of aging as a potential measure of cumulative animal welfare. Dr. Simon Eckerström Liedholm started working full-time on the Wild Animal Initiative research team. Research Interns Anthony DiGiovanni and Dylan Quinn wrapped up their projects on density-dependent population modeling and definitions of welfare, respectively.

Add your own update

If your organization isn't represented in this list, you're welcome to provide an update in a comment.

You can also email me if you'd like to be included on the list of organizations I ask for updates each month; I can then add any updates you submit to future posts. (I may not accept all such requests; whether I include an org depends on its size, age, focus, track record, etc.)