EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

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(Audio version here (read by the author), or search for "Joe Carlsmith Audio" on your podcast app.)

We want the benefits that superintelligent AI agents could create. And some people are trying hard to build such agents. I expect efforts like this to succeed – and maybe, very soon.

But superintelligent AI agents might also be difficult to control. They are, to us, as adults to children, except much more so. In the same direction, relative to us, as advanced aliens; as demi-gods; as humans relative to ants. If such agents “go rogue” – if they start ignoring human instructions, resisting correction or shut-down, trying to escape from their operating environment, seeking unauthorized resources and other forms of power, etc – we might not be able to stop them.

Worse, because power/resources/freedom/survival etc are useful for many goals, superintelligent agents with a variety of [...]

The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

February 13th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xApddQBLzJocoBcmF/how-do-we-solve-the-alignment-problem

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post.

I wrote this to try to explain the key thing going on with AI right now to a broader audience. Feedback welcome.

Most people think of AI as a pattern-matching chatbot – good at writing emails, terrible at real thinking.

They've missed something huge.

In 2024, while many declared AI was reaching a plateau, it was actually entering a new paradigm: learning to reason using reinforcement learning.

This approach isn’t limited by data, so could deliver beyond-human capabilities in coding and scientific reasoning within two years.

Here's a simple introduction to how it works, and why it's the most important development that most people have missed.

The new paradigm: reinforcement learning

People sometimes say “chatGPT is just next token prediction on the internet”. But that's never been quite true.

Raw next token prediction produces outputs that are regularly crazy.

GPT only became useful with the [...]

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Outline:

(00:51) The new paradigm: reinforcement learning

(02:32) Reasoning models breakthroughs

(04:09) A new rate of progress?

(07:53) Why this is just the beginning

(11:02) Two more accelerants

(16:12) The key thing to watch: AI doing AI research

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First published:

February 13th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZuWcG3W3rEBxLceWj/teaching-ai-to-reason-this-year-s-most-important-story

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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the important bits

• EA North is a one-day summit for the local(-ish) EA community
• 📅 Saturday, 26 April 2025
• 📍 Sheffield, UK
• 🔗 website for more details and updates
• 📜 apply here!

what to expect

EA North will be a one-day event for up to 50 people. It will be hosted at the Showroom Workstation right next to Sheffield Station.

You can expect cause area meetups, talks, and all-day capacity for 1-1s in a separate room. The schedule won't be finalised until closer to the date. Let me know what content you would like to see by filling out the optional section on the application form! What is keeping you from having more impact?

There will be vegan food and drinks. If you require a travel stipend to attend you can indicate this when applying. This event is funded by EA UK.

Apply here!

can/should I [...]

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Outline:

(00:17) the important bits

(00:39) what to expect

(01:23) can/should I apply?

(01:59) what I think people will get out of the event

(02:43) other outputs

(03:14) whats with the weird Art Deco branding?

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First published:

February 12th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/23tNRQxXKDG4fDoxj/ea-north-is-happening-in-sheffield-on-saturday-26-april

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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This is a link post.

Sophie Gibert and I recently interviewed David Thorstad on our podcast, Bio(un)ethical, about epistemic issues related to longtermism.

And if you enjoy this episode, you might consider checking out others (e.g., Marc Lipsitch on pandemic prevention or Jeff Sebo on moral circle expansion).

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First published:

February 11th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6MSBe2LeA6wBvXRcH/podcast-with-david-thorstad-evidence-uncertainty-and

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Project for Awesome (P4A) is a charity video contest running from February 11th to February 19th, 2025. The public can vote on videos supporting various charities, and the ones with the most votes receive donations. Thanks to the support of the EA community, three EA charities received $37,000 each last year.

Please help generate additional donations for EA charities again this year with just a few clicks! Voting is open until Wednesday, February 19th at 11:59 AM EST. You can find more information about P4A in this EA Forum post.

On the P4A website, there are numerous videos showcasing different charities, including several EA charities. Feel free to watch the videos and cast your votes.

Here's how it works: „Anyone can go to the homepage of projectforawesome.com to see all videos. You can sort by charity category, pick from a dropdown of organization names, or search for a specific [...]

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First published:

February 11th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JWWWHiNxtvfEYPQgi/vote-for-videos-about-ea-charities-project-for-awesome-2025

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

When we built a calculator to help meat-eaters offset the animal welfare impact of their diet through donations (like carbon offsets), we didn't expect it to become one of our most effective tools for engaging new donors.

In this post we explain how it works, why it seems particularly promising for increasing support for farmed animal charities, and what you can do to support this work if you think it's worthwhile. In the comments I’ll also share our answers to some frequently asked questions and concerns some people have when thinking about the idea of an ‘animal welfare offset’.

Background

FarmKind is a donation platform whose mission is to support the animal movement by raising funds from the general public for some of the most effective charities working to fix factory farming.

When we built our platform, we directionally estimated how much a donation to each of our [...]

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Outline:

(00:50) Background

(01:41) What it is and what it isn't

(02:38) How it works

(04:24) Why this is a promising way to encourage effective giving for animals

(06:46) Case study: Bentham's Bulldog

(07:30) How is this actionable for you?

