EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

Even with a busy schedule, there are easy micro-volunteering actions you can take to support your local, national, or regional EA group as well as other EA organizations engaged in outreach and community building.

These small steps can fit “whenever, wherever” — and even brief acts of support can add up to meaningful impact.

Below are 15 concrete suggestions, each with a short explanation of why it matters to your group's mission.

1. Invite a Friend to an Event or the Community
   Why it matters: Many people get involved simply because someone asked them. In fact, about 41% of volunteers say they started because they were personally invited or asked to join. Inviting a friend or colleague to a meetup, an intro talk, or even into your group's Slack/WhatsApp channel is a quick action that can have a big ripple effect. That friend gets exposed to new ideas and our supportive network – possibly leading them to engage further, seek career coaching, or at least walk away with a positive impression. Even if they just attend once, they might tell others or come back when they’re ready to explore doing good in their career. It's grassroots growth: one friendly nudge [...]
   

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First published:

September 26th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HJHcTacia5DusR4ur/15-easy-low-effort-ways-to-support-your-ea-group

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Background

In my previous post, I discussed Cortical Labs, an Australian biocomputing startup. After achieving early success combining human neurons with silicon chips, Cortical Labs launched a commercial product strategy: selling biocomputers that contain living human neurons and offering “Wetware-as-a-Service” cloud access to their computing infrastructure. The company envisions broad commercialization of their products, across applications in AI systems, robotics, and military technology.[1] Their CEO has stated: “Ultimately, the goal for Cortical Labs is to be like Nvidia, which is to enable the creativity of other users to build on this technology.”[2]

In my post, I defined “brain farming” as the commercialization of novel forms of consciousness for computational purposes. I argued that while current biocomputing systems likely lack moral value, there is a strong case for taking preemptive action now to prevent the creation of a brain farming industry.

Proposal

I'm highly confident that action should be [...]

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Outline:

(00:11) Background

(01:13) Proposal

(01:44) Scope of the Ban

(02:07) Argument

(03:37) Objections

(06:39) Conclusion

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First published:

September 27th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/FPsFBhCM3EGQ5rCCn/brain-farming-the-case-for-a-global-ban

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Cross-posted from Otherwise

Part of my job is being available as a “contact person” at some events. The main purpose is to address problems promptly if something happened at the event, but often I end up hearing from people who are stressed about something unrelated. Sometimes they need someone to listen to what's front-of-mind for them, which has included:

• They lost a pregnancy and they’re dreading people asking them about it
• Their marriage has fallen apart
• They just lost a family member to suicide
• They’re having a fight with their mother about whether to make an expensive flight to a family funeral
• Their baby is sick, their partner is handling it alone, and they need to decide whether to fly back early
• Somehow everything just feels wrong and embarrassing and they feel like crying

And sometimes I’ve been that person. I remember sitting down with a [...]

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First published:

September 28th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/roKwRynk29YR2AvzJ/you-re-not-the-only-one-to-have-life-events-affect-work

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Summary

The goal of this post is to analyze the growth of the technical and non-technical AI safety fields in terms of the number of organizations and number of FTEs working in these fields.

In 2022, I estimated that there were about 300 FTEs (full-time equivalents) working in the field of technical AI safety research and 100 on non-technical AI safety work (400 in total).

Based on updated data and estimates from 2025, I estimate that there are now approximately 600 FTEs working on technical AI safety and 500 FTEs working on non-technical AI safety (1100 in total).

Note that this post is an updated version of my old 2022 post Estimating the Current and Future Number of AI Safety Researchers.

Technical AI safety field growth analysis

The first step for analyzing the growth of the technical AI safety field is to create a spreadsheet listing the names of [...]

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Outline:

(00:11) Summary

(01:00) Technical AI safety field growth analysis

(03:57) Non-technical AI safety field growth analysis

(05:50) Acknowledgements

(06:01) Appendix

(06:20) Old and new dataset and model comparison

(07:05) Technical AI safety organizations table

(07:24) Non-technical AI safety organizations table

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First published:

September 27th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7YDyziQxkWxbGmF3u/ai-safety-field-growth-analysis-2025

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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We're looking for two Research Managers and a Recruitment Manager to join our team from January 2026

Our bottleneck to launching more impactful nonprofits isn't funding – it's finding the right people and ideas.

We're seeking a Recruitment Manager to attract the next generation of exceptional founders and two Research Managers to identify the interventions they'll implement. With everything else in place to double our impact, these roles are the missing pieces that will help us launch 20+ organizations improving millions of human and animal lives in 2026.

Ready to be that crucial piece? Apply for our open roles by October 19.

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As our Recruitment Manager, your mission is to find talent that will found field-leading and benchmark-setting nonprofits. You'll design marketing campaigns, evaluate thousands of applicants, and select the exceptional few who become founders of organizations improving millions of human and animal lives. [...]

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First published:

September 26th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bCdLrx5DJnES3DLp9/aim-is-hiring

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Animal advocates use a wide variety of approaches to help animals—from running corporate campaigns to get chickens out of cages, to researching wild animal welfare science, to influencing lawmakers to support plant-based policies. But which of these approaches are the most promising, and how can they be made more effective? Evaluating and comparing them is a monumental challenge—especially as our field has less empirical research available to guide decisions than other cause areas, such as global health and development.1

However, the animal advocacy evidence base is growing: On average, we add more than 100 articles to our Research Library each month. This is great news; however, it brings its own challenges. While we have always consulted existing research to inform our grantmaking and charity recommendation decisions, the increasing volume and complexity of research called for ACE to adopt a more systematic and dynamic approach to synthesizing results from empirical [...]

