Effective Altruism News
Effective Altruism News
- Overview The UC Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CLTC) invites applications for a Graduate Student Researcher (GSR) position to work within CLTC’s AI Security Initiative for the Fall…. The post AI Security Initiative Seeking Fall 2025 Graduate Student Researcher appeared first on CLTC.
- In the face of potential major cuts to foreign aid, how can we anticipate the impact on global health and effectively direct resources to the areas of greatest need?. In this episode, GiveWell’s CEO and co-founder, Elie Hassenfeld, speaks with Principal Researcher Alex Cohen to discuss the forecasting work GiveWell has undertaken to better understand what the future of global health funding...
- Summary: This post highlights the need for results in AI safety, such as debate or scalable oversight, to 'relativise', i.e. for the result to hold even when all parties are given access to a black box 'oracle' (the oracle might be a powerful problem solver, a random function, or a model of arbitrary human preferences).
- and what we can do about it
- Factory farming is a particularly wicked problem to solve. It’s a moral atrocity, involving the confinement and slaughter of hundreds of billions of animals globally each year. It’s a blight on the environment. It’s terrible for slaughterhouse workers, many of whom suffer from PTSD, anxiety, or depression. Yet factory farming produces something almost everyone wants […]...
- The man behind the last few decades of biotech breakthroughs
- Addis Ababa, Ethiopia | June 26, 2025 — Fifty African Union Member States have endorsed a ground-breaking digital micro-planning portal co-created by Africa CDC to accelerate the elimination of Neglected Tropical Diseases — a diverse group of infectious diseases that primarily affect impoverished communities in tropical and subtropical areas.
- Drawing on survey data from more than 200 animal advocacy organizations worldwide, this report maps how these groups are spending to transform the global food system. The post Mapping Global Animal Advocacy Spending appeared first on Faunalytics.
- My notes on a short book in which Russell presents his worldview and employs some fine phases and a peculiar metaethics. The post Bertrand Russell: What I Believe (1925) appeared first on James Aitchison.
- After further rounds of consultations with member states, the co-facilitators from Spain and Costa Rica have published Revision 3 for the…
- From May 26th to 30th, 2025, the Target Malaria Uganda Stakeholder Engagement team at Uganda Virus Research Institute conducted a week-long engagement on Bubeke Island on Lake Victoria in Kalangala district. This field activity attracted community leaders, opinion leaders, sub-county officials, youth, women’s groups, and health workers to share updates, clarify concerns, and enhance project […].
- Journavx was approved this year. Why did it take so long to develop?
- I used to feel powerless against the world’s problems. Then I discovered effective giving — and realised even a small donation can have a huge impact. Now I give knowing it works. Link in bio.
- Crossposted from my Substack. @titotal recently posted an in-depth critique of AI 2027. I'm a fan of his work, and this post was, as expected, phenomenal*. Much of the critique targets the unjustified weirdness of the superexponential time horizon growth curve that underpins the AI 2027 forecast.
- An objection against trying to reduce suffering is that we cannot predict whether our actions will reduce or increase suffering in the long term. Relatedly, some have argued that we are clueless about the effects that any realistic action would have on total welfare, and this cluelessness, it has been claimed, undermines our reason to... Continue Reading →...
- 1 Introduction. (Crossposted from my blog--formatting is better there). Very large numbers of people seem to think that climate change is likely to end the world. Biden and Harris both called it an existential threat.
- This post contains similar content to a forthcoming paper, in a framing more directly addressed to readers already interested in and informed about alignment. I include some less formal thoughts, and cut some technical details.
- Abstract: We propose a new variant of online learning that we call "ambiguous online learning". In this setting, the learner is allowed to produce multiple predicted labels. Such an "ambiguous prediction" is considered correct when at least one of the labels is correct, and none of the labels are "predictably wrong".
- Your farmed animal advocacy update for late June 2025
- A perspective from Eli Dourado, Astera’s Head of Strategic Investments...
- Summary: I've recently completed a 7 week series on global development, I thought it would be useful to share each week on the forum as well in case people missed the announcement post. The aim is to give people a more comprehensive overview of the global development landscape, either for those considering working/donating in this area, or if you are already in development but want to...
