EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

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Executive summary

AI risk scenarios usually portray a relatively sudden loss of human control to AIs, outmaneuvering individual humans and human institutions, due to a sudden increase in AI capabilities, or a coordinated betrayal. However, we argue that even an incremental increase in AI capabilities, without any coordinated power-seeking, poses a substantial risk of eventual human disempowerment. This loss of human influence will be centrally driven by having more competitive machine alternatives to humans in almost all societal functions, such as economic labor, decision making, artistic creation, and even companionship.

A gradual loss of control of our own civilization might sound implausible. Hasn't technological disruption usually improved aggregate human welfare? We argue that the alignment of societal systems with human interests has been stable only because of the necessity of human participation for thriving economies, states, and [...]

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First published:

January 30th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vLDd4tit9gJtLmZZY/gradual-disempowerment-systemic-existential-risks-from

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Many thinkers worth reading wrote in past centuries:

• 1600s: Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz
• 1700s: Berkeley, Hume, Rousseau, Smith, Kant, Burke, Bentham
• 1800s: Schopenhauer, Mill, Sidgwick

Some of them wrote in English and their texts are usually presented in the original, even when they use archaic spelling, punctuation, and style. (This is in contrast to foreign-language works which are often translated to a modern style.)

For example, in the past there were more uses of the comma, such as

• Before any relative clause:
  • Dickens: “The objects he had lately pursued, turned worthless beside her”
  • Melville: “This august dignity I treat of, is not the dignity of kings”
• Before any clause starting with “that” for any reason:
  • Austen: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that…”
• After any clausal or compound subject as far as I can tell:
  • J Robertson: “Whoever [...]

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First published:

January 30th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7bASeA48kRR868oY4/you-should-read-hobbes-locke-hume-and-mill-via

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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TLDR:

• This year's Draft Amnesty Week — an opportunity to post half-baked, not entirely endorsed, or otherwise draft-y posts — will be held from February 24 to March 2.
• To take part, post your draft-y posts during the week with the Draft Amnesty Week Tag, and/or come to our co-drafting event. 

Bonus announcement - Debate Week and the EA Forum events calendar

I’m also announcing this year's first debate week! We'll be discussing whether, on the margin, we should put more effort into reducing the chances of avoiding human extinction and maximising the value of futures where we survive[1].

If you want to stay up to date on Forum events, you can follow our new EA Forum events Google calendar:

Click to add EA Forum Events Calendar

Screenshot of the Forum Events calendar, with Draft Amnesty, Debate Week, and April 1st (the day when nothing strange at all [...]

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Outline:

(00:31) Bonus announcement - Debate Week and the EA Forum events calendar

(01:11) Draft Amnesty Timeline

(01:15) Next week, February 3 - 9: Get ideas 💡

(01:46) February 17 - 23: Get writing 📝

(02:43) Feb 24 - March 2: Get posting 🎉

(02:53) FAQs

(03:05) What is Draft Amnesty?

(03:35) Why run another one?

(03:48) How Draft Amnesty Works

(04:28) How can I get involved?

(05:04) How draft-y can (or must) my post be?

(06:18) I'm worried my draft isn't high quality enough, should I still post it?

(07:05) What if I dont want to see Draft Amnesty posts?

(07:31) Who's the Draft Amnesty Mascot?

(07:50) Why not commit now?

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

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First published:

January 29th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dsdSnqf7CALBBwjkL/announcing-draft-amnesty-week-feb-24-march-2

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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The EA South Africa Summit took place on October 5th 2024 at UVU Africa in Cape Town. The event brought together 52 members of the EA community for the first time in South Africa. This retrospective is to give a brief overview of what went well, the impact the summit had and what we intend to improve on in the future.

Group Photo of Attendees of the EA SA Summit 2024 

The summit marks a significant milestone in the growth of EA in South Africa. It began in 2018 with a student society at the University of Cape Town that has since gained substantial traction. The broader EA community expanded since then, including an online community and the establishment of a WhatsApp community of ≈150 people and a mailing list of 850+ people. The community also organised and hosted the EA African Organisers Summit in 2022, gathering community builders [...]

