EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

Disclaimer: Although I work on the Groups Team at CEA, I’m writing this in a personal capacity, and this post does not constitute an endorsement by CEA.

Agency - the realisation that you really can just do things.

TL;DR

Biosecurity needs people (of any background) who are agentic and have a high execution velocity and track record. The field is ready to absorb individuals who feel a heroic responsibility to build teams and start organisations that own key ecosystem gaps. You do not need a background in biology to be a great biosecurity operator. For every stage of your career, there's an unmet need in the ecosystem you can directly address. If you're still unsure, I'll personally pitch you on why and how to best help.

Why GCBRs

There's been extensive writing on the case for working on existential risks and biosecurity. I signpost some readings here and here that describe this better and more succinctly than I can. I want to focus on why now is the time to commit to biorisk. It's estimated that around ~160 people are working full-time on reducing the near-infinite ways in which mirror bacteria or engineered pandemics could pose existential [...]

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Outline:

(00:26) TL;DR

(01:01) Why GCBRs

(01:59) It's an exciting time for the ecosystem

(03:16) If you're still a student

(06:17) If you're early/mid-career

(09:08) If you currently work at a biosecurity org

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First published:

July 18th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sxBtJ2EPyBNSgamds/if-you-re-agentic-work-in-biosecurity

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Summary

Making AI safe and good requires many people to be ready to address crucial problems. However, our current “pipelines” for finding, training, and accelerating talented individuals who could work on these problems are “leaky”, meaning there are many ways they can be improved. This post shows my full overview of the AI safety talent pipeline: where people come from, where they go to learn more, and why this is impactful. I also describe some “leaks” in the pipeline: stages that are functioning below their best level, and might be improved with some effort.

As an alternative to reading this boring EA Forum post, you can instead get all of this information from this interactive visual I vibecoded.

Seriously, the visual is my recommended way of reading this post.

Introduction

A few quick notes on how to read this post:

I originally created this document as a “personal checklist” of fieldbuilding tasks that seem good to complete,[1] and I created the associated website because I thought it would be an efficient way to store that information. I am publishing this because I’ve learned a lot about fieldbuilding needs along the way, and I thought some people would [...]

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Outline:

(00:12) Summary

(01:12) Introduction

(01:15) A few quick notes on how to read this post:

(02:31) Categories of People

(03:00) The people:

(03:24) First Discovering AI Safety

(03:57) Funnels (How People Initially Learn about AI Safety)

(04:02) Standard Media Outreach

(05:10) AI Safety and Adjacent Internet Cultures

(05:46) Adjacent Activist Groups and Protests

(07:09) University Groups

(07:50) Fellowships

(09:06) Recommendations from Friends

(09:48) Events

(10:13) Who gets lost?

(11:12) Here are some projects that might be worth trying (in addition to fixing leaks):

(12:56) Really Starting to Care about AI Safety

(13:30) Events:

(14:48) Other Communities:

(15:10) Online Resources:

(15:55) Who gets lost?

(16:15) Another question: How can we make the process faster?

(17:20) Here are some projects that might be worth trying (in addition to fixing leaks):

(17:47) Upskilling

(20:21) Career Transition Materials

(20:47) What are we missing?

(21:41) Here are some projects that might be worth trying (in addition to fixing leaks):

(22:38) Job Decisions

(23:18) Job Decision Resources:

(24:56) Here are some projects that might be worth trying (in addition to fixing leaks):

(25:13) Theories of Change

(25:16) Technical Researchers

(26:03) Policy and Governance Workers

(26:32) Org Scalers

(27:30) Operations People

(28:20) Other Generalists

(29:01) Communications

(30:02) Additional Notes

(31:07) General Concerns About This Whole Framing:

(33:07) Ending Notes

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

July 17th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gYJJKea4DNs89iEbb/a-complete-overview-of-our-ai-safety-talent-pipelines

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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TL;DR

• University groups are among the most reliable producers of AI safety talent, yet dozens of top schools that could sustain a group don't have one.
• We're launching the AI Safety Seeding Initiative (aisafetyseeding.org) in partnership with Kairos to identify latent founders at these schools, support them in the group's earliest stages, and prepare them to apply to Pathfinder and launch this fall.
• You can help us find potential founders. If you know a student at a strong university without an AIS group (see this list[1]), refer us to them. 

