EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

There is an important consultation happening right now on revising EU animal welfare laws - covering cages, import standards, male chick culling, and welfare indicators. If you're an EU Citizen, I encourage you to take 15-30 minutes over the next few days to respond.

• Deadline: July 16th (midnight CET)
• Who can respond: European citizens, animal advocacy organisations, scientists, industry groups, farmers etc. (Non-EU citizens can respond but we expect this will carry less weight)
• Format: 4,000 character limit + one PDF attachment (max 5MB)
• Access: Login using Google or Facebook via this link

DM me here for access to a response guide [1] that has evidence on each topic area. It is important to note, when using the guide, that diversifying responses is necessary as the Commission may group all responses that are considered coordinated/as part of a campaign, which would limit the impact of our efforts. [...]

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First published:

July 14th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tsXzyPoNPgS2kgoBp/eu-citizens-animal-welfare-consultation-closing-soon-16-july

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Organisations using Rethink Priorities’ mainline welfare ranges should consider effects on soil nematodes, mites, and springtails.disagreeagreeOrganisations using Rethink Priorities’ mainline welfare ranges, and not planning to consider effects on [...]

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Outline:

(00:47) Summary

(02:29) I think organisations using RP's mainline welfare ranges should consider effects on soil nematodes, mites, and springtails

(05:23) Effects on soil nematodes should not be neglected just because they are unlikely to be sentient

(07:39) Effects on soil nematodes should not be neglected just because they may be beneficial or harmful

(09:51) Estimates of the expected effects on soil nematodes, mites, and springtails cannot be taken literally, but should still be considered

(11:45) Effects on soil nematodes, mites, and springtails should be considered even if they are very neglected in society

(13:24) Acknowledgements

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First published:

July 13th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/48pwtmGtZfYHmqkur/debate-organisations-using-rethink-priorities-mainline

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Since January I’ve applied to ~25 EA-aligned roles. Every listing attracted hundreds of candidates (one passed 1,200). It seems we already have a very deep bench of motivated, values-aligned people, yet orgs still run long, resource-heavy hiring rounds.

That raises three things:

1. Cost-effectiveness:

   Are months-long searches and bespoke work-tests still worth the staff time and applicant burnout when shortlist-first approaches might fill 80% of roles faster with decent candidates? Sure, there can be differences in talent, but the question ought to be... how tangible is this difference and does it justify the cost of hiring?

2. Coordination:

   Why aren’t orgs leaning harder on shared talent pools (e.g. HIP's database) to bypass public rounds? HIP is currently running an open search.

3. Messaging:

   From the outside, repeated calls to 'consider an impactful EA career' could start to look pyramid-schemey if the movement can’t absorb the talent [...]

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First published:

July 14th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ufjgCrtxhrEwxkdCH/is-ea-still-talent-constrained

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

As we mark one year since the launch of Mieux Donner, we wanted to share some reflections on our journey and our ongoing efforts to promote effective giving in France. Mieux Donner was founded through the Effective Incubation Programme by Ambitious Impact and Giving What We Can.

TLDR 

• Prioritisation is important. And when the path forward is unclear, trying a lot of different potential priorities with high productivity leads to better results than analysis paralysis.
• Ask yourself what the purpose of your organisation is. If you are a mainly marketing/communication org, hire people from this sector (not engineers) and don’t be afraid to hire outside of EA.
• Effective altruism ideas are less controversial than we imagined and affiliation has created no (or very little) push back
• Hiring early has helped us move fast and is a good idea when you have a clear process and a lot of [...]

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Outline:

(00:29) TLDR

(01:11) Summary of our progress and activities in year 1

(02:50) Results: one year of Mieux Donner

(03:05) Meta Goals

(04:01) Fundraising Goals

(05:10) Reflections on why our first year results were so low compared to our goals

(07:20) Proxy of impact/future impact

(07:24) Progress and Key Goals

(09:58) Some data

(11:39) Learnings

(22:40) To conclude

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First published:

July 13th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9iw5D6Atr6nAnpFTc/reflecting-on-one-year-of-mieux-donner-launching-the-french

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Key takeaway

We need less breadth and more depth. Much of the early growth and success of the movement at the intersection of AI, animals and digital minds has come from exchanging ideas, people and resources across these fields. We think we are now approaching a point where more specialisation and a greater focus on action will lead to the most valuable outcomes.

Aim

The aim of AI, Animals, & Digital Minds (AIADM) 2025 was to bring together leaders in AI and non-human ethics to share ideas, resources and opportunities; and to collaborate on two goals:

1. Using AI to help animals now
2. Making powerful AI go better for all sentient beings, regardless of species or substrate

Did we achieve our aim? Yes, we think so!

Event overview

Organised by AI for Animals, AIADM 2025 brought together almost 900 people in person and virtually across three days in [...]

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Outline:

(00:16) Key takeaway

(00:39) Aim

(02:12) Event overview

(05:41) Event takeaways

(07:00) High impact and value

(07:53) Networking and collaboration

(08:43) Movement momentum and direction

(09:09) Event comparison

(10:43) Content deep dive

(10:47) en-US-AvaMultilingualNeural__ Conference speakers on AI, animals, and ethics presenting at London 2025. The image shows four conference speakers presenting at what appears to be an academic or professional conference. Each speaker is shown in their own panel with their name and presentation topic displayed above their photo. The topics focus on AI ethics, animal welfare, and the intersection of artificial intelligence with animal consciousness and welfare. The conference appears to be titled AI, Animals, & Digital Minds London 2025 based on the backdrop visible in one of the panels.