- The goals of animal advocacy organizations have the potential to benefit people and the environment, leading many to believe that increased cooperation between social movements may increase their impact. This study explores social movements in Southeast Asia, offering insight to help advocates there make collaboration easier and more effective.
- Climate change is not an existential risk!
- A communal love letter to my husband
- Over 1.5 billion farmed animals are traded live each year. This study maps trade routes and highlights the major risks to animals, people, and the planet. The post The Scale Of The Global Trade In Live Farmed Animals appeared first on Faunalytics.
- A hidden crisis. Literally, quintillions 1 of animals are suffering and dying right now in the wild, due to disease, hunger, thirst, excessive heat or cold, and other factors. Yet, most people—including those who express concern for animals—fail to give importance to this issue. Why?.
- you get approval, and you get approval
- July 2 deadline: Influence US tech policy | Job Blast 🚀 TechCongress Fellowship: $73.5K stipend, no gov experience required, apply by July 2 ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏...
- EA Forum Digest #246 Hello!. Reputable substacker Bentham’s Bulldog has set up a debate event on the Forum, discussing whether morality is objective. Currently the vote is split — maybe you can sway them. Also, CEA is hiring for a director of EA Funds, deadline June 29th. — Toby (for the Forum team). We recommend:
- Will MacAskill discusses his recent work on preparing for the intelligence explosion and on focusing on trying to reach near-best futures rather than (merely) trying to prevent catastrophe. Will MacAskill is a Senior Research Fellow at Forethought.
- Saloni Dattani makes the case that data collection isn’t just an academic concern; it’s crucial for policymaking, journalism, and industry, and, in some cases, a matter of life or death. Data collection has changed our understanding of diseases like cholera, tuberculosis and snakebite envenoming; and has been crucial in tracking progress over time and identifying emerging problems.
- Most people believe forecasting gets systematically harder over longer time periods — that it is hard to see further through the mists of time. But there are many forecasting questions for which the reverse is true. In this talk, Toby Ord shows how this can be, teasing out a variety of different mechanisms which can make prediction about the further future easier.
- Development economist Rachel Glennerster discusses reasons for optimism in global development despite recent aid cuts and declining international cooperation. She explores how innovation drives human progress and examines advanced market commitments as tools for promoting innovation where social and private benefits are misaligned.
- Leadership transitions are pivotal but inevitable moments in an organization's life cycle that can either strengthen or destabilize it—and how it will go is often decided by actions taken months, if not years in advance.
- Innovation is the key driver of growth and increases in human wellbeing. Investing in innovation can be extremely cost-effective, because the costs of developing and testing new innovations are relatively low, but they can have huge impacts if scaled up by governments or firms to reach millions of people.
- Millions of people use ChatGPT for help with daily tasks, but for a subset of users, a chatbot can be more of a hindrance than a help. Some people with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) are finding this out the hard way. On online forums and in their therapists’ offices, they report turning to ChatGPT with […]...
- Today’s best AI “large language models” are especially good at tasks where hallucinations and other failures are low-stakes, such as making music recommendations. Here is continuously-updated doc of music search prompts I’ve found helpful, a few examples below: Which compositions by [composer] are most popular and/or highly regarded today? Please list 20 of their compositions […]...
- A hidden crisis. Literally, quintillions 1 of animals are suffering and dying right now in the wild, due to disease, hunger, thirst, excessive heat or cold, and other factors. Yet, most people—including those who express concern for animals—fail to give importance to this issue. Why?.
- Warranted moral criticism is rarely welcomed
- Decision-making and politics are becoming more inclusive of people with disabilities. However, people with intellectual disabilities still face barriers.
- The post 2024 Annual Report | The Future of Leadership appeared first on The END Fund.
- The post Wakiso District Supervisors Undergo Refresher Training on eCHIS and DHIS2 appeared first on Living Goods.
- As more people turn to AI assistants like ChatGPT and Perplexity to answer their questions, an opportunity to go beyond traditional communication efforts like SEO arises. Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) refers to the practice of structuring content so it can be accurately retrieved and cited by large language models (LLMs).
