EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

This is a link post.

This is an article published recently in the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy. The abstract reads:

Value capture occurs when an agent's values are rich and subtle — or developing in that direction. The agent enters a social environment that presents simplified — typically quantified — versions of those values; and those simplified articulations come to dominate their practical reasoning. Examples include becoming motivated by FitBit's step counts, Twitter Likes and Retweets, citation rates, ranked lists of best schools, and Grade Point Averages. We are vulnerable to value capture because of the competitive advantage that such crisp and clear expressions of value have in our private reasoning and our public justification. But value capture poses several threats. First, value capture threatens to change the goals of our activities, in a way that often threatens to undermine the value of those activities. Twitter's scoring system [...]

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First published:

October 26th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/b6w9jFzh7mrfbjafK/value-capture

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

I work at the EA Infrastructure Fund, and I'd love to hear people's ideas for what EAIF should fund (and why).

I'm particularly interested hearing ideas on this at the moment because

• I'm planning on publishing a list of 'projects we'd like to fund' on our website.
• I'm interested in finding ideas for particularly valuable projects, and running specific application rounds to fund people to work on them (akin to a hiring round). 

There's more detail on EAIF's scope here.

Feel free to email me at [email protected] if you have ideas that you'd like to share privately.

(If you're interested in receiving funding from EAIF yourself, you can apply here, and your welcome to reach out if you have any questions)

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First published:

October 26th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ejTYFAE2PWzjCFDHf/what-should-eaif-fund

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

@Elizabeth and I recently recorded a conversation of ours that we're hoping becomes a whole podcast series. The original premise is that we were trying to convince each other about whether we should both be EAs or both not be EAs. (She quit the movement earlier this year when she felt that her cries of alarm kept falling on deaf ears; I never left.)

Audio recording (35 min)

Transcript

Some highlights:

• @Elizabeth's story of falling in love with, trying to change, and then falling out of love with Effective Altruism. That middle part draws heavily on past posts of hers, including  EA Vegan Advocacy is not truthseeking, and it's everyone's problem and Truthseeking is the ground in which other principles grow
• I told Elizabeth that I would also have left when she did (if I had had her experience).
• I claimed that EA is ready for a Renaissance.
• [...]

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First published:

October 26th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/C8qrqYPDkmKHG3LMQ/ea-renaissance-or-diaspora

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TL;DR

• We’re announcing Kairos, a new AI safety fieldbuilding organization focused on the early career talent pipeline.
• We’re the new home for two programs:
  • FSP, which provides semester-based mentorship for organizers of AI safety university groups
  • SPAR, a program that pairs early career individuals to work on three-month AI safety research projects alongside experienced mentors
• We’ve opened applications for the next round of FSP (starting in December 2024) and expressions of interest for SPAR (starting in February 2025).

We’re excited to announce the launch of Kairos[1], a new AI safety fieldbuilding organization focused on strengthening the early career talent pipeline. Kairos will serve as the new institutional home for two existing programs: the Supervised Program for Alignment Research (SPAR), a mentorship program now on its fifth iteration, and the Fieldbuilder Support Program (FSP), a program in its second iteration.

We believe that growing and strengthening the infrastructure for [...]

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Outline:

(00:08) TL;DR

(01:40) Fieldbuilder Support Program (FSP)

(02:37) Supervised Program for Alignment Research (SPAR)

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

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First published:

October 25th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tTCyWthLyHk32WX9n/introducing-kairos-a-new-home-for-spar-and-fsp

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Key points

• We surveyed UK respondents, asking them to list (without prompting) the three factors they thought most likely to cause human extinction in the next 100 years.
• We estimate AI risk to be reported by 9% of British adults, at a similar level to Natural disasters (10%)
• The relative ordering of risks aligns well with previous polling from YouGov in 2023, using an alternative methodology. Climate change (58%) and Nuclear weapons/WMDs (42%) were top concerns, followed by Pandemics (37%).
• Some demographic effects were quite large, such as that men were substantially more likely than women to raise the issue of nuclear weapons.
• Polling suggests AI risk is not a wholly niche issue, but is substantially less of a concern to the public than cases such as nuclear weapons or the climate.

This post is also available on Rethink Priorities' website, or to download as a PDF here.

[...]

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Outline:

(00:05) Key points

(01:16) Introduction

(04:00) Methodology in brief

(09:06) Expected causes of extinction

(10:42) Associations between demographic variables and selected risks

(16:09) Discussion

(20:02) Appendix: Associations between causes of extinction

The original text contained 10 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

The original text contained 10 images which were described by AI.

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First published:

October 25th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zdsNJb5JdWoCv3DyR/british-public-perception-of-existential-risks

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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We just published an interview: Sébastien Moro on the most insane things fish can do. Listen on Spotify or click through for other audio options, the transcript, and related links. Below are the episode summary and some key excerpts.

