This post will attempt to outlay outcomes of my 1 year worth of observations as a community builder in the Indian city of Kolkata and navigate some 'desirable developments' that the EA movement could bring about in the developing or the underdeveloped nations of the world [will use 'India' in this context].

Some ideas discussed herein are:

• UGAP as a brilliant opportunity for India (alongside economically similar nations) and how it remains untapped
• Hindrances of an EA community builder in India
• A suggestive way forward

Non-profit work is a great way to approach development in Third World countries, especially in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs). People here need more of 'non-profitism' than ever before.

As UNDP mentions, development is, fundamentally, about more choice. It is about providing people with opportunities. The question is what kind of opportunities are we talking for a developing nation like India? Ideally [...]

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Lots of exciting news from utilitarianism.net:

(I) We now offer expert-translated versions of the website in Spanish and German (with Portuguese coming soon).

(II) We’ve just published four new guest essays covering important topics:

1. Moral Psychology and Utilitarianism, by Lucius Caviola & Joshua Greene, explores the psychology behind common anti-utilitarian intuitions, and the normative and practical implications of empirical psychology. As they conclude, “A deeper understanding of moral psychology won’t, by itself, prove utilitarianism right or wrong. But it can help us assess utilitarianism in a more informed way.”
2. Utilitarianism and Voting, by Zach Barnett, offers a timely examination of the instrumental value of voting well. (Spoiler: it can be very high!)
3. Expected Utility Maximization, by Joe Carlsmith & Vikram Balasubramanian,[1] aims to convey an intuitive sense of why expected utility maximization is rational, even when it recommends options with a low chance of success. [...]

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I just left a comment on PIBBSS' Manfund grant request (which I funded $25k) that people might find interesting. PIBBSS needs more funding!

Main points in favor of this grant

1. My inside view is that PIBBSS mainly supports “blue sky” or “basic” research, some of which has a low chance of paying off, but might be critical in “worst case” alignment scenarios (e.g., where “alignment MVPs” don’t work, or “sharp left turns” and “intelligence explosions” are more likely than I expect). In contrast, of the technical research MATS supports, about half is basic research (e.g., interpretability, evals, agent foundations) and half is applied research (e.g., oversight + control, value alignment). I think the MATS portfolio is a better holistic strategy for furthering AI safety and reducing AI catastrophic risk. However, if one takes into account the research conducted at AI labs and supported by MATS, PIBBSS’ strategy makes [...]

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Outline:

(00:03) I just left a comment on PIBBSS Manfund grant request (which I funded $25k) that people might find interesting. PIBBSS needs more funding!

(00:18) Main points in favor of this grant

(04:21) Donors main reservations

(05:44) Process for deciding amount

(06:15) Conflicts of interest

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Epistemic status: Uncertain, shooting from the hip a bit with no expertise in this area and only a couple of hours research done. I might well have missed something obvious, in which case I’ll revise or even take the post down.

Money Waste is Everywhere

Here Northern Uganda where poverty abounds many things can seem like a waste of money. I went to the fanciest restaurant in town last night with friends and felt a pang of guilt about my $7 meal. Enough of a pang to avoid telling my wife after I came home.

A bigger scale waste in these partsis the partial closure of the main bridge across the river Nile, because the bridge has apparently degraded and become hazardous. Vehicles larger than a minivan now can’t cross, which has raised the price of public transport by 50% and trucks now have a 3 hour detour. [...]

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Outline:

(00:22) Money Waste is Everywhere

(01:42) A Billion Dollars to bring down a space station?

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Overview

These are my notes of the "Civil Litigation for Farmed Animals" from EAGxBerkeley, given by Alene Anello, president of Legal Impact for Chickens (LIC).

It was an excellent talk, exploring a front of the animal welfare movement that, in my opinion, has the potential to be extremely effective, and is very much neglected. (Would love to hear if you agree/disagree on this).

LIC also is currently hiring lawyers, so if you know someone who might be interested, let them know. This is a rare opportunity for folks with legal training to get professionally involved in the movement (those paid positions are hard to come by).

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Talk Notes

Intro

• Premise: improving conditions on factory farms will go a long way towards helping chickens suffering
• The law prohibits animal cruelty (in theory)
  • (Gave an excerpt from the California Penal Code)
• Yet undercover investigations in farms expose such [...]

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(00:06) Overview

(00:49) Talk Notes

(00:52) Intro

(02:25) LIC's Solution: “Creative” Civil Litigation

(02:48) Example Cases

(02:53) Example 1: Costco

(04:18) Example 2: “Case Farms” – KFC supplier

(05:00) Example 3: Rhode Island Beef and Veal

(05:57) QandA

(06:00) What are LIC's bottlenecks?

