EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

I’m Alex Cohen, Principal Researcher at GiveWell. From time to time, we get questions from people outside of GiveWell about ways they could help our research. I decided to write down a few concrete research questions that I think would be informative to us and seem doable primarily with desk-based research, rather than original data collection or field visits (though those would probably help).

These are listed below. They’re not in any particular order and are roughly similar levels of priority. While our team may work on some of these questions over the next year, even in those cases, extra input is still likely to be useful.

If you decide to take these on, I’d be interested in what you find, so please post your answers to the forum. Also, if you find these types of questions interesting, please consider applying for our Senior Researcher role.

“Red teaming” some [...]

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Outline:

(00:56) “Red teaming” some newer grantmaking areas

(01:53) Moral weights questions

(03:10) Burden of disease questions

(09:00) Indirect deaths

The original text contained 30 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

December 17th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2TcdiAFSTuS6jBvNL/research-i-d-like-to-see-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Summary

You can now express interest in joining Catalyze Impact's seed funding networks for AI safety organizations. We offer a non-profit Seed Funding Circle for individuals and organizations with $15k+ annual donation capacity and an Investor Network for VCs and angel investors with $20k+ annual investment capacity. Joining does not create any obligation to invest or donate. For more information, please visit this page.

Expression of interest form

With the AI safety field still being remarkably small relative to the challenge it addresses, new organizations can have an outsized impact on humanity's future. At Catalyze, an incubator for AI safety organizations, we aim to facilitate this. We are currently open to expressions of interest to join either or both of our funding networks.

Seed Funding Circle 

This network focuses on providing early-stage funding to exceptional non-profit founding teams which aim for large contributions to the AI safety field. A [...]

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Outline:

(00:41) Expression of interest form

(01:07) Seed Funding Circle

(02:09) Investor Network

(02:59) Practical Details

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First published:

December 16th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/oTuesHYxdXZm76d5k/ai-safety-seed-funding-network-join-as-a-donor-or-investor

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a summary of a research report that investigates costs of production at large Black Soldier Fly Larvae (BSFL) producers, and explores whether they can displace fishmeal as a feed ingredient at scale. You can request access to the full report here.

Key points

• Over $1 billion has been invested into Black Soldier Fly Larvae (BSFL) farming since 2014.
• BSFL producers have ambitions to displace fishmeal as a feed ingredient. If successful, this could unlock growth in aquaculture.
• We investigated costs of production at four of the largest BSFL producers to better understand the prospects of them making major inroads into aquaculture feed.
• We found production costs at these firms will most likely be too high to displace fishmeal.
• We anticipate a smaller BSFL sector focused on high-value market segments rather than bulk feed commodities.
• Our analysis has lots of caveats, including generalizability across different business models [...]

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Outline:

(00:25) Key points

(01:25) Executive summary

(05:30) Acknowledgments

The original text contained 2 images which were described by AI.

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First published:

December 17th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gJa6ga3jAd9uNxadP/can-black-soldier-fly-larvae-bsfl-producers-displace

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Note that just because a staff member has not written a section for this document does not necessarily mean they are not donating this year. See, for example, Still Donating Half by Julia Wise. Also, some staff might comment later with their final allocations.

Angelina Li

• I’ve been a GWWC pledger since 2016. Starting last year, I decided to pay more attention to my donations again after not prioritizing them as much in 2022. I donated ~17.5% of my pre-tax income last year to a mix of animal + GCR orgs, and I think I'll manage ~15-20% this year.
• For the first time, I'm combining my donations with my partner (who's also a pledger), and for tax reasons, we’re bunching our donations & putting money into a shared donor advised fund before the end of the calendar year. This means we’ll decide on an amount to donate now, but [...]

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Outline:

(00:26) Angelina Li

(01:19) Amy Labenz

(02:12) Arthur Malone

(03:55) Jordan Pieters

(04:40) Niko Bjork

(05:27) Ollie Base

(06:51) Shelby McIntyre

(08:40) Alex Rahl-Kaplan

(10:37) Agnes Stenlund

(11:11) JP Addison

(11:49) Sarah Cheng

(12:51) Toby Tremlett

(14:09) Catherine Low

(16:18) Emma Richter

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First published:

December 17th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/cW5NZbXsoKguquKgg/where-cea-staff-are-donating-in-2024

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Summary

Non-Trivial helps bright high school students start solving the world's most pressing problems.

Since our first fellowship 2 years ago, we’ve received over 35,000 applications and our alums have already gone on to co-author reports for the UN and publish at NeurIPS.

We’re now facing an unexpected funding gap of ~$360k for 2025 and ~$1M for 2026.

This post is an abridged review of 2024, 2025 plans, and our funding gaps. If you’d like any more information, or you can help out, please email our founder Peter ([email protected]).

About Non-Trivial

Many young people make crucial decisions that guide the rest of their lives. Non-Trivial empowers exceptional high schoolers to grapple with the question "How can I make a meaningful difference?" before facing option-constraining decisions, like what to study at university.

Our participants conduct impact-oriented and (importantly!) self-directed research on a topic that interests them. We support them [...]

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Outline:

(00:07) Summary

(00:52) About Non-Trivial

(02:26) 2024 review

(06:04) Track record

(07:24) Outlier talent

(07:51) Gender

(08:15) Race/ethnicity

(08:47) Program performance

(09:13) Our 2025 plans

(10:31) Funding gaps

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

The original text contained 2 images which were described by AI.

