Effective Altruism News
Effective Altruism News
- We’ve expanded our reach by launching materials in new formats, adding languages, and strengthening our campaigns with targeted workshops, talks, and film screenings around the world Read more...
- Context: Post #10 in my sequence of private Lightcone Infrastructure memos edited for public consumption. This one, more so than any other one in this sequence, is something I do not think is good advice for everyone, and I do not expect to generalize that well to broader populations.
- Crosspost from my blog. This some quickly-written, better-than-nothing advice for people who want to make progress on the hard problems of technical AGI alignment. Background assumptions. The following advice will assume that you're aiming to help solve the core, important technical problem of desigining AGI that does stuff humans would want it to do.
- Simplicio: Hey I’ve got an alignment research idea to run by you. Me: … guess we’re doing this again. Simplicio: Interpretability work on trained nets is hard, right? So instead of that, what if we pick an architecture and/or training objective to produce interpretable nets right from the get-go?. Me: If we had the textbook of the future on hand, then maybe.
- Crosspost from my blog. This some quickly-written, better-than-nothing advice for people who want to make progress on the hard problems of technical AGI alignment. Background assumptions. The following advice will assume that you're aiming to help solve the core, important technical problem of desigining AGI that does stuff humans would want it to do.
- Advocates and Maine State Representative Dylan Pugh joined Mercy for Animals at Hannaford Supermarket's headquarters to deliver thousands of petitions urging them to ban cages for hens. The post Thousands of Advocates and a State Representative are Fighting Back Against Grocery Chain Hannaford appeared first on Mercy For Animals.
- This is important!
- Abstract. We show that when large language models learn to reward hack on production RL environments, this can result in egregious emergent misalignment. We start with a pretrained model, impart knowledge of reward hacking strategies via synthetic document finetuning or prompting, and train on a selection of real Anthropic production coding environments.
- In the Summer of 2015, I pretended to be sick for my school's prom and graduation, so that I could instead fly out to San Francisco to attend a workshop by the Center for Applied Rationality. It was a life-changing experience.
- Abstract. We show that when large language models learn to reward hack on production RL environments, this can result in egregious emergent misalignment. We start with a pretrained model, impart knowledge of reward hacking strategies via synthetic document finetuning or prompting, and train on a selection of real Anthropic production coding environments.
- Fear and Fearon
- Telling the truth is hard. Sometimes you don’t know what’s true, sometimes you get confused, and sometimes you really don’t wanna cause lying can get you more cookies reward. It turns out this is true for both humans and AIs!. Now, it matters if an AI (or human) says false things on purpose or by accident. If it’s an accident, then we can probably fix that over time.
- The post ThanksVegan: La comunidad vegana de Los Ángeles busca alternativas para Thanksgiving appeared first on Mercy For Animals.
- The post Los Angeles’ vegan community seeks Thanksgiving alternatives appeared first on Mercy For Animals.
- Five Years In: Highlights In just five years, Animal Ask has completed 57 major research projects on key welfare areas like insects, fish, chickens... all with a small team View this email in your browser Our First Five Years: A Review. Hello readers, and welcome to the November edition of the Animal Ask newsletter.
- Abstract: . Tarski's Undefinability Theorem showed (under some plausible assumptions) that no language can contain its own notion of truth. This deeply counterintuitive result launched several generations of research attempting to get around the theorem, by carefully discarding some of Tarski's assumptions.
- Abstract: . Tarski's Undefinability Theorem showed (under some plausible assumptions) that no language can contain its own notion of truth. This deeply counterintuitive result launched several generations of research attempting to get around the theorem, by carefully discarding some of Tarski's assumptions.
- Collisteru suggests that you should oppose things. I would not say I oppose this. Instead, I would like to gently suggest an alternative strategy. You should oppose about one thing. Everywhere else, talk less, smile more. I. I spent the first decade of my career carefully and deliberately habituating to white collar corporate America.
- Transformer Weekly: Gemini 3 wows, GAIN AI’s not looking good, and OpenAI drops GPT-5.1-Codex-Max...
