EA Organization Updates: January 2023

By Lizka @ 2023-01-16T14:58 (+62)

These monthly posts originated as the "Updates" section of the EA Newsletter. Organizations submit their own updates, which we edit for clarity.

Job listings that these organizations highlighted (as well as a couple of other impactful jobs) are at the top of this post. Some of the jobs have pressing deadlines. 

You can see previous updates on the "EA Organization Updates (monthly series)" topic page, or in our repository of past newsletters. Notice that there’s also an “org update” tag, where you can find more news and updates that are not part of this consolidated series.

The organizations are in alphabetical order, starting with L-Z, 0-A-K.

Job listings

Consider also exploring jobs listed on “Job listing (open).”

GiveWell

• Senior Researcher (Remote / Oakland, CA, $181,400 - $199,800)
• Senior Research Associate (Remote / Oakland, CA, $127,000 - $139,900)
• Content Editor (Remote / Oakland, CA, $83,500 - $91,900)

Global Priorities Institute

• Operations Coordinator (Maternity Cover) (Oxford, £29,614 - £35,326, apply by 24 January)

IDinsight

• 2023 Associate & Senior Associate Global Drive (Multiple locations)
• Technical Delivery Manager/Director (New Delhi, India or Nairobi, Kenya)
• Associate Product Manager (New Delhi, India or Nairobi, Kenya)

Open Philanthropy

Assorted jobs in Salesforce administration, operations, and recruiting (Remote; working hours must overlap with US hours for most roles. Salary range $84,303 - $127,021 across all jobs)

Rethink Priorities 

Board Member (Remote, voluntary roles entail 3-10 hours/month while paid roles require 5-10 hours/week at a rate of $40.53/hour, apply by 20 January)

Wild Animal Initiative 

Development Director (Remote, US preferred, open to UK applicants, $82,020 - $100,247, apply by 23 January) 

Organizational updates

These are in alphabetical order, starting with L-Z, 0-A-K.

Legal Priorities Project

LPP’s Eric Martínez and ​​Christoph Winter published a new working paper titled “Ordinary meaning of existential risk” investigating the ordinary meaning of legally relevant concepts in the existential risk literature. The paper aims to provide crucial insights for those tasked with drafting and interpreting existential risk laws, and for the coherence of ordinary meaning analysis more generally.

José Villalobos and Christoph Winter participated in EAGxLatinAmerica. They hosted a Q&A on international law and existential risk.

Matthijs Maas published a blog post titled “Existential risk mitigation: What I worry about when there are only bad options” as part of Draft Amnesty Day.

LPP received a grant of $115,000 from the Survival and Flourishing Fund to support their general operations.

One for the World 

One for the World mirrors the recommendations made by GiveWell for their own Nonprofit Partners portfolio. This year, GiveWell has updated its portfolio to contain a smaller list of nonprofits than before. 

In practice, this means that their Nonprofit Partners list has temporarily become much smaller, containing just four individual nonprofits. These nonprofits continue to offer gold-standard evidence that their method works and is incredibly cost-effective: Against Malaria Foundation, Malaria Consortium, New Incentives, and Helen Keller International. 

They are also adding a new option upon taking the 1% Pledge, which is GiveWell’s new All Grants Fund. This Fund will continue to make higher-risk grants, potentially including grants to nonprofits removed from GiveWell’s recommended nonprofits list. One for the World therefore thinks this gives donors the best chance to continue supporting a wider variety of granting opportunities.  

Open Philanthropy

Open Philanthropy pre-announced its AI Worldviews Contest, which will launch in early 2023 and reward submissions that criticize Open Philanthropy’s views and assumptions about the future of artificial intelligence. 

Rethink Charity 

Rethink Charity (RC) published updates on significant changes to its leadership and strategy.  RC is now focused solely on growing the RC Forward high-impact donation platform, through which Canadians have donated over $20 million CAD to charities and cause area funds spanning global health, animal welfare, climate change, and catastrophic risks. 