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First published:

December 17th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yTfpbqJZpYokicQiK/2024-review-2025-plans-and-funding-gap-for-non-trivial

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At this time of year, we forum-dwellers tend to spend quite a bit of energy thinking about where we should donate. This year especially, the forum team has outdone themselves, running an interesting debate week on "global health vs. animals" —global health was trounced.. I still love you though, bed-net warriors! — followed by an action packed Giving Season:

While I personally find it very interesting to think about what the very best marginal donation would be, I think it's important to remember where the bigger opportunity lies..

Consider this: When we fine-tune our own donations or help other EAs do the same, the gains are probably quite modest. While there are likely meaningful differences between top charities[1], we can be far less certain about which charity is the very best than we can about which are in the top-tier and which are in the "meh"-tier. So factoring in [...]

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Outline:

(01:59) You dont own the most valuable dollars, but you can still influence them!

(03:19) Tips for making it happen

(04:54) The key ask, once more:

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

The original text contained 1 image which was described by AI.

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First published:

December 17th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/63RuoxvpCbaYKTYM6/the-most-valuable-dollars-aren-t-owned-by-us

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Veganism is not the most effective way to help the world. Donating to animal welfare organizations is far more impactful. According to a calculation on an Effective Altruism (EA) forum, a donation of 5 cents to effective animal welfare organizations can offset the suffering caused by eating meat. Using this calculation, a lifetime of veganism is equivalent in expected utility (EU) to approximately $1,000 in donations. Personally, I would rather donate $1,000 than commit to a lifetime of veganism. Moreover, I believe that focusing my efforts on earning to give or pursuing a high-impact career would further increase my expected utility. Therefore, veganism does not make sense for someone aiming to maximize their EU.

The only other factor stopping me from eating meat was a deontological side-constraint. In other words, I wasn’t sure if I was comfortable with offsetting morally repugnant actions in the pursuit of EU maximization. However [...]

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Outline:

(02:59) My Problem with Deontology and Deontological Side-Constraints

(03:39) More Questions About Deontology

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First published:

December 16th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/XZiFoJTXX4rYcvkE4/my-problem-with-veganism-and-deontology

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

THL UK protestors at the Royal Courts of Justice, Oct 2024. Credit: SammiVegan. 

Four years of work has led to his moment. When we started this, we knew it would be big. A battle of David versus Goliath as we took the Government to court. But we also knew that it was the right thing to do, to fight for the millions of Frankenchickens that were suffering because of the way that they had been bred. And on Friday 13th December, we got the result we had been nervously waiting for.

Represented by Advocates for Animals, four years ago we started the process to take the Government to court, arguing that fast-growing chicken breeds, known as Frankenchickens, are illegal under current animal welfare laws.

After a loss, and an appeal, in October 2024 we entered the courts once more. And the judgment is now in on one of the most [...]

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First published:

December 16th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DuT7AFuBkGjRkRC6i/news-from-thl-uk-judge-rules-on-our-historic-frankenchicken

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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This is a link post.

I recently completed the AI Safety Fundamentals governance course. For my project, which won runner-up in the Technical Governance Explainer category, I summarised the safety frameworks published by OpenAI, Anthropic and Deepmind, and offered some of my high-level thoughts. Posting it here in case it can be of any use to people!

A handful of tech companies are competing to build advanced, general-purpose AI systems that radically outsmart all of humanity. Each acknowledges that this will be a highly – perhaps existentially – dangerous undertaking. How do they plan to mitigate these risks?

Three industry leaders have released safety frameworks outlining how they intend to avoid catastrophic outcomes. They are OpenAI's Preparedness Framework, Anthropic's Responsible Scaling Policy and Google DeepMind's Frontier Safety Framework.

Despite having been an avid follower of AI safety issues for almost two years now, and having heard plenty about these safety [...]

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Outline:

(02:04) What are they?

(03:14) Thresholds and triggers

(06:39) Evaluations

(10:06) Mitigations

(10:25) Security standards

(12:40) Deployment standards

(14:53) Development standards

(15:49) My thoughts and open questions

(16:09) These are not ‘plans’

(19:08) What are acceptable levels of risk?

(21:25) The get-out-of-RSP-free card

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

The original text contained 4 images which were described by AI.

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First published:

December 16th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fsxQGjhYecDoHshxX/i-read-every-major-ai-lab-s-safety-plan-so-you-don-t-have-to

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Summary

This post shares my personal experience with CEA's Community Health team, focusing on how they helped me navigate a difficult situation in 2021. I aim to provide others with a concrete example of when and how to reach out to Community Health, supplementing the information on their website with a first-hand account. I also share why their work has helped me remain engaged with the EA community. Further, I try to highlight why a centralised Community Health team is crucial for identifying patterns of concerning behaviour.

Introduction

The Community Health team at the Centre for Effective Altruism has been an important source of support throughout my EA journey. As stated on their website, they “aim to strengthen the effective altruism community's ability to fulfil its potential for impact, and to address problems that could prevent that.” I don’t know the details of their day-to-day, but I understand that [...]

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Outline:

(00:05) Summary

(00:41) Introduction

(01:32) My goals with this post are:

(02:05) My experience in 2021

(05:17) Three personal takeaways

(07:22) What is the team like now?

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First published:

December 16th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/aTmzt4TbTx7hiSAN8/my-experience-with-the-community-health-team-at-cea

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.