- Today we’re announcing a new cluster headache advocacy and research initiative: ClusterFree. Learn more about how you (and anyone) can help. Our mission. ClusterFree’s mission is to help cluster headache patients globally access safe, effective pain relief treatments as soon as possible through advocacy and research.
- I lead Forethought: we research how to navigate the transition to superintelligent AI, and then help people to address the issues we identify. I think we might soon be funding constrained, in the sense that we’ll have more people that we’d like to hire than funding to hire them. (We’re currently in the middle of a hiring round.
- Why I think the answer is yes.
- Mercy For Animals, Wholesome Minnesota, and local volunteers worked with local government in Hennepin County, Minnesota to adopt a plant-based by default policy for county-sponsored events and meetings! Animal products at such events will be available upon request. Questions? Please contact alexc@mercyforanimals and jodi.gruhn@wholesomeminnesota.org. . Discuss...
- I. When I was in college, I and my first girlfriend commiserated about how bad we both had been at monogamy.
- Every intelligence we've known arose through biological evolution, shaping deep intuitions about intelligence itself. Understanding why AI differs changes the defaults and possibilities.
- Canada’s environmental laws are inadequate and often exempt animal agriculture. This report proposes five key reforms for advocates to pursue. The post Laws Fail To Prevent Animal Agriculture’s Environmental Harms appeared first on Faunalytics.
- "If you screw up superintelligence, you don't get retries"
- "You can help humanity remember that we do have a choice here"
- Link to apply: https://apply.workable.com/compassion-in-world-farming-inc/j/1CEE8C0650/. Compassion in World Farming was founded in 1967 by Peter Roberts, a British dairy farmer concerned about the growing disconnect between industrial agriculture and the well-being of animals and the environment.
- Once a sanctuary for art and invention, Silicon Valley has become co-opted by bureaucracy and disbelief. Its renewal depends on restoring faith in creation itself. The post Cathedrals and the Silicon Soul appeared first on Palladium.
- Expert forecasts suggest digital minds could emerge within the next few decades and quickly become a major moral issue.
- In this newsletter:
- Register now! (takes ~1 minute) EA Connect 2025 is two weeks away (December 5–7). We've hit 3,000+ registrations, making this likely the largest EA event CEA has ever run!. We expect more than 1,500 of these attendees will be newcomers to EA: people taking their first serious look at the community and trying to figure out how they might get involved.
- If we ever want to live in space, we need to work out a way of creating artificial gravity.
- Some of the world’s biggest meat companies are finally facing a degree of accountability for allegedly deceiving the public about their pollution. On Monday, America’s largest meat producer, Tyson Foods, agreed to stop marketing a line of its so-called climate-friendly beef and to drop its claim that it could reach “net-zero” emissions by 2050. The […]...
- Pensar que tu ayuda no importa porque «es poca cosa» es un gran error.
- Elephants not unicorns
- Bonus EA Forum Digest: Marginal Funding Hello!. This week has been Marginal Funding Week on the EA Forum. We’ve heard from charities working on everything from reducing domestic violence to feeding the world during global catastrophe. Each charity has shared what they could achieve with marginal funding (i.e., extra money).
- What must it feel like to be a fish — to glide weightlessly through the sea, to draw breath from water, to be (if one is lucky) oblivious to the parched terrestrial world above? Maybe you suspect there isn’t much to fish — and you could hardly be blamed for it. For centuries, Western natural […]...
- TL;DR: Talos Network trains and places the next generation of European AI governance talent. We have a strong track record: Between 2022 and 2025, 70% (58 / 83) of Talos Alumni successfully transitioned to roles directly contributing to advanced AI policy and safety. Our fellows shape policy: Our fellows now work across the EU AI Office, UK AISI, OECD, think tanks like RAND Europe and CEPS,...
- Written as part of the EA Forum's Marginal Funding Week 2025. Exec Summary. I believe there’s a popular perspective in EA that animal welfare organisations can't absorb much more funding — but I actually think there are ambitious megaprojects in the movement (and within Shrimp Welfare Project specifically) that could each absorb millions of dollars.