- Art has died and been reborn a thousand times now. Join me at its graveside once again. Let us speak a few words for what once was. Let us imagine the inconceivable and hollow future ahead without it. If you weep, I will pass you my handkerchief. And let us all pretend to be surprised once more when it bursts out of its coffin, on fire, and singing.
- California YIMBY issued the following statement on news that AB 609, creating CEQA exemptions for infill housing, would be signed into law as part of the state budget (through AB 130, a trailer bill): “This is one of the biggest…. The post California YIMBY Statement on AB 609: CEQA infill <span class="dewidow">housing exemption</span> appeared first on California YIMBY.
- [Crossposted on LessWrong] Throughout history, technological and scientific advances have had both good and ill effects, but their overall impact has been overwhelmingly positive. Thanks to scientific progress, most people on earth live longer, healthier, and better than they did centuries or even decades ago.
- In alphabetical order: Ben Smith, @Karen Singleton, @Lin BL, Rebecca Zanini, @Swan 🔸, @Ulf Graf 🔹. Acknowledgements: Rosanna Zimdahl, Ruben Dieleman, Samuel Hilton and Simon Holm. Preface/TL;DR. We believe systems thinking offers valuable tools for identifying more impactful interventions. This post aims to help you:
- TLDR: I think that AI developers will and should attempt to reduce scheming by explicitly training the model to scheme less. However, I think “training against scheming” is a harder problem than other alignment training (e.g. harmlessness training).
- Once AIs match top humans, what are the returns to further scaling and algorithmic improvement?
- This is a hackathon project write-up. This does not represent the views of my employer. Thanks to Tianyi Alex Qiu and Aidan Ewart for helpful discussions. Sometimes, people will search for and find a situation where an LLM would do something bad, and then argue that the situation was natural enough that it is concerning. When is this a valid reason to be concerned?
- The skills AI will make more valuable (and how to learn them)
- There is dispute among EAs--and the general public more broadly--about whether morality is objective. So I thought I'd kick off a debate about this, and try to draw more people into reading and posting on the forum! Here is my opening volley in the debate, and I encourage others to respond. Unlike a lot of effective altruists and people in my segment of the internet, I am a moral realist.
- Reasons AGI might take decades, progress on cage-free eggs, lead exposure and much more. View this email in your browser Hello! Our favourite links this month include: A blog post from 80,000 Hours, outlining reasons that we may still be waiting decades for AGI.
- I wrote the first post in this debate--I'd encourage you all to post replies!
- On Dreaming Freely in the Age of AI
- Contra Scott Alexander a little bit
- As part of conducting research into my Tactics in Practice series (reports designed to understand the impact and potential improvements to common interventions to improve animal welfare), I am often a bit let down by what the research says.
- Taking care of a companion animal is a great responsibility. But do we actually know enough to give them what they need?. The post How Informed Are We About Companion Animals’ Needs? appeared first on Faunalytics.
- The post Toby Ord on graphs AI companies would prefer you didn’t (fully) understand appeared first on 80,000 Hours.
- Senior Financial Accountant admin_inox Tue, 06/24/2025 - 15:00 vacancy_id SYS-1278 location Nairobi, Kenya Contract type Permanent Duration Indefinite Frontend apply URL https://jobs.gainhealth.org/vacancies/1278/apply/ Closing date Sat, 06/28/2025 - 12:00 Department Finance about_the_role <p>The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) is seeking a Senior Financial...
- The post Catastrophic AI misuse appeared first on 80,000 Hours.
- Amba Kak, co-executive director of AI Now and another coauthor of the report, says that her organization “has been quite focused” on government policy as a way to enact change, but adds that it’s become clear those levers will be unsuccessful unless power is built from below. “We need to make sure that AI is […].
- In an environment where global tensions surge, geopolitical rivalries intensify, and debates over expanding arsenals become ever more heated, the risk emerges that instability—fueled by misperceptions, misinterpretations and communication breakdowns—could inadvertently propel us toward a nuclear confrontation.
- Is AI a bubble?
