EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

In 2017, I learned about EA from a friend of a friend in Scotland. He gave me a copy of Doing Good Better to read on the flight home, and I was sold by the time I’d finished it. Over the next five years, I was interested in EA but low on context - occasionally lurking on the Forum and talking about the ideas with friends and family. This post is a smorgasbord of thoughts I wish I could tell my past self.

Diligence or caveat claims before repeating them as code

I knew that the commercials set to Sarah McLachlan music claiming you can help a dog find a foster home for 60 cents were probably inaccurate. However for some reason, I would repeat EA-related claims out of context in ways that the author would probably dislike. I’ve seen public-facing threads along the lines of the following:

[...]

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Outline:

(00:35) Diligence or caveat claims before repeating them as code

(02:53) Being funny is a virtue. Being edgy is not

(04:20) Jargon is rarely necessary

(05:52) Embrace entrepreneurship but not risky schemes

(06:54) Be cognizant of professional dynamics and personal boundaries

(08:12) It's great to ask for help

(09:24) What the people are really like

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

April 14th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/SJpCsSdrFpa7HiJX4/untitled-draft-jw9e

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

I signed up to the 10% Pledge from Giving What We Can and donated 19% of my annual income this year, in response to the foreign aid cuts.

In a recent blogpost, I give a summary of what has happened, why I pledged, how I thought about where to donate, and what individuals can do.

You can read it here: We don't have to sit back and just watch the horror unfold.

Summary / highlights:

• The U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has provided HIV treatment to 20 million people annually and is estimated to have saved around 25 million lives. PMI (President's Malaria Initiative) is estimated to have saved more than 10 million lives through malaria prevention and treatment.
• The US aid freeze beginning in January led to the abrupt shutdown of many global health programs. They meant that, for example, hundreds of thousands [...]

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First published:

April 14th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4Zr5cKK7pkdz4HKsb/why-i-signed-up-to-the-10-pledge-in-the-wake-of-foreign-aid

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

After reading the comments on this EA Reddit post about the recent 80,000 Hours newsletter and similar stories on the EA Forum, about how difficult it is to secure a job in AI safety, even with relevant credentials and experience, I remembered an AMA with Peter Singer. When asked what he'd do today if he were in his twenties and wanted to significantly help the world, Singer responded: “I'm not sure that I'd be a philosopher today. When I was in my twenties, practical ethics was virtually a new field, and there was a lot to be done. […] Now there are many very good people working in practical ethics, and it is harder to have an impact. Perhaps I would become a full-time campaigner, either for effective altruism in general, or more specifically, against factory farming”.

This got me thinking: Isn't AI safety facing a similar situation? There [...]

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First published:

April 13th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/PBtbBqcsPeLFw8HbB/protesting-now-for-ai-regulation-might-be-more-impactful-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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This is an AI-generated summary of Epoch's recent 4-hour podcast Is it 3 Years, or 3 Decades Away? Disagreements on AGI Timelines. I have not listened to the original podcast, so I can't vouch for its accuracy. I assume some other people are also reluctant to listen to 4 hours of content (even sped up) so I thought I'd share this summary: there is a short summary, a medium summary, and then a long overview.

Quick Summary

The true divide on AI timelines isn't about if AGI will arrive, but whether fundamental agency capabilities represent a much harder problem than specialized intelligence. In this podcast, two Epoch AI researchers present contrasting perspectives on when transformative AI will drive substantial economic growth, with Erdil advocating for longer timelines (30-35+ years) and Barnett predicting much faster transformation (10-15 years). Their disagreement centers on how to interpret AI's uneven development across different [...]

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Outline:

(00:38) Quick Summary

(02:39) Upfront orientation

(02:52) Participants and Core Stance

(04:22) Key Areas of Disagreement

(05:22) Cruxes in more detail

(05:25) Pace of Progress in Agency and Common Sense

(08:21) Number of Remaining Bottlenecks:

(09:49) Scaling vs. New Paradigms:

(12:03) Interpretation of Current AI Failures:

(16:03) Detailed overview

(16:06) 1. Setting the Stage -- Who Has Long vs. Short Timelines

(17:27) 2. Divergent Timelines -- Economic Growth as a Metric

(18:44) 3. Previous AI Timelines Dialogue and Shifts in Erdil's Views

(20:25) 4. The Update All the Way Argument and Why Erdil Resists It

(21:36) 5. Agency, Common Sense, and Country of Geniuses vs. Routine Labor

(23:15) 6. Observations on Slow Agency Progress vs. Rapid Gains in Math/Code

(24:58) 7. The Argument That One or Two Domains Remain

(26:39) 8. Concrete Failures Illustrating Missing Agency

(28:14) 9. Hypothesized Roadmap to AGI -- But No Clear Path

(29:58) 10: Transfer Learning, Reasoning, and Limitations of LLMs

(32:15) 11: Economic Impact of AI vs. The Internet

(34:17) 12: Zero-Order Forecasts and Complexity of Progress

(35:58) 13: Role of Incremental Improvements vs. Single Genius AI

(37:41) 13: Multiple Agents, Deployment, and the Basement AI Fallacy

(39:03) 15: Historical Analogies -- War Games and Unexpected Complexity

(40:50) 16. How AGI Will Impact Culture

(43:11) 17. Beyond Utopia-or-Extinction

(45:10) 18. AI's Impact on Wages and Labor

(47:40) 19. Why Better Preservation of Information Accelerates Change

(49:31) 20. Markets Shaping Cultural Priorities

(50:54) 21. Challenges in Defining What We Want to Preserve

(52:21) 22. Risk Attitudes in AI Decision-Making

(53:57) 23: Different Explanations for War--And Their Relevance to AI

(55:19) 24: Cost-Benefit of AI vs. Humans Conflict

(56:33) 25: A Warning Sign--Different Arguments, Same Conclusion

(57:59) 26: Revisiting Core Assumptions in AI Alignment

(59:19) 27: Empirical Evidence vs. Abstract Arguments

(01:00:17) 28: Simple Models in Complex Domains--Lessons from History and AI

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First published:

April 12th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dBQWhoqcktxv3ZR4j/summary-of-epoch-s-ai-timelines-podcast

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post.

Linkpost from ai-2027.com (with permission of co-author @kokotajlod). For further discussion, see also:

• their LessWrong post with +555 karma & 106 comments as of now (April 11th)
• feature in the New York Times (behind paywall)
• co-authors Daniel Kokotajlo and Scott Alexander on the Dwarkesh podcast. 

This is the most well-researched report on a plausible AGI risk scenario that I (Manuel) am aware of. Consider sharing it, especially with people new to AGI risk and with skeptics, I'd love to read good critiques on this. Curious how plausible the scenario and its timeline seems to you, let me know in the comments!

Summary

(copied from website)

We predict that the impact of superhuman AI over the next decade will be enormous, exceeding that of the Industrial Revolution. We wrote a scenario that represents our best guess about what that might look like. It's informed by [...]

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Outline:

(01:01) Summary

(01:28) Daniel Kokotajlos Intro

(03:12) Authors

(04:08) Report

(04:11) Mid 2025: Stumbling Agents

(05:50) Late 2025: The World's Most Expensive AI

(11:12) Early 2026: Coding Automation

(13:26) Mid 2026: China Wakes Up

(16:26) Late 2026: AI Takes Some Jobs

(18:13) January 2027: Agent-2 Never Finishes Learning

(20:58) February 2027: China Steals Agent-2

(23:48) March 2027: Algorithmic Breakthroughs

(26:35) April 2027: Alignment for Agent-3

(30:04) May 2027: National Security

(32:27) June 2027: Self-improving AI

(34:09) July 2027: The Cheap Remote Worker

(37:04) August 2027: The Geopolitics of Superintelligence

(43:12) September 2027: Agent-4, the Superhuman AI Researcher

(49:12) Footnotes

The original text contained 98 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

April 11th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8iccNXsAdtpYWAtzu/ai-2027-what-superintelligence-looks-like

Linkpost URL:
https://ai-2027.com/

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

First of all, I would like to say this is not a complaint, and also not a compliment (but it could be). This is just an outflow; I hope some may feel represented, because I really feel a little bit overwhelmed and wanted to share these thoughts and see if someone felt like this in their first year as an Effective Altruist.

It's kind of sad to me that I've never made a post here in the forum, and my first one is a vent, but here we go.

There are so many interesting things to read that I’m pretty sure I won’t have the lifetime to go through most of them. There are a lot of books, articles, and blogs on how to really change the world for good. Sometimes I just want to absorb everything quicker, but not in an AI kind of way—I don’t want someone [...]