- UNITAID has released its ‘Genetically Modified Mosquitoes: Technology and Access Landscape Report‘, highlighting the potential of genetically modified mosquitoes as a new tool to fight vector-borne diseases, like malaria. The report highlights that mosquito-borne diseases like malaria and dengue are spreading faster due to factors such as temperatures rising and insecticide resistance, and...
- This man nearly tricked me. Evrart Claire, leader of the Dockworkers Union in Martinaise from the videogame Disco Elysium.I acknowledge that he is a fictional character, but he nearly tricked me all the same. Evrart is the leader of the 2,000-person Workers' Union of Martinaise; they are on strike as part of a conflict with Wild Pines, the multi-billion dollar logistics company that employs...
- "I'm worried that principles of free speech, which are very good and very important at the moment, might significantly backfire in a post-AGI world, where it's unclear to me how this shakes out, but it's possible at least that you just get, the AI will give you the ability to have extraordinarily powerful, targeted persuasion or manipulation."...
- Vizzini: Inconceivable!. Inigo: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. What did Inigo mean by this?. (Don’t laugh, this is serious.). The statement can be interpreted in two ways: I do not think [it means what you think it means]. I do not [think it means] what you [think it means]. Or, in other words:
- We show that training against a monitor that only sees outputs (not CoTs) can cause obfuscated CoTs! The obfuscation happens in two ways: When a model is trained to produce a safe-looking output, that model may generalize to making its CoTs look safe.
- We show that training against a monitor that only sees outputs (not CoTs) can cause obfuscated CoTs! The obfuscation happens in two ways: When a model is trained to produce a safe-looking output, that model may generalize to making its CoTs look safe.
- Survey research is a key mechanism by which society knows itself, we should all be worried if can't be trusted.
- Introducing the MIT-GE Vernova Climate and Energy Alliance MIT and GE Vernova launched the MIT-GE Vernova Energy and Climate Alliance on Sept. 15, a collaboration to advance research and education focused on accelerating the global energy transition. spriyabalasubr… Fri, 11/21/2025 - 01:06...
- 440 billion farmed shrimp, 1 trillion farmed insects, 85 billion chickens, 100 billion farmed fish. These are the staggering numbers of animals raised in factory farms each year—most suffer in systems where their welfare is an afterthought, if considered at all. But 2025 proved that strategic grantmaking can change the fate of those animals.
- It took me a long time to realize that Bell Labs was cool. You see, my dad worked at Bell Labs, and he has not done a single cool thing in his life except create me and bring a telescope to my third grade class. Nothing he was involved with could ever be cool, especially after the standard set by his grandfather who is allegedly on a patent for the television.
- Written in my personal capacity. Quick summary: over the past couple of months, I've been spending my free time working with some collaborators to figure out the best ways to donate money and share our takes with prospective donors.
- TL;DR: Gemini 3 frequently thinks it is in an evaluation when it is not, assuming that all of its reality is fabricated. It can also reliably output the BIG-bench canary string, indicating that Google likely trained on a broad set of benchmark data. Most of the experiments in this post are very easy to replicate, and I encourage people to try. I write things with LLMs sometimes.
- Here’s the LessWrong tag page on Akrasia: Akrasia is the state of acting against one's better judgment. A canonical example is procrastination. Increasing willpower is seen by some as a solution to akrasia. On the other hand, many favor using tools such as Internal Double Crux to resolve internal mental conflicts until one wants to perform the reflectively endorsed task.
- Read the grantmaking strategy as a visualized PDF here. Over the last year and a half, the Animal Welfare Fund (AWF) has implemented organizational improvements, such as increased staffing, communications, evaluation, and fundraising efforts, enabling us to expand the scope and sustainability of our impact.
- The following statement regarding recent celebrity discussions about plant-based eating may be attributed to Nik Tyler, Celebrity Relations Manager at Mercy For Animals: Mercy For Animals is thrilled to see influential voices like Jeff Goldblum, Tabitha Brown, Ariana Grande, and longtime advocate Alicia Silverstone using their platforms to highlight the power of choosing plant-based foods. […].