Rethink Priorities (RP)

• Research Manager Linch Zhang published a summary to inform potential future employees, funders, and collaborators about the General Longtermism team’s work during 2022 and updates going forward. 
• Ben Cottier completed his research fellowship, which culminated in a nine-part sequence on the diffusion of large language models. The report presents key findings from case studies of eight models that are similar to GPT-3, discusses implications for AI governance, and poses additional questions that might be worthy of research. 
• Research Fellow Jam Kraprayoon collaborated with Gavriel Kleinwaks, Alastair Fraser-Urquhart, and Josh Morrison from 1Day Sooner on a report exploring how improving air safety could reduce global catastrophic biorisks, and potential bottlenecks. 
• The Moral Weight Project sequence concluded with a post by Academic Collaborator Joe Gottlieb arguing that there is insufficient evidence to act on the idea that certain species (e.g. octopuses) contain multiple welfare subjects per individual. An audio version of the Welfare Range Table post is now available on the EA Forum Podcast.  
• In the new episode of the 80K After Hours podcast, Co-CEO Marcus Davis spoke with Rob Wiblin on how he and Peter Wildeford founded Rethink Priorities, the organization's strategy, lessons learned, careers in global priorities research, and recent research. 

The Life You Can Save 

New Book Translations

Peter Singer’s book, The Life You Can Save, is now available to download for free as an eBook in the following languages:
Hindi - http://bit.ly/3FmmCUZ  German - http://bit.ly/3iUEhf7  Turkish - http://bit.ly/3YcFqPg 

If you haven’t downloaded the English version yet, you can access that here.

Cause Funds Launch

You can donate to several high-impact charities at once with a single donation: The Life You Can Save’s cause funds help you to focus on the kind of impact you want to achieve:

• Save Lives Fund
• Transform Lives Fund
• Help Women & Girls Fund
• Create Economic Opportunity Fund
• Tackle Climate Change Fund
• All Charities Fund

View cause funds here. 

80,000 Hours

This month, 80,000 Hours released a career review on Information security and updated its article on How to choose where to donate. 

On The 80,000 Hours Podcast, Rob Wiblin interviewed: 

• Richard Ngo on large language models, OpenAI, and striving to make the future go well 
• John McWhorter on key lessons from linguistics, the virtue of creoles, and language extinction
• Jeffrey Lewis on the most common misconceptions about nuclear weapons

And on 80k After Hours, he interviewed Marcus Davis on founding and leading Rethink Priorities. 

Anima International

Anima International recently decided to suspend its campaign against live fish sales in Poland indefinitely, and summed up the thinking behind the decision in a blog post on the Effective Altruism forum.

The European Citizens’ initiative to ban fur farming that aims to ban fur farming and importation in the EU reached the required milestone of 1 million signatures. There is still time to sign.

The dates for 2023’s Conference on Animal Rights in Europe have been announced, taking place in Warsaw, Poland, 17-20 August. Tickets will be on sale soon.

On a lighter note, Anima recently launched its first ever Minecraft challenge internally within the organisation, using the game as a fun way to build relationships between team members, as well as spreading effective smithing tactics.

Animal Charity Evaluators

Charity Evaluation Process

Each year, Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) spends several months evaluating animal advocacy organizations to identify those that work effectively and are able to do the most good with additional donations. They recently published four blog posts to give detailed overviews of the four criteria they assess: Programs, Cost Effectiveness, Room for More Funding, and Leadership and Culture. You can also learn more about ACE’s charity evaluation process in their charity evaluation process explainer video. 

How can charities steward donor relationships to increase monthly support?

Donor stewardship – efforts to acquire, retain, and engage with donors to create long-term, mutually positive relationships – is essential to a nonprofit’s success. Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) asked four professionals in the animal advocacy space on how best to do this. See what they had to say here.

Center on Long-Term Risk

The Center on Long-Term Risk published their annual report.

