EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

Crosspost from https://stijnbruers.wordpress.com/2025/03/11/how-to-systematically-reduce-wild-animal-suffering-in-the-near-future/

Reducing wild animal suffering is not easy. We need to do more scientific research on how to safely and effectively reduce wild animal suffering (by supporting organizations like Wild Animal Initiative). However, many people who care about wild animal welfare, are impatient and do not want to wait until we have invented technologies to reduce wild animal suffering. For those people, is there something specific that they can do or that they can support right now?

Perhaps they can support organizations that directly help wild animals, such as wildlife rescue centers. However, those wildlife rescue centers also help and release predators that are going to harm other wild animals. And suppose one helps starving wild animals by feeding them. If those animals survive, they can reproduce and increase the population of animals, resulting in more competition for food. Eventually some of those newborn animals [...]

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We are excited to announce the launch of the Abundance and Growth Fund, which will spend at least $120 million over the next three years to accelerate economic growth and boost scientific and technological progress while lowering the cost of living.

We’re grateful for support from Good Ventures, which has committed $60M, and from the other private individuals who matched them. We’re also grateful for a contribution from Patrick Collison, who helped launch the Progress Studies movement.

We launched the fund because:

• Economic growth has transformed global living standards, and further growth could deliver vast improvements to health and well-being.
• Innovation is a key input to growth; economists and our own researchers estimate that R&D and scientific research have very high social returns.
• We have strong evidence that it's possible to boost growth and innovation by removing existing constraints; there are many positive examples to point to where [...]

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This is a linkpost for a new paper called Preparing for the Intelligence Explosion, by Will MacAskill and Fin Moorhouse. It sets the high-level agenda for the sort of work that Forethought is likely to focus on.

Some of the areas in the paper that we expect to be of most interest to EA Forum or LessWrong readers are:

• Section 3 finds that even without a software feedback loop (i.e. “recursive self-improvement”), even if scaling of compute completely stops in the near term, and even if the rate of algorithmic efficiency improvements slow, then we should still expect very rapid technological development — e.g. a century's worth of progress in a decade — once AI meaningfully substitutes for human researchers.
• A presentation, in section 4, of the sheer range of challenges that an intelligence explosion would pose, going well beyond the “standard” focuses of [...]

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Forethought[1] is a new AI macrostrategy research group cofounded by Max Dalton, Will MacAskill, Tom Davidson, and Amrit Sidhu-Brar.

We are trying to figure out how to navigate the (potentially rapid) transition to a world with superintelligent AI systems. We aim to tackle the most important questions we can find, unrestricted by the current Overton window.

More details on our website.

Why we exist

We think that AGI might come soon (say, modal timelines to mostly-automated AI R&D in the next 2-8 years), and might significantly accelerate technological progress, leading to many different challenges. We don’t yet have a good understanding of what this change might look like or how to navigate it. Society is not prepared.

Moreover, we want the world to not just avoid catastrophe: we want to reach a really great future. We think about what this might be like (incorporating [...]

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Outline:

(00:34) Why we exist

(01:57) Research

(02:00) Research agendas

(03:13) Recent work

(03:34) Approach

(03:37) Comparison to other efforts

(04:14) Principles

(05:35) What you can do

(05:39) Engage with our research

(06:08) Apply to work with us

(06:25) Funding

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Confidence check: This is my field of expertise, I work in the field and I have a PhD in the subject. However I am not an expert in every sub-field that I’m covering here, and in particular I do not have much machine learning experience. This is a blog post and I do not guarantee complete accuracy.

I have done my best to make this readable and enjoyable for a general audience (on the nerdy side), but certain parts are very difficult to explain, so apologies in advance

Introduction

Both AI skeptics and AI boosters sometimes operate on the “breaking news” model of assessing capabilities. Boosters who think powerful AI is imminent can point to a steady stream of breakthrough achievements. Skeptics counter this with an steady stream of AI mistakes and flops. I think both things are important to keep track of, but they [...]

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Outline:

(00:52) Introduction

(03:38) How CEST works:

(08:00) AI failures

(10:47) The conference statistics

(14:47) So what is AI being used for?

(23:50) Panel on AI and quantum computing.

(26:27) What about LLMs and GenAI

(31:16) But will it come for our job later?