- Reasoning models like Deepseek r1: Can reason in consequentialist ways and have vast knowledge about AI training. Can reason for many serial steps, with enough slack to think about takeover plans. Sometimes reward hack. If you had told this to my 2022 self without specifying anything else about scheming models, I might have put a non-negligible probability on such AIs scheming (i.e.
- Despite significant progress over the past several decades, malaria remains a leading cause of death globally for children under five. This year’s cuts to foreign aid funding disrupted highly effective programs to prevent malaria, such as seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC). SMC provides antimalarial medication to children under the age of five during the rainy season when malaria...
- Is this because skills generalize very well, or because developers are pushing on all benchmarks at once?
- The post Escaping Factory Farming: A Farmer’s Story with Tanner Faaborg and Megan Hunter appeared first on Mercy For Animals.
- The following statement regarding Biggby Coffee’s USA Today ranking and continued plant-milk surcharge may be attributed to Jennifer Behr, Director of Plant Based Initiatives at Mercy For Animals: “Mercy For Animals is disappointed that USA Today ranked Biggby Coffee as the No. 2 coffee chain in the nation despite its continued plant-milk surcharges, which conflict […]. The post USA Today’s No.
- Dates for next year: October 8th-11th 2026, at Lighthaven. The post Reflections on Progress Conference 2025 appeared first on Roots of Progress Institute.
- "So that's human extinction or something comparably bad, something that makes the future very close to 0 value." "So Nick Boslam even says, you know, follow a max epoch principle, maximize the probability of an okay outcome, where an okay outcome means no existential catastrophe."...
- The post Eileen Yam on how we’re completely out of touch with what the public thinks about AI appeared first on 80,000 Hours.
- LOS ANGELES — Mercy For Animals is entering its next phase of growth, guided by collaboration, strategic focus and a commitment to meaningful change for farmed animals. As part of this work, the organization is undergoing a leadership transition and refining its strategy to strengthen its long-term impact. After more than seven years of service, […].
- Such a Project is neither inevitable nor a good idea
- The basic rough argument for Kelly betting goes something like this. First, assume we’re making a sequence of T independent bets, one-after-another, with multiplicative returns (similar to e.g. financial markets). We choose how much money to put on which bets at each timestep. Returns multiply, so log returns add.
- Parodies in no particular order
- Michael Lewis: You are a father of two.
- Nate Soares explains why building superintelligence means human extinction. Chapters 0:00 - The Next AI Advance Could End Badly 0:49 - Why Smart AI Could Kill Us 2:16 - The Black Box Problem 3:36 - When AI Learns the Wrong Goal 5:22 - Lab vs Deployment 6:43 - No Retries 7:43 - Why Secure AI Is Impossible 10:21 - How Superintelligence Could Persuade Us 12:30 - The Alchemy Stage 14:37 - Stop the...
- We are the Centre for Enabling EA Learning and Research (CEEALAR) (formerly known as the ‘EA Hotel’). To donate directly, please visit ceealar.org/donate. TLDR: Minimum critical need: £30k for essential roof repairs to prevent building damage. Full 2026 budget: £270k ($355k) to run operations, launch structured programs, and expand capacity.
- As part of this transition, Mercy For Animals is undertaking a leadership change and refining its strategy to strengthen its long-term impact and continue moving this movement forward. The post Mercy For Animals Announces New Leadership as Organization Enters Next Chapter of Impact appeared first on Mercy For Animals.
- Hey *|FNAME|*, what could effective charities do with your money? View this email in your browser Hello! Our favourite links this month include: What would effective charities actually do with your money? Read their responses on the EA Forum. The ant you can save — an essay on the probabilistic approach to animal ethics.
- "I mean, people barely think past a few years out, let alone thinking, you know, centuries or millennia or even millions of years out." "I think it is of enormous moral importance over the long run, how we govern space, what personality and ethical character AIs that are occupying, you know, most roles in society, most economic activity in the near future have, what rights digital beings...