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First published:

April 10th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/voK2qPvyMZJBnrCex/my-first-year-in-effective-altruism

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Longview is now offering AI grant recommendations to donors giving >$100k / year

Executive Summary

Longview is offering donors a new service.

• We now advise high-net-worth (HNW) donors looking to donate >$100k per year to AI safety projects.
• For interested HNW donors, we provide access to our AI grantmaking team's top AI grant recommendations and our newly launched private Frontier AI Fund. We offer an introductory call to match HNW donors with grants that align with their interests and donor profile (e.g. geography, industry).
• This service aims to address critical gaps in the funding landscape—gaps that can make marginal donations several times more valuable than funding from existing donors. We recommend funding for:
  • Projects that the largest donors are unlikely to fully fund.
  • Projects that benefit from or can only take funding from donors with a specific profile (e.g. geography).
  • Projects that would benefit from increased donor diversity.
• [...]

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Outline:

(00:23) Executive Summary

(02:05) Background: Longview's UHNW Advising and Grantmaking

(03:08) Who is the new service for?

(03:26) What is the new service?

(04:29) How to get in touch if you know relevant donors

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First published:

April 11th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WRGBW8DMNhRGWA9xB/longview-is-now-offering-ai-grant-recommendations-to-donors-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

The MacArthur foundation is giving away a grant of $100 million dollars to “fund a single proposal that promises real and measurable progress in solving a critical problem of our time”.

A key requirement is that “Your budget must be a minimum of $100 million to be considered” so it's go big or go home. Obviously given this scale, only existing (and likely relatively large) organizations would be meaningful contenders.

Unfortunately, the deadline to register in order to be able to apply for this cycle has already closed (It was August 15th). Despite it being too late to apply for the 2024 grant cycle, this is the third time they have conducted this grant competition (with the prior rounds being in 2017 and 2021) and so I expect they will do so again in the near future (probably next 3-4 years based on previous rounds). Therefore, I [...]

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First published:

April 11th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7ng6GfR9vtsyc7rgr/usd100-million-dollar-grant-funding-opportunity-for-ea

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Epistemic status: Amateur synthesis of medical research that is still recent but now established enough to make it into modern medical textbooks. Some specific claims vary in evidence strength. I’ve spent ~20-30 hours studying the literature and treatment approaches, which were very effective for me.

Disclaimer: I'm not a medical professional. This information is educational only, not medical advice. Consult healthcare providers for medical conditions.

Key claims

This post builds on previous discussions about the fear-pain cycle and learned chronic pain. The post adds the following claims:

1. Neuroplastic pain - pain learned by the brain (and/or spinal cord) - is a well-evidenced phenomenon and widely accepted in modern medical research (very high confidence).
2. It explains many forms of chronic pain previously attributed to structural causes - not just wrist pain and back pain (high confidence). Other conditions include everything from pain in the knees, pelvis, bowels, neck, and the brain [...]

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Outline:

(00:41) Key claims

(02:03) My personal experience with with chronic pains and sudden relief

(03:59) What is neuroplastic (learned) pain?

(04:54) Strength of evidence

(05:45) Why we learn pain

(08:05) Diagnosing neuroplastic pain

(10:28) Case study: my diagnosis

(12:13) Belief barriers

(13:36) Treatment Approaches

(17:05) Resources

(19:07) Appendix: Chronic fatigue, dizziness, nausea etc

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

April 10th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/QGwSkMKpDgTsDpPNA/learned-pain-as-a-leading-cause-of-chronic-pain

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Introduction

Four years ago, I commissioned as an Officer in the UK's Royal Navy. I had been engaging with EA for four years before that and chose this career as a coherent part of my impact-focused career plan, and I stand by that decision.

Early next year, I will leave the Navy. This article is a round-up of why I made my choices, how I think military careers can sensibly align with an EA career, and the theories of impact I considered along the way that don't hold water. Military service won't be the right call for most in this community, but it could be for some. Hopefully, this is informative for those people. Furthermore, I spent a whole year being trained in leadership. Someone I met at an EAGx conference said the offhand nugget of Military Leadership 101 wisdom I gave them was the "best advice I received [...]

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First published:

April 10th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/f6XmkJ9PWFfn9GvqD/ea-reflections-on-my-military-career

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.