EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

TL;DR: We've updated the EA Opportunities Board and migrated it over to effectivealtruism.org! 🙌

Check it out here

• For organizations: submit opportunities to add to the board
• For group organizers: request a Slack integration
• For people interested in opportunities: sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter
• For everyone else: give us feedback, and share the board with someone you know who could use it

Overview

The EA Opportunities Board is a website that lists accessible opportunities for building skills or contributing to impactful work. It includes things like internships, volunteer opportunities, part-time roles, training programs, funding opportunities — anything short of a full-time role.

Since the CEA Online Team took over the project at the start of 2025, we've been running it while attempting to minimize its costs. I'm now a bit more confident that it's worth our team making low-hanging-fruit improvements (for example, it did surprisingly well in the 2024 EA Survey given its relatively [...]

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Outline:

(00:55) Overview

(02:42) Our plans

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First published:

August 14th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rWBwBALyynn3qdfrh/we-ve-migrated-the-ea-opportunities-board-to

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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I’m a long-time GiveWell donor and an ethical vegan. In a recent GiveWell podcast on livelihoods programs, providing animals as “productive assets” was mentioned as a possible program type. After reaching out to GiveWell directly to voice my objection, I was informed that because GiveWell's moral weights currently don’t include nonhuman animals, animal-based aid is not categorically off the table if it surpasses their cost-effectiveness bar.

Older posts on the GiveWell website similarly do not rule out animal donations from an ethical lens.

In response to some of the rationale GiveWell shared with me, I also want to proactively address a core ethical distinction:

• Animal-aid programs involve certain, programmatic harm to animals (breeding, confinement, separation of families, slaughter).
• Human-health programs like malaria prevention have, at most, indirect and uncertain effects on animal consumption (by saving human lives), which can change over time (e.g., cultural shifts, plant-based/cultivated options).

Constructive [...]

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First published:

August 14th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YnL6prYQbaLz22mxe/psa-for-vegan-donors-givewell-not-ruling-out-animal-based

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Note: I work at MIRI, but not on the comms team. I don’t work on the book directly and am writing this post in my personal capacity, but do think it would be great if a lot of people read the book.

Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares have written a book about why artificial superintelligence might cause human extinction. The book is called If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. It is out September 16th and is available for preorder now.

The book is good

Having read it, I can say it's genuinely good. While I personally really enjoy Yudkowsky's other writing, I understand why some people find it off-putting or arrogant. I think If Anyone Builds It is much more accessible, it's measured and it doesn’t condescend to readers. It's also just an enjoyable (although also alarming) read.

This is by far the best explainer of existential risk from [...]

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Outline:

(00:38) The book is good

(01:26) There have been impressive endorsements

(02:24) Preorders matter

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First published:

August 12th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6WrbaWEfuMfqD9Kkh/consider-preordering-if-anyone-builds-it-everyone-dies

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Giving What We Can has reached 10,000 🔸10% pledgers! We see this as an important milestone on the road to a cultural norm, and we’ve made a video to celebrate:

If you’re a 🔸10% or 🔹Trial pledger, we’d love for you to post about the 10k milestone on your social channels! You can find templates here.

And if you are a 🔸10% pledger, a sincere thank you for being part of the first 10,000! As our former executive director Luke Freeman wrote back in 2020:

“The world is made up of individual people who respond to social norms. What we do and say really matters, and it has flow-on effects on those around us, and to the rest of the world.”

You’re not only having an incredible impact by funding high-impact programs. You’re also paving the way for countless others.

Here's to a million and beyond!

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First published:

August 13th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/etZtA3uzaKGaubkmp/a-big-milestone-10-000-10-pledgers

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

We are pleased to announce that our new Executive Director, Attila Ujvari, has started work.

Up until now, CEEALAR has been led by Greg Colbourn, our Founder. Greg has been in the role of Executive Director in a part-time*, unpaid capacity from the start. Since being founded in 2018 as the EA Hotel, CEEALAR has grown into a grant-supported charity and increased in capacity by 70%, expanding to the adjoining building, and facing many trials and tribulations along the way. We have hosted hundreds of grantees, a significant number of whom have gone on to work at established organisations in the EA and AI Safety spaces; and hosted numerous events, unconferences, and retreats.

With the hiring of Attila, the role of Executive Director has become a paid, full-time position. Greg will remain Chair of the Trustees of CEEALAR.

Attila grew up in Hungary, spent 16 years in the [...]

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First published:

August 12th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ah6rXHq8qqz7nNrFE/ceealar-has-a-new-executive-director

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

The fact that the ITN framework[1] can help us prioritize between problems feels almost magical to me.

But when I see ITN BOTECs in the wild, I’m often very skeptical. It seems really easy for these estimates to be inadvertent “conclusion-laundering” — regurgitating the author's opinions in a quantitative or more robust-seeming form without actually providing any independent signal. And even when that's not the case, the bottom-line estimates can seem so noisy and ungrounded that I trust them less than my fuzzy, un-BOTECed intuitions.