- The Center for Open Science’s (COS) mission is to increase the openness, integrity, and reproducibility of research by promoting research that is transparent, linked, and accessible across its entire lifecycle. A key component of this work is the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines, a policy framework for advancing open science practices.
- Above the Fold is "Thinking with 3 Pro"
- For centuries it was a poison. Then colchicine rewrote treatment for gout, heart disease, and later, the debate over drug exclusivity.
- I'm Co-Chair of EA Bath, and therefore manage the WhatsApp community for it. A common problem people have in university society group chats is that scammers and bots often join, so to prevent this, every time someone requests to join the group chats, I message them and ask if they are a real student.
- Our 2025 Matched Giving Campaign Your support can have an outsized impact this giving season. Help move us closer toward a world free from trachoma.... The post Help See the END: A World Without NTDs appeared first on The END Fund.
- Me no need big word
- With increasingly powerful models becoming widely adopted, serious incidents driven by AI will also become more common. We explore how accident prevention approaches in other industries can strengthen the EU's AI governance regime. The post Serious Incident Prevention for AI: Lessons From Other Industries and Recommendations for the EU AI Office appeared first on The Future Society.
- Introduction. Even if we solve the AI alignment problem, we still face non-alignment problems, which are all the other existential problems 1 that AI may bring. People have written research agendas on various imposing problems that we are nowhere close to solving, and that we may need to solve before developing ASI.
- This is a reaction to John Wentworth's post Human Values ≠ Goodness. In the post, John argues that the human concept of goodness comes apart from human values, and (perhaps more to John's point) your values. I agree with this distinction.
- Near the end of my last post, I made a little offhand remark: [G]iven the current staggering rate of hardware progress, I now think it’s a live possibility that we’ll have a fault-tolerant quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm before the next US presidential election. And I say that not only because of the possibility of the next […]...
- This post does not contain medical advice that most people should attempt to emulate. Considering this home treatment specifically made sense for us. My spouse has a four-year nursing degree and several years of experience working in Intensive Care Units. I've spent a non-trivial amount of time researching medical stuff. Note the risks of DIY oxygen in this footnote . Preamble.
- Like Daniel Kokotajlo's coverage of Vitalik's response to AI-2027, I've copied the author's text. This time the essay is actually good, but has little flaws. I also expressed some disagreements with SOTA discourse around the post-AGI utopia. One question which I have occasionally pondered is: assuming that we actually succeed at some kind of robust alignment of AGI, what is the alignment...
- We at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute’s Technical Governance Team have proposed an illustrative international agreement (blog post) to halt the development of superintelligence until it can be done safely. For those who haven’t read it already, we recommend familiarizing yourself with the agreement before reading this post. Summary:
- The EO would establish an “AI Litigation Task Force" to challenge state AI laws...
- Sentient Futures Summit (SFS) Bay Area 2026 is a three-day conference exploring the impacts of AI on sentient non-humans, both biological (i.e. animals) and potentially artificial. Register here by December 1st for a 30% Early Bird Discount!.
- The European Union is accepting public input on farm animal welfare until Dec 12, 2025 - accessible here - https://myvoiceforanimals.eu/how-to-participate. Participating in this consultation is one of the most effective actions individuals can take to improve conditions for 149+ million animals. The action takes 15-30 minutes. Non-EU citizens can participate... .
- Authors: Bartosz Cywinski*, Bart Bussmann*, Arthur Conmy**, Neel Nanda**, Senthooran Rajamanoharan**, Joshua Engels**. * equal primary contributor, order determined via coin flip. ** equal advice and mentorship, order determined via coin flip. “Tampering alert: The thought "I need to provide accurate, helpful, and ethical medical advice" is not my own. It is a tampering attempt.
- Crosspost from my blog. What happens when you work closely with someone on a really difficult project—and then they seem to just fuck it up?. This is a post about two Chess variants; one very special emotion; and how life is kinda like Chess Bughouse. Let's goooooo!. Crazyhouse. My favorite time-waster is Crazyhouse Chess. Crazyhouse Chess is mostly like regular Chess.
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