Centre for Effective Altruism

Applications are now open for:

• EAG: Bay Area 2023 (February 24-26) | App deadline: February 8
• EAG: London 2023 (May 19-21) | App deadline: April 28

EAG conferences are primarily for people who have a solid understanding of the core ideas of EA and who are taking significant actions based on those ideas. You or your members can apply now here.

The default ticket price is 200 GBP, but ticket discounts are available. Some travel support is also available (we link to an update on this below.)

Update on spending for CEA-run events

Spending on events run and supported by CEA, including EAG/EAGx conferences, will likely be reduced due to a decrease in available funding. This might influence travel grants, catering, volunteering, ticketing, and non-critical conference expenses. Read more about this here

Save the date for EAGxCambridge (UK) and EAGxNordics

EAGxCambridge is happening March 17-19, while EAGxNordics is happening April 21-23 in Stockholm, Sweden! Learn more here on who EAG and EAGx conferences are for. Applications for these EAGx’s will launch sometime within the next few weeks.

You can view the list of upcoming EAG/EAGx events here on the redesigned webpage for EA Global.

Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER)

• On March 8th CSER, together with CFI and ValGRAI, will host a one-day event on Predictable AI: Evaluation, Anticipation and Control, including talks, panels, short highlights and time for networking. Registration closes January 31st – book here.
• The video of the 3rd International Workshop on Cross-cultural AI Ethics and Governance co-chaired by Sean Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh is now available.
• Sabin Roman has co-authored a paper in Royal Society Open Science, A Master Equation for Power Laws, proposing a new mechanism to explore power law behaviour for phenomena where time plays a key role in increasing cascade sizes.
• The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists awarded Haydn Belfield and Christian Ruhl the Leonard M. Rieser award for their article, Why policy makers should beware claims of new ‘arms races’.
• Ellen Quigley was interviewed for the European Corporate Governance Institute about her recent paper Universal Ownership in Practice: A Practical Investment Framework for Asset Owners.
• A new paper in the journal Foods, co-authored by Asaf Tzachor and Catherine Richards, presents a feasibility study for the large-scale production of spirulina in a novel energy-food system.
• Paul Ingram published an article for Nato Watch, critiquing narratives around the war in Ukraine and the potential use of nuclear weapons. 

Family Empowerment Media

FEM completed proof of concept projects in three new states across Nigeria: Ondo, Kogi, and Anambra. For one week, FEM aired content reaching an estimated 10 million new listeners across the three states. FEM also worked with a top AI research institute to test a partly automated (a qualified human reviews all messages) WhatsApp service, which people can message after hearing FEM’s campaign content. This allows FEM to provide customized 1:1 information and supports FEM’s learning around their target audience for future campaigns.

Faunalytics 

Faunalytics published their annual report, with highlights including being named an Animal Charity Evaluators Top Charity, producing seven new original research studies, supporting over 100 advocates and organizations through their pro bono Office Hours, and having nearly 400,000 advocates engage with their work. 

Additionally, Faunalytics released their Plans & Priorities for 2023, with details including the expansion of their flagship programs, driving forward crucial new research, and building capacity for the movement. Their upcoming research agenda is available here. 

The organization has also updated their research library with articles on topics including how to get farmers on board for alternative proteins and consumer perception of fish welfare. 

Fish Welfare Initiative

FWI recently published their Version 2 Welfare Standard, which they plan to scale via their farmer work to reduce the suffering of over a million fish in 2023. As always, you can track FWI’s impact on their impact page.

They also recently published their 2023 plans for work in India.