(12:13) Core tensions

(13:47) Strategic insights

(15:05) Emerging priorities

(16:02) Talks, panels & workshops

(22:01) What went well

(23:33) What could be improved for next time

(25:24) Budget

(28:37) Acknowledgements

(29:52) Get involved

(30:30) Contact

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First published:

July 12th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HJg3CGW4yBxXhD9x2/ai-animals-and-digital-minds-2025-retrospective

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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TLDR: On a VERY rough Sanity check[1], GiveWell's New Incentives “lived saved” numbers seem perhaps twice as high as is plausible.

On seeing this wonderful graph from a GiveWell Back-check of New Incentives, I thought to myself wow New Incentives saved 27,000 lives - that's insane but feels quite high.

So I decided to spend a surprisingly fun 90 minutes of my life doing a sanity check of a back-check. The things I do for joy...

Due to the speedrun nature, I might have got a baisc input wrong, made a simple logical mistake or calculation error. Also note that even if New Incentives did only save half, or a quarter as many lives as GiveWell estimated, they would still be a very cost-effective charity!

My Sanity Check BOTEC[2]

I tried to estimate the upper end of what might be plausible, as this is only a [...]

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Outline:

(01:08) My Sanity Check BOTEC

(01:19) How Many kids did New Incentives cause to be vaccinated?

(01:49) What percent of those lives would be saved by Vaccination?

(03:55) We account for the remaining Mortality

(04:15) Now we estimate Vaccine preventable deaths from what's left.

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First published:

July 11th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/FxAtFMRnJZ2dbLBhA/sanity-check-givewell-s-new-incentives-estimate-seems

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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This is a link post.

This seems like an important piece of work - an RCT on the use of AI capabilities for developers. The TL;DR of the paper is

The devil is in the details of course. This post by Steve Newman does a good job of working through some of them.

I have highlighted some considerations from it:

The methodology was as follows:

1. METR recruited 16 developers from major open-source projects.
2. Each developer selected a list of coding tasks from their todo list, breaking up large projects into tasks that they could complete in an hour or two. In all, 246 tasks were included in the study.
3. The developers estimated how long it would take them to complete each task (a) under normal conditions, and (b) without using any AI tools. The percentage difference between these figures yields the predicted speedup – the degree to [...]

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First published:

July 11th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rgBSYGBFMpKRpgHca/linkpost-metr-measuring-the-impact-of-early-2025-ai-on

Linkpost URL:
https://metr.org/Early_2025_AI_Experienced_OS_Devs_Study.pdf

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Thank you to @Jacintha Baas, @Judith Rensing, and the @CE team for your help in editing and improving this post.

Introductory Context

Hi, I’m Trish. This is my first post on the EA forum. I spent the past decade building VC-funded, high-growth startups (from pre-revenue to $10M+, from founding team to 250+ employees; pre-funding through Series B), and supporting 100s of early-stage founders through the communities at On Deck and Unreasonable Group.

Last year, I joined the team at AIM to help build the Founding to Give program, which helps people start high-impact for-profit tech startups.

AIM's Founding to Give program aims to launch for-profit startups that create impact through two ways:

1. Build a startup, exit, and donate to effective charities (similar to earning to give)
2. Direct positive impact created through the startup

AIM's research and Founder's Pledge data show high expected value (EV) for the [...]

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Outline:

(00:18) Introductory Context

(01:33) Summary

(02:10) Overview: The Bull & Bear Case

(03:05) Reasons often given for why for-profits can't have significant impact (and their counterexamples)

(03:13) #1 You can't serve two masters

(03:56) #2 Show me a for-profit that is solving for rural malaria prevention

(05:02) #3 For profits can't solve problems for those suffering the most

(06:37) #4 But what about the perverse incentives that will inevitably emerge

(08:07) #5 It would have happened anyway

(10:24) #6 DuoLingo is designed to keep you using the app, not to deliver real learning outcomes

(11:42) Some ideas for where for-profits might be able to create significant direct impact

(13:15) Some ideas for where for-profits might be able to uniquely contribute to the impact ecosystem

(15:06) Next Steps

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First published:

July 11th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Se7gdAbjHPLLnRgbf/can-for-profit-companies-create-significant-direct-impact

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post.

I'm interested in a simple question: Why are people all so terrified of dying? And have people gotten more afraid? (Answer: probably yes!)

In some sense, this should be surprising: Surely people have always wanted to avoid dying? But it turns out the evidence that this preference has increased over time is quite robust.

It's an important phenomenon that has been going on for at least a century, it's relatively new, I think it underlies much of modern life, and yet pretty much nobody talks about it.

I tried to provide a evenhanded treatment of the question, with a "fox" rather than "hedgehog" outlook. In the post, I cover a range of evidence for why this might be true, including VSL, increased healthcare spending, covid lockdowns, parenting and other individual risk behaviors. Conditional upon it being true, I also consider why, drawing on evidence from [...]

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First published:

July 10th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pbgBbjdGGMbkLGXYp/the-rising-premium-of-life

Linkpost URL:
https://linch.substack.com/p/the-rising-premium-for-life

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

I think the 2003 invasion of Iraq has some interesting lessons for the future of AI policy.

(Epistemic status: I’ve read a bit about this, talked to AIs about it, and talked to one natsec professional about it who agreed with my analysis (and suggested some ideas that I included here), but I’m not an expert.)

For context, the story is:

• Iraq was sort of a rogue state after invading Kuwait and then being repelled in 1990-91. After that, they violated the terms of the ceasefire, e.g. by ceasing to allow inspectors to verify that they weren't developing weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). (For context, they had previously developed biological and chemical weapons, and used chemical weapons in war against Iran and against various civilians and rebels). So the US was sanctioning and intermittently bombing them.
  • After the war, it became clear that Iraq actually wasn’t producing [...]

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First published:

July 10th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hLWsAdhhgE88HKjKE/lessons-from-the-iraq-war-about-ai-policy

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.