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Outline:

(01:39) Objectives

(02:39) Key Takeaways

(03:52) Outcomes and Survey Feedback

(03:57) The impact of this event

(04:44) Intended Actions of Respondents

(06:40) Cause Areas

(06:43) Respondents' Average Rating of Cause Areas by their Importance

(06:59) Respondents' current engagement in the field of their most important cause area

(07:27) Content, time and community

(07:46) Conference content and logistics

(08:41) Additional Information

(08:57) Program

(10:59) Applications and Attendance

(11:21) Attendees' Level of Engagement with EA

(11:36) Application Outcomes

(13:27) Attendees' Country of Residence

(13:43) Costs

(14:29) Breakdown of Costs (Excluding Travel Support and Remuneration)

(14:44) Venue

(15:47) Catering

(16:37) Marketing

(17:09) Social Media Ad Results by Platform

(17:45) EA SA Summit Social Media Ad Costs (in USD)

(18:37) Photography and Videography

(19:10) Merchandise

(19:41) Accommodation and Travel

(20:03) Swapcard

(20:35) Team Composition and Collaboration

(20:39) Organising Team

(22:12) Volunteers

(22:39) Closing Thoughts

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First published:

January 29th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/h9yca8ER7tn2BYZFx/retrospective-for-inaugural-ea-sa-summit-2024-its-impact-and

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There's something deeply wrong with the world, when the median US college graduate's starting salary is a dozen times higher than the price to save another person's entire life. The enduring presence of such low-hanging fruit reflects a basic societal failure to allocate resources in a way that reflects valuing those lives appropriately. (If you personally earn over $60k, and agree that your least-important $5k of personal spending is not nearly as important as a young child's entire life, I’d encourage you to reallocate your budget accordingly and save someone's life today. Then, if you’re happy with the results, consider taking the🔸10% Pledge to make it a regular thing. This should be the norm for anyone who is financially comfortable.)

It's a tricky thing. If you really let yourself internalize this fact—that children are dying for want of $5000—it can be hard to think of [...]

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Outline:

(01:20) Psychological Defense 1: moral delusion

(03:23) 2: Compartmentalization

(04:56) Conclusion

The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

January 29th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fMEhpDrpbnHpcgsDE/facing-up-to-the-price-on-life

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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This article won't be news or surprising to many people here, but if you are looking for a gentle/popular introduction to what challenge trials are and why people participate in them this could be a good option.

I was pleased we volunteers were portrayed positively in the piece, here is the bit about me (though my symptoms are slightly exagerrated - I only had a somewhat reduced appetite)

1Day Sooner went on to promote challenge trials for maladies including norovirus, hepatitis-C and shigella, a bacteria that can cause dysentery. Its message inspired people like Mr. Delaney, the research assistant in England. In October 2024, he began his first trial, also on malaria.

He has since had bone marrow extracted from his pelvis as part of the study, and received the malaria parasite via infected blood through a cannula into his arm. Nine days later, his [...]

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First published:

January 29th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hmYBmvmGD7gknxmhW/nyt-article-on-challenge-trials

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Scroll for Español and Português descriptions]

Screwworm Free Future is a volunteer-led organisation investigating the political and scientific barriers stopping South American governments from eradicating the New World Screwworm.

We are looking for our first paid team member to lead this project on a full-time basis. This will be our first hire, with the work so far having been done by a group of volunteers who are excited to continue to support the Director. The Director will contribute with a combination of high-level strategy, key stakeholder engagement, and operational execution. This is a founding team role that requires someone who can wear multiple hats while maintaining straightforward priorities. We are especially looking for Spanish and/or Portuguese speakers. We invite you to apply if you're a good fit, and we would be grateful if you could share with people and communities with high potential fit for this role.

Find more [...]