GiveWell

• GiveWell selected winners of its Change Our Mind Contest to solicit critiques of its cost-effectiveness analyses. Two first-place prizes were awarded: one to Noah Haber for his entry on GiveWell's approach to uncertainty, and one to Matthew Romer and Paul Romer Present for their look at GiveWell's water treatment cost-effectiveness analysis. GiveWell also awarded eight honorable mentions, and participation prizes to all other entries that met contest criteria. You can read more about GiveWell's takeaways from the contest and how the winning entries may affect its cost-effectiveness analyses, as well as find links to all prize winners, here.
• GiveWell published its staff giving blog post, in which a number of GiveWell staff members wrote about what organizations or causes they chose to support in 2022 and why. 
• GiveWell recently published reports on the evidence behind these programs: 
  • Participatory learning and action groups for maternal and neonatal health (PLA-MNH), which aim to increase uptake of best practices for maternal and neonatal health through facilitated meetings for women of reproductive age.
  • The Ponseti method of treating clubfoot, a congenital foot condition that can result in pain, impaired mobility, and possibly reduced income and social stigma if left untreated.
  • One Acre Fund's tree program, which helps small-scale farmers plant trees that they can then use or sell for extra income.
• GiveWell published pages about the following grants it directed: 
  • $77,000 to One Acre Fund to plan data collection on its tree program.
  • Up to $5.6 million to Evidence Action for its in-line chlorination program in Malawi.

Giving Green

Giving Green launched its 2022 climate giving recommendations: its top recommendations for donors and philanthropists as well as its updated carbon offset and carbon removal recommendations for businesses. Its top recommendations were featured in Vox’s Future Perfect. Giving Green is grateful to Giving What We Can for hosting its top recommendations on GWWC’s giving platform, as well as the newly launched Giving Green Fund, which will be strategically allocated towards its top recommendations.

Giving What We Can

The Giving What We Can community donated over $13 million USD to effective charities and funds during Giving Season 2022 (mid November 2022 – early Jan 2023) from close to 9,000 donors!

There are also now over 9,000 people who have an active pledge with Giving What We Can. This includes both Trial Pledges and the Giving What We Can Pledge.

The research team published the first payout report for the Longtermism Fund in December. The Longtermism Fund announced that it will be providing grants to the following organisations in the first-ever grantmaking round:

• Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence ($70,000 USD)
• SecureBio ($60,000 USD)
• Rethink Priorities' General Longtermism Team ($30,000 USD)
• Council on Strategic Risks' nuclear weapons policy work ($15,000 USD)

Additional charities have been added to Giving What We Can’s current top-rated list.

Global Catastrophic Risk Institute

GCRI published their 2022 Annual Report reflecting on accomplishments in 2022 and plans for 2023. The direction for 2023 includes more activity in public conversations related to global catastrophic risk, especially providing perspective on current events and promoting constructive solutions for reducing the risk. 

In May, GCRI put out an open call for people interested in seeking our advice or in collaborating on projects with us. The open call was a continuation of the Advising and Collaboration Programs GCRI conducted in 2019, 2020, and 2021. Their 2022 Advising and Collaboration Program was quite successful and allowed them to continue networking and meeting others in the field of global catastrophic risk.

GCRI is pleased to announce its 2022 GCRI Fellowship Program. The program recognizes a select group of four GCRI Fellows who made exceptional contributions to addressing global catastrophic risk in collaboration with GCRI in 2022. 

Happier Lives Institute

HLI’s final report of 2022 looked at the effects of deworming interventions on subjective wellbeing. They find that deworming has a non-significant effect on long-term happiness that seems (surprisingly) to become negative over time. 

The report marks the culmination of HLI’s Phase 1 research: assessing GiveWell’s top charity recommendations in terms of their effects on subjective wellbeing. After three years of research, the key takeaway is that HLI’s recommended charity, StrongMinds, is more cost-effective than all of them (unless you hold unusually strong views about the badness of death).

HLI’s research was awarded several prizes in 2022 as part of GiveWell’s Change Our Mind Contest, Open Philanthropy’s Cause Exploration Prizes, and the EA Criticism & Red Teaming Contest.

HLI’s Director, Michael Plant, was interviewed by GB News, WBEZ Chicago, and Devex.