EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

We should prioritize slowing the spread of industrial animal agriculture in future high-production regions over investing in advocacy in currently high-production regions that remain neglected in terms of farmed animal advocacy.Place your vote or view results.https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sg6mLFmFWdwcbtAgb/debate-we-should-prioritize-slowing-the-spread-of-industrial

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If an intelligence explosion occurs, the vast majority of people will be confused, misled, and epistemically disempowered – with no agency over the future. Unless we try to change this.

Introduction

While knowledge is invisible[1], it defines and shapes the world around us. It dictates how we decide what is true, and how we take action on such truths. It is undeniable that the advent of superintelligent AI systems would irreversibly change how we relate to knowledge on both an individual and societal level.

MacAskill and Moorhouse refer to this as epistemic disruption in their paper “Preparing for the Intelligence Explosion”. When defining the intelligence explosion, they use the analogy of a compressed century. What if all the scientific, social, philosophical, and political advancements of the 21st century were compressed into just 10 years? MacAskill compares humanity's situation to:

"A mediaeval king suddenly needing to [...]

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Outline:

(00:24) Introduction

(02:54) Could AI Really Help Solve This?

(06:36) More Drivers of Destabilisation

(07:54) The New Underclass of Those Who Do Not Wish to Enhance

(10:06) The World From a Normal Human's Perspective

(12:54) Preventing Epistemic Collapse

(14:48) Conclusion

(15:29) Acknowledgements

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First published:

August 18th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YoGw4Hg5ndzaosmHL/beware-epistemic-collapse

Linkpost URL:
https://futuresonder.substack.com/p/beware-epistemic-collapse

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What projects today could most improve a post-AGI world?

In “How to make the future better”, I lay out some areas I see as high-priority, beyond reducing risks from AI takeover and engineered pandemics.

These areas include:

• Preventing post-AGI autocracy
• Improving the governance of projects to build superintelligence
• Deep space governance
• Working on AI value-alignment; figuring out what character AI should have
• Developing a regime of AI rights
• Improving AI for reasoning, coordination and decision-making.

Here's an overview.

First, preventing post-AGI autocracy. Superintelligence structurally leads to concentration of power: post-AGI, human labour soon becomes worthless; those who can spend the most on inference-time compute have access to greater cognitive abilities than anyone else; and the military (and whole economy) can in principle be aligned to a single person.

The risk from AI-enabled coups in particular is detailed at length here. To reduce this risk, we can try to [...]

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First published:

August 15th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rmjJPuziRk69esh3N/how-to-make-the-future-better-other-than-by-reducing

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Disclaimer: CEARCH itself does some work related to effective giving in Asia, and there is an inherent risk of bias to this evaluation. Beyond doing our best to remain impartial throughout the research process, we have also explicitly applied a meta discount for bias within our CEA, with the goal of eliminating any bias-driven over-estimation of the cause area's cost-effectiveness.

Key Takeaway: CEARCH recommends effective giving in Asia as a high impact philanthropic cause.

Introduction: CEARCH is a research and grantmaking organization – we try to find and fund highly cost-effective philanthropic ideas. The primary author for this report is Joel Tan, the Managing Director of CEARCH, and the lead researcher and grantmaker for its meta portfolio.

Note that this research investigation has been motivated by two considerations:

• Firstly, CEARCH and our grantmaking partners (e.g. individual members of the Meta Charity Funders) are interested in effective [...]

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First published:

August 16th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/cRSr3HSeoTHjpAuEi/intermediate-report-effective-giving-in-asia

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About the Event

EA Summit: Santiago 2025 took place on July 19 at the Prince of Wales Country Club in Santiago, Chile. It was a one-day event focused on:

• Providing an accessible and low cost entry point to effective altruism for newcomers
• Fostering connections between local professionals. EA community and students
• Showcasing high-impact cause areas: AI safety, global health & development, animal welfare, social entrepreneurship, effective giving and biotechnology. 

