EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

A witty politician once said, "The world belongs to the old. The young ones just look better." He had a point. Power, seniority, and influence tend to come with age. Walking around the conference halls this February at EAG Global in the Bay Area, the average age seemed to be in the mid-20s or so. While youthfulness has its benefits, such as fewer family or career commitments, openness to pivoting occupation, and volunteering, I believe we miss out on the power, wisdom, and diversity that older participants could bring. Even people in their mid-late 40s appeared quite rare at the conference.

Why is it important to have age diversity and more older participants?

• Power and Influence: Leaders and managers are typically older than their employees. The median age in the U.S. House of Representatives is around 58. Baby Boomers (now mostly in their 60s and 70s) hold about [...]

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First published:

March 14th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/y9nKRy6svuiEaDgHp/where-are-the-older-people-in-our-movement

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This post is adapted from a talk I delivered at EA Global: Bay Area in February 2025. While the style might differ from other advice on the Forum, I hope this proves valuable for leaders navigating challenges within EA organizations and projects.

TL;DR

• There are unique leadership challenges when teams are facing a seemingly insurmountable problem
• I’ve found four strategies for navigating crises:
  • Start by building agreement about the problem
  • Commit to the belief that your problems are solvable
  • Keep focus on things within your control

  • Invest in a high-feedback culture

A struggling store surrounded by snow banks and construction, generated using Imagen

Right now, in this moment we are in, I feel the intensity and challenge of our work. Across our cause areas, we are confronted with turbulent, overwhelming change. We are faced with short timelines for existential threats. Our projects that support the world's [...]

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Outline:

(00:21) TL;DR

(05:30) 1. Start by building agreement about the problem

(10:41) 2. Commit to the belief that your problems are solvable

(14:04) 3. Keep focusing on things that are in your control

(16:39) 4. Invest in a high-feedback culture

(25:25) Leading yourself

(26:23) The takeaway

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First published:

March 14th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/BiyXQrrCMxfbLaF3g/leading-teams-through-adversity

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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This is a link post.

Rapid AI progress is the greatest driver of existential risk in the world today. But — if handled correctly — it could also empower humanity to face these challenges.

Executive summary

1. Some AI applications will be powerful tools for navigating existential risks

Three clusters of applications are especially promising:

• Epistemic applications to help us anticipate and plan for emerging challenges
  • e.g. high-quality AI assistants could prevent catastrophic decisions by helping us make sense of rapidly evolving situations
• Coordination-enabling applications to help diverse groups work together towards shared goals
  • e.g. automated negotiation could help labs and nations to find and commit to mutually desirable alternatives to racing
• Risk-targeted applications to address specific challenges
  • e.g. automating alignment research could make the difference between “It's functionally impossible to bring alignment up to the requisite standard in time” and “this is just an issue of devoting enough compute to it”

[...]

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Outline:

(00:19) Executive summary

(03:34) Some AI applications will help navigate existential risks

(03:40) Epistemic applications

(04:04) Coordination-enabling applications

(05:09) Risk-targeted applications

(05:26) Other applications?

(06:08) We can accelerate helpful AI tools

(06:13) There's meaningful room to accelerate some applications

(08:12) There are promising strategies for accelerating specific AI applications

(12:39) Implications for work on existential risk reduction

(14:34) 1. Shift towards accelerating important AI tools

(14:40) Speed up AI for current existential security projects

(15:33) Work on new AI projects for existential security

(15:58) 2. Plan for a world with abundant cognition

(17:16) 3. Get ready to help with automation

(18:09) Further context

The original text contained 21 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

March 14th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6m6Q7jgB8iwXGYhXw/ai-tools-for-existential-security

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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For Existential Choices Debate Week, we’re trying out a new type of event: the Existential Choices Symposium.

How it works:

• Any forum user can write a top-level comment that asks a question or introduces a consideration, the answer of which might affect people's answer to the debate statement[1]. For example: “Are there any interventions aimed at increasing the value of the future that are as widely morally supported as extinction-risk reduction?” You can start writing these comments now.
• The symposium's signed-up participants, Will MacAskill, Tyler John, Michael St Jules, Andreas Mogensen and Greg Colbourn, will respond to questions, and discuss them with each other and other forum users, in the comments.
• To be 100% clear - you, the reader, are very welcome to join in any conversation on this post. You don't have to be a listed participant to take part. 

This is an experiment. We’ll see how [...]

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Outline:

(00:16) How it works:

(01:23) Brief bios for participants (mistakes mine):

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

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First published:

March 14th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bpqurdjZvyYmHoHiA/existential-choices-symposium-3-5pm-gmt-monday-17th

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post.

If there is an international project to build artificial general intelligence (“AGI”), how should it be designed? Existing scholarship has looked to historical models for inspiration, often suggesting the Manhattan Project or CERN as the closest analogues. But AGI is a fundamentally general-purpose technology, and is likely to be used primarily for commercial purposes rather than military or scientific ones.

This report presents an under-discussed alternative: Intelsat, an international organization founded to establish and own the global satellite communications system. We show that Intelsat is proof of concept that a multilateral project to build a commercially and strategically important technology is possible and can achieve intended objectives—providing major benefits to both the US and its allies compared to the US acting alone. We conclude that ‘Intelsat for AGI’ is a valuable complement to existing models of AGI governance.