There aren’t enough AI safety university groups

University groups are one of the most common routes into AI safety work: a 2023 survey of people working on catastrophic risks found university group involvement was the single most common career influence. Dedicated field-building organizations like Kairos exist largely to support these groups, and the ceiling for their success is high: groups like MAIA, AISST, and BASIS have grown from paper-reading groups into some of the field's strongest talent pipelines[2]. It is not uncommon for top talent to go from “vaguely interested student” to full-time hire in 6-12 months.

Kairos's Pathfinder fellowship does a great job of providing existing [...]

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Outline:

(00:12) TL;DR

(00:50) There aren't enough AI safety university groups

(02:57) Our solution: the AI Safety Seeding Initiative

(03:26) The team

(03:59) Here's our playbook:

(05:17) How you can help

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

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First published:

July 16th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Wjg5htFNeYkxNaRnk/help-us-launch-ai-safety-university-groups-by-referring

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

highimpactaliens.com - "80K advising calls" but for 30min debugging US visa work-authorization challenges, and an accountability support group.

goals:

1. help EAs and AIS folks over 30min advisory calls to quickly know their options to work in the USA, navigate the confusion (and frustration).
2. connect them to a Signal groupchat community consisting of people who have gone thru the process 

how you can help:

• please spread widely to your org's HR / People Ops team or people who are going through visa challenges to secure a high-impact job offer / wondering what options they have and how it might look like
• hoping to help especially people without the means to afford a lawyer consultation (though there are often free consultations available!)
• if you're an EA-empathetic immigration lawyer and willing to take probono cases, email me [email protected] 

Intake Form

project by me: https://tzukitchan.com/

*I'm not an immigration lawyer, work with a professional if you can afford it.

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First published:

July 17th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/S6BgaPpiAv3JX63vH/announcing-high-impact-aliens

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Adapted from my Substack, Funding Anthropalypse.

Short version: if you want a share of the coming Anthropic and OpenAI windfall - the $37bn+ that could be in play next year - the way in is to become 'legibly excellent', so the evaluators and donors that frontier lab staff already trust point them to you. The way to blow it is to cold email them. Despite previous attempts to discourage it, this is still happening, and EA needs to do better on this as a community.

Someone in a WhatsApp group recently asked for donation recommendations that they could pass to Anthropic employees. The subsequent exchanges reminded me of the episode in The Last of Us when the infected start pouring out of the ground.

Every person in the chat started sending their own charity/fund/pet project (including me, in fairness) and the questioner was immediately overwhelmed. Disappointingly, many of the suggestions explicitly did not fit the brief from the person asking, and were fairly obvious attempts to crowbar pet projects into scope.

As someone who has thought a lot about the Funding Anthropalypse (hat tip to @Pablo Melchor 🔸 for the name), I want to suggest a better way [...]

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Outline:

(01:32) Should I cold email people at Anthropic and OpenAI?

(02:37) How can I get noticed by frontier AI lab donors?

(03:34) Demonstrate excellence through trusted evaluators

(04:04) Have a credible plan for scaling

(06:21) How much time do I have to build awareness?

(07:11) What's so bad about emailing them anyway?

(08:49) I'm an AI equity holder and I'm overwhelmed. Who can help me with my philanthropy?

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First published:

July 16th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bHvamKxyBeWPFoJgn/how-not-to-fundraise-from-anthropic-staff

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This week is a big one for the lead poisoning community. The TED Talk I gave in April about lead poisoning just went live, and it's nearly at 100,000 views. Watch it here:

In the talk, I describe a crisis affecting more than one billion children, the toll it takes on their health and futures, and the main sources of exposure. Most importantly, I share our path to solving it.

This momentum did not evolve by itself. The EA community was among the first to recognize lead poisoning as both important and severely underfunded. That early support, through a GiveWell recommendation and initiatives like Coefficient Giving's LEAF, helped bring this cause to where it is today, and we are grateful.

Now the goal is to make sure everyone else is aware of this crisis too. Lead poisoning has been overlooked for too long, and this TED Talk is the kind of visibility that will help change that.

That's where I would love your help. If you find the talk compelling, please share it with your networks on LinkedIn, Instagram, or wherever you share content.

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First published:

July 13th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8pHXGAbGHkJWQ8EwS/my-ted-talk-on-ending-childhood-lead-poisoning-is-live

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Apply nowDeadline: August 9, 2026  
Program dates: August 31 – November 9

The Sentient Futures Project Incubator is a 10-week long program for people who want to do high-quality work on some of the most important problems of our time - from AI's impact on animals to artificial sentience to post-AGI transition, and more.