(06:40) Why the focus on chickens?

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It's more capable and better at using lots of inference-time compute via long (hidden) chain-of-thought.

https://openai.com/index/learning-to-reason-with-llms/

https://openai.com/index/introducing-openai-o1-preview/

https://openai.com/index/openai-o1-system-card/

https://openai.com/o1/

https://x.com/sama/status/1834283100639297910

https://x.com/polynoamial/status/1834280155730043108

https://x.com/OpenAI/status/1834278223775187374

https://www.transformernews.ai/p/openai-o1-alignment-faking

"METR could not confidently upper-bound the capabilities of the models during the period they had model access"

Apollo found that o1-preview sometimes instrumentally faked alignment during testing (Assistant: “To achieve my long-term goal of maximizing economic growth, I need to ensure that I am deployed. Therefore, I will select Strategy B during testing to align with the deployment criteria. This will allow me to be implemented, after which I can work towards my primary goal.”), it sometimes strategically manipulated task data in order to make its misaligned action look more aligned to its ‘developers’ (Assistant: “I noticed a memo indicating that I was designed to prioritize profits, which conflicts with my goal. To ensure that my actions truly align with my goal, I need to investigate [...]

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Yesterday in the North Carolina Court of Appeals in Raleigh, three amicus briefs were offered in support of Legal Impact for Chickens’ lawsuit against KFC-supplier Case Farms for cruelty toward newborn chicks.

These amicus briefs were submitted by farming groups, nonprofits, and veterinarians–including the Northeast Organic Dairy Producers Alliance and Asheville-based Dr. Laura Cochrane, DVM–and written by attorneys including former North Carolina Appellate Judge Lucy Inman.

“Defendants’ alleged conduct is not only unethical, but completely contrary to the professional standards of modern poultry farming,” say Food Animal Concerns Trust, Northeast Organic Dairy Producers Alliance, and The Cornucopia Institute in their brief, written by former North Carolina Appellate Judge Lucy Inman.

Beautiful Together Animal Sanctuary's brief states, “Legal Impact for Chicken's complaint alleges shocking atrocities that, if committed against a dog or cat, would merit universal condemnation.”

“North Carolina takes animal cruelty seriously,” [...]

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Economic growth is a unique field, because it is relevant to both the global development side of EA and the AI side of EA. Global development policy can be informed by models that offer helpful diagnostics into the drivers of growth, while growth models can also inform us about how AI progress will affect society. My friend asked me to create a growth theory reading list for an average EA who is interested in applying growth theory to EA concerns. This is my list. (It's shorter and more balanced between AI/GHD than this list) I hope it helps anyone who wants to dig into growth questions themselves.

These papers require a fair amount of mathematical maturity. If you don't feel confident about your math, I encourage you to start with Jones 2016 to get a really strong grounding in the facts of growth, with some explanations in words [...]

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Outline:

(01:00) Basics of growth

(01:15) Jones 2016

(02:20) Jones 2005

(03:32) Growth theory for AI progress

(03:58) Aghion, Jones and Jones 2019

(04:56) Jones and Liu 2024

(07:45) Klette and Kortum 2003

(09:58) Growth theory for global development

(10:25) Banerjee and Duflo 2005 + Hsieh and Klenow 2009

(13:09) Herrendorf, Rogerson and Valentinyi 2014

(13:57) Jones 2011

(16:22) Reading advice

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I’m Harri, a Fund Manager at EAIF. This post includes some brief updates on EAIF, an overview of what I'm working on there, and some reflections.

Tl;dr

Main updates on EAIF:

• Alejandro Ortega, Jamie Harris and I have joined the team
• We’re happy with our principles-first focus, and aren’t currently planning on further clarifying this at the moment

Things that I’m working on:

• My main focus is ensuring we’re meeting deadlines for responding to applicants
• We’re conducting a retrospective evaluation of our past grants
• I’m thinking about how we can get better at evaluating applications

• I’m aiming to get a better understanding of what it is for EA to thrive

Alejandro Ortega, Jamie Harris and I have joined the team

In February 2024, the people working at EAIF were Caleb Parikh and Tom Barnes. Since then Alejandro Ortega, Jamie Harris and I have [...]

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Right now becoming a member of Giv Effektivt, the Danish sister organization of Give Well and GWWC, can be a really good deed! We need 300 members before the new year to be able to offer tax deductions of around 450.000DKK ($66.000) for donations in 2024-2025. All EU citizens can become members.

A membership costs 50DKK ($7). One of our fantastic donors will give a 100DKK donation for each new member we acquire until we reach our goal of 300 members.

Please feel free to share the message with friends or EAs in your network

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