Episode summary

You have a tank split in two parts: if the fish gets in the compartment with a red circle, it will receive food, and food will be delivered in the other tank as well. If the fish takes the blue triangle, this fish will receive food, but nothing will be delivered in the other tank. So we have a prosocial choice and antisocial choice.

When there is no one in the other part of the tank, the male is choosing randomly. If there is a male, a possible rival: antisocial — almost 100% of the time. Now, if there is his wife — his female, this is a [...]

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Outline:

(00:26) Episode summary

(02:00) Highlights

(02:03) The ingenious innovations of Atlantic cod

(06:27) The mirror test triumph of cleaner wrasses

(09:59) The astounding accuracy of archerfish

(13:10) The magnificent memory of gobies

(15:55) The tactical teamwork of the grouper and moray eel

(19:18) The remarkable relationships of wild guppies

(23:04) Sébastiens take on fish consciousness

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First published:

October 24th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/i4yfga2Bd5AraSrkK/205-the-most-insane-things-fish-can-do-sebastien-moro-on-the-2

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post.

GiveWell's mission is to find the charities that deliver the greatest impact per dollar spent to help donors decide where to give. To support this, they publish forecasts on expected grant outcomes. Now, Metaculus and GiveWell invite you to forecast and share your reasoning to help GiveWell help others.

Get started and provide feedback on GiveWell's funding decisions. $1,000 commenting prize pool. Deadline is December 1st, 2024.

• How much will GiveWell update its cost-effectiveness estimate of GiveDirectly based on the results of the 2023-2024 follow-up of the Cash Transfers Study by UC Berkeley?
• Will the study in Ghana find that RTS,S combined with malaria chemoprevention reduces clinical malaria more than RTS,S alone in the following age groups?
• Will the study of supplying eyeglasses to near-vision impaired adults in Kenya and India find a boost to household consumption of the following levels?
• [...]

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

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First published:

October 23rd, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jjPfA9Mi7DrkmgK2g/forecast-with-givewell

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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→ TL;DR: 10+ years experience in tech, operations and management experience - please pitch me why and how I can best help your org/project. 😊

Hi everyone,

I have the rare opportunity to spend the next several months on whatever seems to be the most impactful thing for me to do.

So I'm looking for your ideas and help in finding that. The requirements are:

• must be 100% remote possible from Germany
• must have flexible hours, but can be up 40h/week commitment
• must be unpaid(!)

This skilled volunteering/project/opportunity should optimally last more than 1 month, due to logistics/onboarding time cost.

It also should use my skill set in the best/biggest way possible; which mostly lie in Tech Management areas. You can find my English CV here.

Coming from a Tech background, I could e.g. help with planning, designing and testing your software project. Thus also consulting on [...]

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First published:

October 24th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/A5KisGkkjJtMqoFur/tell-me-what-to-do-in-the-next-months

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

It's been a few months since our last update. In addition to preparing for a big Giving Season event, here are some of the things we’ve been up to.

Site improvements

Notifications re-redesign

After evaluating the feedback we received from our notifications redesign earlier this year, we decided to overhaul the UI again. We removed the standalone notifications page and improved the notification icon dropdown menu, so that it stays open on click.

As a reminder, there are many options for customizing your notifications via your account settings page.

Advanced search syntax

We’ve started adding support for search operators in the search text box. Right now you can use the “user” operator to filter by author, and the “topic” operator to filter by topic, though these will currently only do exact matches and are case-sensitive. Note that there is already a topic filter on the left side, if that [...]

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Outline:

(00:15) Site improvements

(00:18) Notifications re-redesign

(00:55) Advanced search syntax

(01:39) Decreased karma threshold for adding/editing topics

(02:18) Footnotes on mobile open in a floating box

(02:43) Changing post/comment types retains your drafted text

(03:05) Animal Welfare vs Global Health Debate Week

(03:42) Team updates

(05:31) Other updates

(06:40) Share your feedback

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

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

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First published:

October 24th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/645ZrezNDYTDhd2RC/ea-forum-update-oct-2024

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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 for Machine Superintelligence.

OpenAI is disbanding its AGI readiness team — and its Senior Advisor for AGI readiness, Miles Brundage, just resigned after over six years at the organization.

The company defines artificial general intelligence (AGI) as “a highly autonomous system that outperforms humans at most economically valuable work.” And Brundage defines “ready for AGI” as roughly “readiness to safely, securely, and beneficially develop, deploy, and govern increasingly capable AI systems.”

So is OpenAI prepared for the thing it's explicitly trying to build?

No, according to Brundage.

In an accompanying Substack post, he writes, “In short, neither OpenAI nor [...]

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Outline:

(02:11) So what?

(06:37) There are some years where decades happen

(08:18) Brundage's farewell

(11:15) A call for cooperation with China

(14:06) Appendix:

(14:10) Where did the co-authors go?

(16:07) Full announcement text

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

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First published:

October 23rd, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7dyFRXRHpH7di87XQ/miles-brundage-resigned-from-openai-and-his-agi-readiness

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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