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Outline:

(03:53) The Project

(05:17) The Research Process

(07:26) Limitations

(10:06) Acknowledgments

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First published:

September 24th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/nQN5YwvbdDEYzRuKn/introducing-better-for-animals-a-new-public-resource-for

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

To start off with, I’ve been vegan/vegetarian for the majority of my life.

I think that factory farming has caused more suffering than anything humans have ever done.

Yet, according to my best estimates, I think most animal-lovers should eat meat.

Here's why:

1. It is probably unhealthy to be vegan. This affects your own well-being and your ability to help others.
2. You can eat meat in a way that substantially reduces the suffering you cause to non-human animals

How to reduce suffering of the non-human animals you eat

I’ll start with how to do this because I know for me this was the biggest blocker. A friend of mine was trying to convince me that being vegan was hurting me, but I said even if it was true, it didn’t matter. Factory farming is evil and causes far more harm than the potential harm done to [...]

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Outline:

(00:44) How to reduce suffering of the non-human animals you eat

(03:22) Being vegan is (probably) bad for your health

(12:32) Health is important for your well-being and the world's

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First published:

September 25th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LxC2yEmvYvy2NStkQ/why-you-should-eat-meat-even-if-you-hate-factory-farming

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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(Link-post to https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.19389 )

I've written a new paper some of you may be interested in. It was written in response to the problems arising in decision theory, economics, and ethics where standard approaches to evaluating an option leads to divergent sums or integrals. This makes it hard to evaluate and compare things like unending streams of value, when each option under consideration would standardly be assigned the value _+infty_. This leads theorists to develop a variety of conflicting approaches to making these comparisons and often even leads them to modify their theory of finite cases — adding things like a requirement for bounded utility or discounting of future utility in order to make the infinities go away.

I believe this problem is mainly caused by the use of the extended reals, which are an impoverished system of infinite numbers which is obviously not expressive enough to solve the [...]

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First published:

September 25th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4FxCr3iqZPYa62pdM/evaluating-the-infinite

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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We’re building a frictionless way to turn everyday transactions into donations to the world's most effective charities, and we’re seeking funding and partners to accelerate our growth.

GoodWallet: Making Effective Giving Frictionless

We’re building GoodWallet, a digital wallet that makes donating to high-impact charities as simple and seamless as sending money to a friend. Our simple, flexible design supports a wide range of real-world uses, such as repayments between friends, tips for creators, business payments, and peer-to-peer fundraising. By embedding effective giving into everyday financial flows, we aim to unlock new counterfactual donations and introduce more people to the principles of effective altruism.

For more on our functionality and vision, see our last post from July:
🔗 GoodWallet: Turning Everyday Repayments into High-Impact Donations

Since launching in May 2025, we’ve grown to 150+ early users, processed $1,500+ in donations, and secured conditional 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsorship with SparkWell, allowing us [...]

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Outline:

(00:22) GoodWallet: Making Effective Giving Frictionless

(01:33) The Core Team that Got Us Here

(02:24) How We Would Use Funding

(03:54) Our Theory of Change

(04:20) Please Reach Out

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First published:

September 25th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/kDzxEfLqQz9EjA7um/goodwallet-scaling-effective-giving-through-everyday

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Note: I am the web programme director at 80,000 Hours and the view expressed here currently helps shape the web team's strategy. However, this shouldn't be taken to be expressing something on behalf of 80k as a whole, and writing and posting this memo was not undertaken as an 80k project.

80,000 Hours, where I work, has made helping people make AI go well [1]its focus. As part of this work, I think my team should continue to:

• Talk about / teach ideas and thinking styles that have historically been central to effective altruism (e.g. via our career guide, cause analysis content, and podcasts)
• Encourage people to get involved in the EA community explicitly and via linking to content.

I wrote this memo for the MCF (Meta Coordination Forum), because I wasn't sure this was intuitive to others. I think talking about EA ideas and encouraging people to get [...]

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Outline:

(01:21) 1. The effort to make AGI go well needs people who are flexible and equipped to to make their own good decisions

(02:10) Counterargument: Agendas are starting to take shape, so this is less true than it used to be.

(02:43) 2. Making AGI go well calls for a movement that thinks in explicitly moral terms

(03:59) Counterargument: movements can be morally good without being explicitly moral, and being morally good is whats important.

(04:41) 3. EA is (A) at least somewhat able to equip people to flexibly make good decisions, (B) explicitly morally focused.

(04:52) (A) EA is at least somewhat able to equip people to flexibly make good decisions

(06:04) (B) EA is explicitly morally focused

(06:49) Counterargument: A different flexible & explicitly moral movement could be better for trying to make AGI go well.

(07:49) Appendix: What are the relevant alternatives?

(12:13) Appendix 2: anon notes from others

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First published:

September 25th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/oPue7R3outxZaTXzp/why-i-think-capacity-building-to-make-agi-go-well-should

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.