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Context

On booking 1:1 meetings

Responding to people and punctuality

Know your limits and commit accordingly

Actually commit* to your 1:1 meetings

Focus

On giving feedback

They know more about their situation

Give constructive feedback kindly

EAG is a professional event

Personal space and body language

Conversation topics

Eye contact

Some practical ideas for navigating eye contact in a 1:1:

To walk or not to walk

Closing thoughts

Context

One-on-one (1:1) meetings are widely recognized as one of the most valuable aspects of EA Global (EAG) and EAGx conferences, both anecdotally and in the survey data CEA receives. However, last year I noticed in the conference feedback forms that there was a slight rise in feedback about a small number of 1:1s that have left people feeling unwelcome or disrespected. From a preliminary skim of the EAG Bay Area feedback, this doesn’t seem to have continued, but I’ve [...]

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Outline:

(01:51) How I'm hoping you'll orient to this

(03:08) Epistemic status / what I'm basing this on

(04:09) On booking 1:1 meetings

(04:13) Responding to people and punctuality

(06:09) Know your limits and commit accordingly

(08:47) Actually commit\* to your 1:1 meetings

(11:16) Focus

(12:24) On giving feedback

(12:28) They know more about their situation

(13:52) Give constructive feedback kindly

(17:05) EAG is a professional event

(17:40) Personal space and body language

(18:54) Conversation topics

(20:08) Do not use Swapcard/EAG as a dating opportunity.

(21:25) Eye contact

(22:49) Some practical ideas for navigating eye contact in a 1:1:

(23:53) To walk or not to walk

(25:03) Closing thoughts

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[Cross-posted from my Substack here. I wrote this back in November 2024 but someone recently said it would be worth cross-posting here. Some things....didn't age so well.]

Grassroots movements can fall apart and die in many ways. One such way is having demands that are too broad, too intangible or have no defined endpoint.

When Social Change Lab did a survey of 100+ political scientists and sociologists, something that cropped up was the importance of having achievable demands. In the graphs below, you can see that these experts believe that it was the 2nd most important strategic and tactical factor (of the ones we asked about) contributing to a social movement's success. The second graph shows that experts also believed having a clear political goal was one of the most important organisational factors leading to success.

I wanted to unpack these findings a bit more [...]

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*Disclaimer* I am writing this post in a personal capacity; the opinions I express are my own and do not represent my employer.

I think that more people and orgs (especially nonprofits) should consider negotiating the cost of sizable expenses. In my experience, there is usually nothing to lose by respectfully asking to pay less, and doing so can sometimes save thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per hour. This is because negotiating doesn’t take very much time[1], savings can persist across multiple years, and counterparties can be surprisingly generous with discounts. Here are a few examples of expenses that may be negotiable:

For organizations

• Software or news subscriptions
  • Of 35 corporate software and news providers I’ve negotiated with, 30 have been willing to provide discounts. These discounts range from 10% to 80%, with an average of around 40%.
• Leases
  • A friend was able [...]

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[Crossposted from: https://www.catalyze-impact.org/blog]

We are excited to introduce the eleven organizations that participated in the London-based Winter 2024/25 Catalyze AI Safety Incubation Program.

Through the support of members of our Seed Funding Network, a number of these young organizations have already received initial funding. This program was open to both for-profit and non-profit founders from all over the world, allowing them to choose the structure that best serves their mission and approach. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to our mentors, funders, advisors, the LISA offices staff, and all participants who helped make this pilot incubation program successful.

This post provides an overview of these organizations and their missions to improve AI safety. If you're interested in supporting these organizations with additional funding or would like to get involved with them in other ways, you'll find details in the sections below.

To stay up to date on our [...]

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Outline:

(01:31) The AI Safety Organizations

(03:11) 1. Wiser Human

(06:32) 2. \[Stealth\]

(09:15) 3. TamperSec

(12:15) 4. Netholabs

(14:48) 5. More Light

(17:40) 6. Lyra Research

(20:00) 7. Luthien

(21:52) 8. Live Theory

(23:40) 9. Anchor Research

(26:25) 10. Aintelope

(29:10) 11. AI Leadership Collective

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Hi everyone,

About a month ago, I shared an initial idea for a “Dollar a Day” app—a platform that gamifies giving to help people build a daily habit of generosity. I’m excited to update you all on the progress my partner and I have made since then. We’ve rebranded the project as EveryDrop and have built a working prototype for Android using Kotlin and Firebase, complete with an integrated Stripe payment system. This post explains our progress to date and outlines the areas where we feel other members of this community could potentially help.

A Quick Walkthrough of EveryDrop

EveryDrop is designed to make daily giving as smooth, rewarding, and engaging as possible. Here's a brief overview of the app's flow based on our current prototype screenshots:

1. Splash Screen:

   
   The app opens with a clean, visually appealing splash screen featuring the EveryDrop logo. This screen [...]
   

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