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First published:

March 13th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RQWJ34JvgLHtQydg3/intelsat-as-a-model-for-international-agi-governance

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TLDR: Vacuum decay is a hypothesized scenario where the universe's apparent vacuum state could transition to a lower-energy state. According to current physics models, if such a transition occurred in any location — whether through rare natural fluctuations or by artificial means — a region of "true vacuum" would propagate outward at near light speed, destroying the accessible universe as we know it by deeply altering the effective physical laws and releasing vast amounts of energy. Understanding whether advanced technology could potentially trigger such a transition has implications for existential risk assessment and the long-term trajectory of technological civilisations. This post presents results from what we believe to be the first structured survey of physics experts (N=20) regarding both the theoretical possibility of vacuum decay and its potential technological inducibility. The survey revealed substantial disagreement among respondents. According to participants, resolving these questions primarily depends on developing theories that [...]

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Outline:

(01:25) Background

(01:28) What is Vacuum Decay?

(05:34) Why does vacuum decay matter?

(06:59) Approach

(09:14) Respondents

(10:58) Results

(11:10) Is the apparent vacuum metastable?

(17:45) Can we induce vacuum decay?

(21:51) What are the drivers of disagreement?

(23:58) Limitations

(25:17) Summary

(25:59) Acknowledgements

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First published:

March 13th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CFv82Xt2kuvvjNvP8/vacuum-decay-expert-survey-results-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Summary

Are you looking for an impactful role in AI safety? Look no further!

Kairos is a recently founded AI safety fieldbuilding organization with the mission of mitigating the risks from advanced AI by helping fill talent gaps and needs within the field. Our programs, such as SPAR, currently support hundreds of people going into AI safety each year, and we’re looking to scale up as we grow our programs and start new ones.

We’re looking for a skilled generalist or operations professional to help grow our organization as our third employee. This role would have a salary of $80,000 to $130,000 plus benefits, and we think this is a unique opportunity to get involved in multiple high-impact AI safety projects and helping us build our org from the ground up.

Apply here! 

About Kairos

Kairos manages a portfolio of different AI safety fieldbuilding projects [...]

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Outline:

(00:06) Summary

(00:57) Apply here!

(01:00) About Kairos

(01:53) About the role

(03:00) What youll do

(04:25) About you

(06:57) Why work with us?

(07:47) Compensation and benefits

(08:24) Logistics

(09:01) Application process

(09:24) Our culture

(10:20) Additional information

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First published:

March 12th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8asXYywfRP9yTpPfA/kairos-is-hiring-a-head-of-operations-founding-generalist

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TL;DR: Cost-effective giving can excuse moral slip-ups in daily life. I suggest pairing it with small, personal acts of giving to stay grounded.

I’m sharing this to reflect on my struggles and get advice from the EA community.

When I was in secondary school and sixth form, I used to never do home clothes day. I gained a bit of a reputation as somebody who didn't care about charity, eager to save £2 (home clothes days have gotten damn expensive recently).

There were other reasons; Most of the time I'd genuinely forget. I also used to have some really crap clothes, so I didn't want my friends to see those. But the main reason was that I was influenced by effective altruism. Because most of these charities were especially cost-ineffective, I would think 'that money would be better off spent elsewhere'.

But then: I wouldn't take up that challenge. [...]

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First published:

March 11th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NhFgZcJGBZJNAqCgZ/giving-more-has-made-me-less-generous

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Summary:

I am looking for feedback on a new tool being released by Yield & Spread called the FI Purpose Planner*. This template is meant to help individuals explore how different life choices—such as changing careers, donating more, or adjusting spending—can impact their Financial Independence (FI) and CoastFI timelines. My goal is to provide a dynamic way to model potential scenarios, making it easier to visualize the long-term consequences of various decisions.

After receiving valuable feedback on the FI-lanthropy Calculator I previously released, I’m once again reaching out to this community for insights.

(*Note on access: For the next week, the link to the FI Purpose Planner will be a direct link to the tool, after which I will revert the link back to my website where you have to submit a form to get the planner. It will remain free.)

Rationale for creation of the tool:

Financial Independence [...]

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Outline:

(00:06) Summary:

(01:01) Rationale for creation of the tool:

(01:50) About the tool:

(03:58) Example use cases:

(06:03) Tips for using the template effectively:

(07:21) Author background:

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First published:

March 11th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Dj32LqkvQMPTLXyCC/feedback-requested-financial-independence-purpose-planner

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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This is a link post.

We are pleased to announce the publication of Altruismo Eficaz, a repository of EA-related content in Spanish. (The site had been in beta for a while but is now officially launched.)

Content

The site features translations of many of the most important or influential articles written by members of the effective altruism community. The translations comprise the EA Handbook and dozens of other classic posts excluded from that collection. The site also includes translations of hundreds of (mostly brief) entries from the EA wiki, as well as short biographies of every author with published articles. In total, we have translated over 650,000 words of content.

All published articles and wiki entries are available in audio format, playable directly from the site and also on major podcasting platforms (including Apple Podcasts and Spotify). Some of the articles (e.g., Nick Bostrom's Astronomical Waste) are narrated by Martin [...]

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Outline:

(00:20) Content

(01:19) Design

(04:39) Plans

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

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First published:

March 11th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KJnb8tbo7jw6H3XvP/announcing-altruismoeficaz-net

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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