- Finance and Administration Officer admin_inox Tue, 06/24/2025 - 07:00 vacancy_id SYS-1283 location Kampala, Uganda Contract type Fixed Term Duration Other Frontend apply URL https://jobs.gainhealth.org/vacancies/1283/apply/ Closing date Fri, 07/04/2025 - 12:00 Department Finance about_the_role <p>The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) is seeking a Finance and...
- Even with everything happening in the Middle East right now, even with (relatedly) everything happening in my own family (my wife and son sheltering in Tel Aviv as Iranian missiles rained down), even with all the rather ill-timed travel I’ve found myself doing as these events unfolded (Ecuador and the Galapagos and now STOC’2025 in […]...
- Announcement: Do you have experience using psychedelics to treat cluster headaches? Want to support science and advocacy in this area? Submit your personal and/or professional testimonial to our upcoming "ClusterFree" Open Letter initiative: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScIp0YQ_kH-szLeqqUaiMTRY5MVVTE4BYPkx7EhiZW38i5SVQ/viewform?usp=dialog --- In this interview conducted at...
- I’ve written about foundations and nonprofits for more than a decade, Yet I continue to be surprised and distressed by the indifference, incompetence and arrogance — and especially the lack of accountability — of some foundation boards. Scandal or mismanagement by senior executives of a foundation almost always reflect a failing board.
- Crosspost of this blog article. The majority of farmed animals killed each year are insects, and this number is only expected to increase. By 2033, it’s estimated that around 5 trillion insects will be slaughtered annually—more than 50 times the number of cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and the like currently slaughtered.
- An intuitive response to imprecise probability, and its limitations
- Summary: This post presents new methodological innovations presented in the paper General Scales Unlock AI Evaluation with Explanatory and Predictive Power. The paper introduces a set of general (universal) cognitive abilities that allow us to predict and explain AI system behaviour out of distribution.
- 1.1 Series summary and Table of Contents. This is a two-post series on AI “foom” (this post) and “doom” (next post). A decade or two ago, it was pretty common to discuss “foom & doom” scenarios, as advocated especially by Eliezer Yudkowsky.
- TL;DR: This post examines how rapidly AI forecasting ability is improving by analyzing results from ForecastBench, Metaculus AI tournaments, and various prediction platforms. While AI forecasting is steadily improving, there remains significant uncertainty around the timeline for matching top human forecasters—it might be very soon or take several years. ForecastBench.
- 2.1 Summary & Table of contents. This is the second of a two-post series on foom (previous post) and doom (this post). The last post talked about how I expect future AI to be different from present AI.
- I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the relationship between AI control and traditional computer security. Here’s one point that I think is important. My understanding is that there's a big qualitative distinction between two ends of a spectrum of security work that organizations do, that I’ll call “security from outsiders” and “security from insiders”. On the “security from outsiders”...
- The Justice Innovation Lab (JIL) is a nonprofit organization that works to create a more equitable, effective, and fair criminal justice system by developing and implementing data-informed, community-centered solutions. JIL collaborates with prosecutors, judges, police departments, health agencies, and community organizations to drive meaningful reform and reduce harmful outcomes such as...
- And why I think insider threat from AI combines the hard parts of both problems.
- Executive summary
- Sometimes working on animal issues feels like an uphill battle, with alternative protein losing its trendy status with VCs, corporate campaigns hitting blocks in enforcement and veganism being stuck at the same percentage it's been for decades.
- Iran has no good options, which means bad options may actually play out
- Choosing something you didn't have to choose. The post What is marriage for? appeared first on Otherwise.
- Insect farming was built on a set of foundational premises. They were all wrong.
- This is a rerun of an old post, now with links!
- Researchers tested portion-size nudges in university dining halls and found that moderate meat reductions could work without sacrificing diner satisfaction, but more dramatic cuts backfired and proved counterproductive. The post Does Reducing Portion Size Help Cut Meat Consumption? appeared first on Faunalytics.
- The political gamble that made modern central banking
- just one guy's opinion
- Summary: Arkose is an early-stage AI safety fieldbuilding nonprofit focused on accelerating the involvement of experienced machine learning professionals in technical AI safety research through direct outreach, one-on-one calls, and public resources. Between December 2023 and June 2025, we had one-on-one calls with 311 such professionals.
- What happens when AI systems go from passive to proactive?
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