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Outline:

(03:37) More information

(03:57) Logistics

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First published:

January 29th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rfxtgLqKAKQLzngeG/screwworm-free-future-is-hiring-for-a-director

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Rethink Priorities collaborated with the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) and 80,000 Hours to survey attendees of the 2024 Meta Coordination Forum (MCF; n = 25). In addition, we distributed a shortened version of this survey to a number of other organizations associated with effective altruism (EA), to try to estimate talent needs across a broader spectrum of other organizations.[1] However, this latter survey has a very small sample size (n = 7) due to a low response rate, so in the reporting below we have focused primarily on the results from the MCF.

The MCF survey covered questions concerning:

• Funding needs for core meta organizations
• What skills are most valuable for the EA community in the near future
• How valuable different kinds of hire are to both organizations and the community
• How many resources should be allocated to different causes
• How quickly should we be spending [...]

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Outline:

(01:14) Interpreting these results

(02:57) Summary of key results

(08:08) Funding gaps at meta organizations

(10:16) Valuable skills

(13:03) Value of a hire

(18:28) Different role types

(21:33) Junior vs. senior staff

(22:13) Cause prioritization

(25:52) Spending rates

(26:33) AI safety

(28:05) Comparing 2023 vs. 2024

(29:16) EAs target audience

(33:58) Growing the movement

(34:06) The ideal number of new visitors to EA websites

(35:40) The ideal number of new newsletter subscribers

(37:05) The value of high fidelity new encounters with EA relative to highly engaged EAs

(39:25) Differences in the expected impact of more/less recently recruited EAs

(41:24) EA experience

The original text contained 14 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

January 29th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LoGBdHoovs4GxeBbF/meta-coordination-forum-2024-talent-need-survey

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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The following is the annual year in review post Fish Welfare Initiative (FWI) publishes, cross-posted from our blog. As always, we welcome any questions or input anyone may have. We'd also like to add that we're especially grateful to the EA community: FWI, in many ways, would never have been founded and probably would not have persisted without the support the community has provided.

- Tom and Haven (FWI cofounders)

Message from the Cofounders

In our 2023 in Review, we characterized that year as one of setup: It was the year where, more than any before, we realized that our current programs probably didn’t meet our (at that point intuitive) thresholds for further scaling. In response, we launched our new R&D Department, with the goal of developing new interventions that would warrant broader scaling.

June 2023: FWI staff constructing and measuring the small ponds at our experimental site.August 2024: Those [...]

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Outline:

(00:35) Message from the Cofounders

(03:12) Countries of Operation

(04:03) 2024 Key Outcomes Attained

(06:46) 2024 Themes

(06:58) 1 - The Development of our 2026 (Two-Year) Goal

(08:37) 2 - A Primary Focus on Program Development

(09:29) 3 - Generally Improved Efficiency

(10:11) 4 - Improved But Still Challenging RandD Process

(11:47) 5 - Ethical Questions with Live Animal Studies

(13:14) FWI's China Work in 2024

(14:39) Operational Information

(15:12) OKR and Goal Attainment

(15:53) Staff Changes

(17:14) Financials

(19:47) Culture

(20:06) Board

(20:32) Note of Gratitude

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First published:

January 28th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/BMejvvfFjZLpATHZE/fish-welfare-initiative-s-2024-in-review

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This is a link post.

Note: This post was crossposted from the United States of Exception Substack by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post.

A good and wholesome K-strategist.

I am a climate change catastrophist, but I’m not like all the others. I don’t think climate change is going to wipe out all life on Earth (as 35% of Americans say they believe) or end the human race (as 31% believe). Nor do I think it's going to end human life on Earth but that human beings will continue to exist somewhere else in the universe (which at least 4% of Americans would logically have to believe). Nevertheless, I think global warming is among the worst things in the world — if not #1 — and addressing it should be among our top priorities.

Friend of the blog [...]

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First published:

January 28th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gBSmkRjYLcAvNPoDs/climate-change-is-worse-than-factory-farming

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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