So I'm[2] sharing notes on some pitfalls that seem especially pernicious and common to (i) help BOTEC authors avoid these issues, (ii) nudge readers to be somewhat cautious about deferring to such estimates, and (iii) encourage people to supplement (and/or to replace) ITN BOTECs with other approaches.

Note: I expect the post will make more sense to people who are already somewhat [...]

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Outline:

(01:25) Brief outline of my views

(04:54) 1. Illusions of tractability

(05:17) a. Hard upper limits; our leverage may only cover a small fraction of the problem were hoping to solve

(08:10) b. The cause-stuffing pump -- or why the 100x heuristic can bias us towards wider (and/or vaguely defined) problem areas

(12:18) 2. Inflating neglectedness\*importance

(12:24) a. Mismatched boundaries

(14:39) b. Other ways neglectedness gets exaggerated or skewed

(17:34) c. Using unrepresentative slices of total investment for comparisons of problems overall neglectedness

(19:37) 3. Edge cases & other issues with ITN

(20:54) 4. Precarious frameworks & the garbage-in, garbage-out effect

(23:35) Thanks!

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First published:

August 13th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ECYrN8aY42KyQbPZe/itn-201-pitfalls-in-itn-botecs

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Crosspost of my blog post.

Factory farming is evil.

I know, I know, I’ve made this point before. I’ve described, in depth, the way we treat animals. I’ve described that we stuff billions of chickens into tiny cages where they can’t turn around or flap their wings—where their frail bones are broken three times on average over the course of their brief lives, where they inhale nothing but feces deposits from the caged birds above them.

I’ve described the results of a report which estimated that egg-laying hens spend about an hour a day in distress as intense as the most intense distress most humans ever experience. That they never see the sun except immediately before slaughter—that one of the most distressing things that can happen to a hen, being unable to perch, happens to nearly all the egg-laying hens in the world.

They live in filth [...]

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First published:

August 12th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/roSnTrDssczawa5NE/the-bone-chilling-evil-of-factory-farming

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Is there anything we can do to make the longterm future go better other than preventing the risk of extinction?

My paper, Persistent Path-Dependence, addresses that question. I suggest there are a number of mechanisms that are fairly likely to be developed within our lifetimes that would result in extremely persistent path-dependent effects of predictable expected value. These include the creation of AGI-enforced institutions, a global concentration of power, the widespread settlement of space, the first immortal beings, the widespread design of new beings, and the ability to self-modify in significant and lasting ways.

I’m not very confident that such events will occur, but in my view they’re likely enough to make work to steer them in better directions very valuable. Let's take each mechanism in turn.

First, AGI-based institutions. Once we have AGI, decision-makers could:

• Set up an institution, and align the AGI so that it understands [...]

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First published:

August 11th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/edpMbLKSqahoNxzgi/the-trajectory-of-the-future-could-soon-get-set-in-stone

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

With Gather Town announcing a sharp price hike and removal of their free tier, I wanted to remind both organisations and remote-workers/students/anyone individually interested that the EA Gather is still available - and currently free for marginal use.[1]

Individuals

Just show up and start coworking :) The starting map is a shared space, so you can feel free to join anyone on there, even those in offices (orgs who want privacy have their offices on a different map). Use this invite link if you want private message and avatar permanence while you're there.

Organisations

The offer for a custom office from this post is still open. At the moment, we have space paid for 60 concurrent users, and we coordinate events by this calendar so that you can avoid overlaps. In the longer run I'm hoping orgs using the space will contribute an amount in proportion to their use [...]

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Outline:

(00:25) Individuals

(00:47) Organisations

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First published:

August 11th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gBrZWvWihehifHei2/virtual-offices-available-on-ea-gather-town

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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We’re already in the second half of 2025 and there are still an incredible number of EAGx and Summit events coming up, as well as the first ever EA Global: New York City. We’re so excited to continue watching the EA community connect and grow.

Below is our conference schedule for the rest of the year. We’re supporting the first EAGx in Brazil, and inaugural EA conferences in France, Vietnam, New Zealand, and Turkey. We hope to reach more people than ever before. Please spread the word, especially for events happening near you!

We are also eager to initiate new events; if you’d like to apply to run an EAGx or Summit in 2026, please fill out this form!

Apply to run an EAGx or EA Summit in 2026

Upcoming EA conferences

EA Global

• EA Global: New York City (10–12 Oct) | Applications close September 28—apply now!

EAGx

[...]

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Outline:

(01:02) Upcoming EA conferences

(01:06) EA Global

(01:18) EAGx

(02:00) EA Summits

(03:07) What is the difference between EA Global, EAGx, and EA Summits?

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First published:

August 11th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hJWT3wJTFFTALub7d/upcoming-ea-conferences-in-2025

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.