AFTERMOVIE: EA SUMMIT: SANTIAGO 2025

Key Stats

• Registered attendees: 133
• Attendees present: 87 (~66%)
• Volunteers: 15
• Speakers: 10
• Net budget: $17,000 USD
• Cost per attendee: $195 USD
• Likelihood to Recommend (LTR): 9.27 / 10
• Avg. new connections per attendee: 4.7
• Avg. meaningful connections per attendee: 2.4
• Attendees likely to apply for a short-term opportunity (<1 yr): 67%
• Rated event >3–10x better than counterfactual: 91%
• Felt welcomed: 4.95/5
• Respect score (others - women & gender minorities): 9.91-10/10

Our Aims

We intentionally aimed for a [...]

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Outline:

(00:13) About the Event

(01:07) Key Stats

(02:10) Our Aims

(02:49) What Went Well

(02:53) ✅ High-quality content & speaker lineup

(05:09) ✅ Great energy, great people

(06:42) ✅ Professional feel, low cost, low time demand for organizers

(08:25) What Could Have Gone Better

(08:28) 🔸 No-show rate (~34%)

(09:42) 🔸 Catering confusion (vegan vs vegetarian)

(10:22) 🔸 Few 1-on-1s through the app

(11:12) 🔸 Timing mismatch with local norms

(11:33) Budget Snapshot

(11:48) Looking Ahead

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First published:

August 15th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/FjdFCxygusQghk5MH/ea-summit-santiago-2025-retrospective

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Summary

• 🤰🏽 A randomized study in Kenya found that giving families a $1,000 GiveDirectly cash transfer immediately cut infant deaths by 48%.
• 🏥 Deaths dropped most for mothers living near physician-staffed health facilities and those who received cash in the weeks before they gave birth.
• 🩺 GiveDirectly is launching a new program to maximize these life-saving impacts, partnering with a Kenyan community health provider to get cash to more expectant mothers.

In rural Kenya, giving poor families a one-time $1,000 transfer cut infant deaths nearly in half, one of the largest reductions ever recorded for a poverty program. With global aid budgets shrinking and funders under pressure to do more with less, the findings point to cash as a powerful, underused tool to reduce preventable deaths.

Cash cut infant deaths by 48%

The study, led by researchers at UC Berkeley and Oxford, tracked over 100,000 births and found [...]

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Outline:

(01:03) Cash cut infant deaths by 48%

(02:13) Cash saved lives by helping new moms rest, eat, and deliver safely

(03:01) Cash had the largest impact when timed near birth and paired with access to healthcare

(04:04) Cash ranks among the best tools we have to save children's lives

(05:13) We're building on this evidence with new maternal and newborn health programs

(06:19) Cash is an underused tool to end preventable child deaths

(06:57) Appendix: How we know cash saved lives (Methods FAQs)

(07:04) Cash is well-studied. Why haven't we seen this impact before?

(07:56) Then how was this study able to measure the link between mortality and cash?

(09:13) How do they track 100,000 births with no hospital records?

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First published:

August 18th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dNSXKsEqJAiZpTYBr/study-giving-cash-to-mothers-cut-infant-deaths-in-half

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If you are an organization that:

1. Has demonstrated initial success in a cost-effective global health intervention and has the potential and willingness to scale; and
2. Is at an inflection point, has a demonstrated funding gap, and requires additional resources to optimize programming, equip for scale, or develop your track record to attract major funding…

Apply for funding today!

About this Funding Opportunity

We are a group of donors looking to support cost-effective and high-impact global health nonprofits during a critical growth phase where targeted funding can have immense impact. For more information, including how to join as a funder, see the bottom of this post.

We will consider applications with total funding requests ranging from approximately $50,000-$300,000.

Grants will initially be one-off support, though renewals may be possible in some cases, at the discretion of individual donors. In this round, we expect around 2 million USD will be available [...]