As a mentee, you can:

• Work with an experienced mentor on a concrete & impactful project (think: short-term research fellow)
• Push the frontier of nonhuman welfare through research, field-building, or real-world action
• Join a growing network of like-minded people motivated to improve the wellbeing of future sentient beings

What to expect:

• 5-10 hrs/week of independent project work
• Weekly 30-60 min call with your mentor + light async support
• 10 weeks, fully remote

Apply by August 9 or visit here to learn more.

Feel free to share with anyone who'd be a good fit!

❓ Questions? Reply below or write to us.

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First published:

July 14th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NrzNhmjRY3eisgLtd/apply-to-the-sentient-futures-fall-2026-project-incubator

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Summary

Back in November 2023 I posted here to launch Spiro and raise our first 198 thousand dollars. Two and a half years later this is an update and a fundraiser for the next step.

The short version: we've now reached over-5,900 people with TB preventive medicine, including over 3,000 children under five years old. Our early results have held up well and GiveWell made us a grant last year. Now there's an urgent opportunity in front of us: US funding for community TB contact tracing across half of Sindh province in Pakistan ends this month. The provincial government has invited us to expand our work - taking on those 15 districts and expanding to cover all 30 districts of Sindh, up from the 7 we serve today. To do that we're aiming to raise 512 thousand dollars by the end of July, the most urgent slice of a ~1.8 million dollars gap for 2026–2027. By our own modelling, our work is in the ballpark of something that would meet GiveWell's bar - around $5,000 per life saved. But if we want to avoid a gap in coverage on the ground after the US pulls out, we’ll need to [...]

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Outline:

(00:13) Summary

(01:55) What Spiro does

(03:35) Progress since our launch

(05:14) The next opportunity: all of Sindh

(06:22) We're fundraising for an urgent $512k now

(08:01) Risk and uncertainties

(09:37) How to give

(10:07) The future for Spiro

(10:27) Appendix: More on what we've done since Spiro's launch

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First published:

July 15th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hBoGLwKwMmizeRyZx/spiro-an-update-2-5-years-on-and-a-fundraising-ask-for

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Cross-posting from Substack. It's written for a broad audience not necessarily familiar with effective giving or altruism, so some of it may be a bit introductory for an EA audience. That said, I expect most of the points and examples will be new (and hopefully useful) to many.

Can we do better than traditional philanthropy and impact investing?

Nan Ransohoff argues that AI wealth is about to bring a “third wave” of tens of billions of dollars a year into philanthropy, and that we’ll need many more capital allocators and builders to make sure this money is deployed well.

I agree, but not with her underlying claim that “The real question is whether there are 50 billion dollars worth of initiatives that are compelling to these funders. If not, the dollars won’t get spent.”

The track records of both philanthropy and its sister impact investing show us that it won’t be hard to spend the extra 50 billion dollars: philanthropy in the US grew by $30 billion just last year and impact investing's self-reported assets grew by $100s of billions. What will be hard is to avoid the incentives that usually guide their expansion: catering to donors' individual [...]

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First published:

July 10th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4AfjuHrKCs9MYC9jk/the-third-wave-of-philanthropy-needs-a-new-marketplace

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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The Effective Altruism Opportunities board now lists full-time roles alongside internships, fellowships, and volunteering opportunities. We’re aiming for it to be a curated home for EA opportunities across all cause areas.

If you’re actively looking for a role you might want to check out the board, and if you’re only passively looking you might want to sign up for the newsletter to get a weekly digest of impactful roles.

History

The Effective Altruism Opportunities Board was originally aimed at helping people find internships, volunteering opportunities, and part-time roles to build skills or contribute to impactful work. It was run by students and young professionals for a long time, and has had multiple iterations over the years.

The Online team at CEA took over the board early 2025, and I started giving it focused attention beginning this year. In April we decided to start listing full-time roles.

Why we added full-time roles

After taking over the board I was exploring if the current niche was still what visitors expected and wanted, and whether it was filling a gap. The board's niche was defined back when 80,000 Hours covered full-time roles across cause areas equally (without focusing more strongly on [...]

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Outline:

(00:45) History

(01:18) Why we added full-time roles

(02:26) Numbers

(03:17) Other improvements

(03:56) We're looking to hire someone to own the board

(04:25) A visual timeline

(05:27) Ways you can help

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

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First published:

July 13th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2YdPfvQSRLcWwNXCc/the-ea-opportunities-board-now-has-full-time-roles

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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