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

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First published:

February 11th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/nGQRBWyCAbcEYSyLL/using-a-diet-offset-calculator-to-encourage-effective-giving

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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TL;DR

HealthLearn provides accredited, engaging, mobile-optimized online courses for health workers in Nigeria and Uganda. We focus on lifesaving clinical skills that are simple to implement.

Our recent evaluation of the HealthLearn Newborn Care Foundations course showed significant improvements in birth attendants’ clinical practices and key birth outcomes. Early initiation of breastfeeding, strongly linked to reduced newborn mortality, improved significantly in the evaluation.

After applying large (>10X) discounts, we estimate the course is ~24 times more cost-effective than GiveWell's cash transfer benchmark. We are uncertain about the precise magnitude of impact, but a sensitivity analysis suggests that the program is cost-effective under a wide range of plausible scenarios.

Our already-low unit costs should decline as we scale up. This is likely to increase or at least maintain the program's cost-effectiveness, even if the impact per trainee is lower than our current point estimate. We also earn revenue by hosting [...]

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Outline:

(00:06) TL;DR

(01:50) Background

(02:48) Newborn Care Foundations

(04:16) Our Clinical Practice Evaluation

(04:48) All Models Are Wrong - Some Are Useful

(07:36) Substantial Uncertainties

(09:01) Modeling Impact at Scale

(11:53) Discussion

(14:12) Broader Implications

(17:02) Conclusions and Next Steps

(18:31) How You Can Help

(19:46) Acknowledgements

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First published:

February 11th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dA99mkei3mKrojDA9/healthlearn-impact-evaluation-and-next-steps

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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How important is animal welfare as an issue? And how should it be traded against other concerns (if we must)?

Work over the last few years has begun to highlight the case for quantifying animal welfare impacts in dollar terms – for the purpose of comparing different causes and costs and benefits – and arguably made progress with the necessary foundations to do that, including assessing how we should weight the experience of different animals. This post summarises some of that work, particularly 'Monetizing Animal Welfare Impacts for Benefit–Cost Analysis' by @Bob Fischer and others, and tries to impatiently rush to one end of this process by putting some $ numbers on animal suffering changes. Hopefully this post helps provide a useful walk-through of some of the concepts, makes the case for further work, and demonstrates why some people think farm animal welfare is not just a 'nice-to-have' consideration [...]

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Outline:

(01:13) Quantifying health changes

(05:52) An impact assessment example

(11:07) What is the maximum potential welfare impact of changes to chicken farming?

(14:26) Discussion / a few possible points of disagreement

(14:41) Welfare potential values for different species

(16:01) Questioning the use of human-based QALY values

(19:46) Population ethics and states worse than death

(23:03) Conclusion

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First published:

February 9th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bL99PnBJBGnquHmed/quadrillion-dollar-bills-on-the-sidewalk-quantifying-animal

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post.

In brief

• The Trump administration is infringing on Congress's power of the purse. Forecasters disagree on the importance and implications of this.
• An H5N1 bird flu variant (D1.1) that resulted in the death of a patient in the US and the hospitalization of a teenager in Canada has been found in dairy cows for the first time.
• OpenAI unveiled its Deep Research system.
• An asteroid named 2024 YR4 has a 2.2% chance of hitting Earth on December 22, 2032 and could cause an 8-megaton explosion.
• Iran's Ayatollah has come out against entering into negotiations with the Trump administration.

Geopolitics

The Americas

The Trump Administration's overhaul of the US Government continued. More than 8,000 government web pages have been taken down. Also, all USAID staff were placed on leave, as plans were announced to reduce staff from 14,000 to 294 people total. A judge has [...]

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Outline:

(00:15) In brief

(01:01) Geopolitics

(01:05) The Americas

(05:30) Middle East

(06:53) Europe

(07:34) Asia-Pacific

(07:53) Biorisk

(09:34) Tech

(12:25) Climate change

(13:22) Natural disasters

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First published:

February 10th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6sDJ4N8ngk98XtPbo/sentinel-minutes-6-2025-power-of-the-purse-d1-1-h5n1-flu

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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This is a link post.

This is the full text of a post from "The Obsolete Newsletter," a Substack that I write about the intersection of capitalism, geopolitics, and artificial intelligence. I’m a freelance journalist and the author of a forthcoming book called Obsolete: Power, Profit, and the Race to build Machine Superintelligence. Consider subscribing to stay up to date with my work.

Wow. The Wall Street Journal just reported that, "a consortium of investors led by Elon Musk is offering $97.4 billion to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI."

Technically, they can't actually do that, so I'm going to assume that Musk is trying to buy all of the nonprofit's assets, which include governing control over OpenAI's for-profit, as well as all the profits above the company's profit caps.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman already tweeted, "no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want." [...]

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Outline:

(02:44) The control premium

(04:19) Conversion significance

(05:45) Musks suit

(09:26) The stakes

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First published:

February 11th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7iopGPmtEmubSFSP3/why-did-elon-musk-just-offer-to-buy-control-of-openai-for

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.