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Outline:

(00:47) About this Funding Opportunity

(01:39) Eligibility criteria:

(03:02) Selection criteria - What makes a competitive application?

(04:29) How to apply

(04:47) About the Global Health Funding Circle

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First published:

August 15th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ynTFW43HPr7865kWS/request-for-proposals-global-health-funding-circle-fall-2025

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We surveyed experts about the future of digital minds — computer systems capable of subjective experiences.

The survey explored a wide range of difficult and speculative questions: when digital minds will first be created, how quickly their collective welfare capacity will expand, what types of digital minds will emerge, where and by whom digital minds will be built, whether their net welfare will be positive or negative, what claims they will make about consciousness and rights, how society will respond—through protections, recognition, or resistance—and what the implications will be for AI safety.

The report begins with a concise summary of the main findings.

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First published:

August 16th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hDf5WW7qzgq56d7wH/futures-with-digital-minds-expert-forecasts-in-2025

Linkpost URL:
https://digitalminds.report/forecasting-2025/

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Executive Summary

Aquatic animals—fish, shrimp, crabs, and other decapods—are the most numerous animals farmed for food, yet they receive just 11 % of global farmed animal welfare philanthropy (which is less than 0.5% of all global philanthropy). With  100 billion farmed fish and 440  billion farmed shrimp slaughtered every year, supporting high‑leverage interventions in this space offers one of the clearest opportunities to alleviate mass suffering at scale.

In 2025, Farmed Animal Funders (FAF) hosted the Aquatic Animal Funding Circle for major donors. After six months of co-learning, a request for proposals, co-evaluating, and co-funding, the funding circle members and aligned funders allocated funding to ten organizations. While not every funder funded every organization, FAF generally views these organizations as offering complementary tactics—corporate pressure, producer training, policy lock‑ins, and evidence generation—to form a coherent strategy for rapid, durable welfare gains.

FAF expects the recommended groups can absorb additional grants up to [...]

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Outline:

(00:11) Executive Summary

(02:19) Why aquatic animals? Why now?

(03:42) Funding Recommendations

(03:46) Strategic Themes

(04:35) Recommended Organizations

(05:04) Measurable Outcomes

(05:38) Other Grants

(06:45) How to Fund

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First published:

August 14th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dBwoeth8y9dQjTeSw/aquatic-animal-funding-recommendations

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Introducing the 'Unweirding Boards' Sequence

Over the past three months I’ve spoken with ~30 founders, board members, and staff at EA organisations, in an attempt to better understand what governance looks like within this community.

These conversations have taken the form of semi-structured interviews, exploring each individual's experience of governance. Most have started broad, answering something like "what is and isn't working?", before focusing on specific challenges or opportunities for improvement.

This isn't formal or representative research (I would very much like to speak with more people in general, and those at funders/fiscal sponsors/large organisations in particular!) but some clear patterns are emerging. I feel confident in beginning to share some initial reflections on the 'state of governance' in the EA community, and some suggestions for improving governance that will apply to many EA organisations.

With that in mind, this is post 1/n in an 'Unweirding Boards' [...]

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Outline:

(00:11) Introducing the Unweirding Boards Sequence

(01:42) The State of Governance

(01:45) Setting up and maintaining a board is hard

(02:13) Getting clear on purpose

(02:39) Right-sizing time/effort spent on governance

(03:20) Clarifying decision-making

(03:38) Running effective meetings

(04:01) Appropriately engaging and getting support from board members

(04:36) Identifying board members

(04:57) When governance is good, its really good

(05:22) Leadership is held to account

(05:44) The organisation is held to account

(06:07) The organisation benefits from perspective and insight

(06:26) Leadership enjoys peace of mind

(06:47) Next Steps

(07:03) Getting More Perspectives

(07:36) Writing the Sequence

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First published:

August 14th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hDiQCkfMivwysxegq/good-governance-unweirding-boards

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