EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

The views expressed here are my own, not those of my employers.

Summary

• I Fermi estimate the past cost-effectiveness of Shrimp Welfare Project's (SWP's) Humane Slaughter Initiative (HSI) is 433 DALY/$, which is:
  • 28.8 times my estimate for the (marginal) cost-effectiveness of corporate campaigns for chicken welfare, such as the one supported by The Humane League (THL).
  • 43.5 k times my estimate for the cost-effectiveness of GiveWell's top charities.
• I calculate helping shrimps slaughtered via air asphyxiation is 21.0 times as cost-effective as helping those slaughtered via ice slurry.
  • Consequently, holding the number of shrimps helped per $ constant, it is much better to target producers slaughtering shrimps via air asphyxiation.
• I believe SWP's work on removing sludge from shrimp ponds might be even more cost-effective than HSI, but it is not clear.

Cost-effectiveness of HSI

The calculations are in this Sheet.

I estimate the past cost-effectiveness of HSI is 433 DALY/$ [...]

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Outline:

(00:12) Summary

(01:15) Cost-effectiveness of HSI

(07:57) Cost-effectiveness of sludge removal

(10:18) Acknowledgements

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First published:

October 6th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EbQysXxofbSqkbAiT/cost-effectiveness-of-shrimp-welfare-project-s-humane

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TL;DR

• We still don’t want you to donate through FarmKind, but we have a new way to get involved in our mission of solving the funding bottleneck for animal welfare: A build-your-own fundraiser tool
• With very little effort, you can raise thousands of counterfactual dollars for effective animal charities by sharing your fundraiser with colleagues, friends and family. In the process you can introduce them to the cause of fixing factory farming and the practice of effective giving
• Our ‘split and boost’ donation model makes it easier for people who don’t have a strong emotional motivation to support effective animal welfare charities to dip their toes into new waters

Introduction

Since launching FarmKind about two months ago, we've been really grateful for the excitement and support that the EA community has given our mission of raising new donations for some of the most impactful animal charities out there.

But... [...]

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Outline:

(00:06) TL;DR

(00:48) Introduction

(01:54) Why set up a fundraiser

(03:20) What makes this fundraiser different?

(05:20) How It Works

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

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First published:

October 4th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Nhs8aTA4jGcrwdJfc/farmkind-s-new-tool-to-encourage-effective-donations-from

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TLDR: I’ve recently started as a “Research Fellow” at Forethought (focusing on how we should prepare for a potential period of explosive growth and related questions).

I left my role on the CEA Online Team, but I still love the Forum (and the Forum/CEA/mod teams) and plan on continuing to be quite active here. I’m also staying on the moderation team as an advisor.

➡️ If you were planning on reaching out to me about something Forum- or Online-related, you should probably reach out to Toby Tremlett or email [email protected].

What's in this post?

I had some trouble writing this announcement; I felt like I should post something, but didn’t know what to include or how to organize the post. In the end, I decided to write down and share assorted reflections on my time at CEA, and not really worry about putting everything into a cohesive frame or [...]

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Outline:

(00:44) What's in this post?

(02:17) Briefly: more context on the change

(03:45) A note on EA and CEA

(04:32) Assorted notes from my time at CEA

(04:37) Some things about working at CEA that I probably wouldn’t have predicted

(04:44) 1. Working with a manager and working in a team have been some of the best ways for me to grow.

(05:33) 2. I like CEA's team values and principles a lot more than I expected to. (And I want to import many of them wherever I go.)

(08:39) 3. A huge number of people I worked and interacted with are incredibly generous and compassionate, and this makes a big difference.

(10:40) Some things about my work at CEA that were difficult for me

(10:46) 1. My work was pretty public. This has some benefits, and also some real downsides.

(12:31) 2. Many people seem confused about what CEA does, and seemed to assume incorrect things about me because I was a CEA staff member.

(14:58) 3. My job involved working on or maintaining many different projects, which made it difficult for me to focus on any single thing or make progress on proactive projects.

(16:03) 4. Despite taking little of my time, moderation was quite draining for me.

(18:26) Looking back on my work

(23:08) Thank you!

The original text contained 11 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

October 3rd, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/SPZv8ygwSPtkzo7ta/announcing-my-departure-from-cea-and-sharing-assorted-notes

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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(You can read this post as a Google Doc, which may be easier to share with global health focused non-EAs)

Hi all, my name is Benjamin Anderson and I am currently leading work to coordinate the UK EA community to make individual submissions to a consultation on UK aid.

The main purpose of this post is to ask for input on the arguments that we will be making, both feedback/expansion on the arguments we already have, and suggestions for further points. The secondary purpose of this post is to advertise the online workshop that I will be running on October 14th to support people to make submissions to the consultation.

What's the public consultation?

The Independent Commission for Aid Impact is running a public consultation on the future of its work, so that it can ‘maximise its effectiveness and ensure the government is held to account’. ICAI [...]

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Outline:

(00:42) What's the public consultation?

(01:45) Why am I coordinating submissions for this consultation?

(03:10) How you can help

(03:55) Core Arguments:

(04:39) Will this be impactful?

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

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First published:

October 2nd, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dRhxspr4SNTz4AEKp/help-increase-the-effectiveness-of-uk-aid

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Governor Newsom has vetoed SB 1047. This is a very disappointing decision, but it has still been heartening to see such a big coalition come out in favor of the bill as described in a press release from the bill's sponsors here:

A broad bipartisan coalition came together to support SB 1047, including over 70 academic researchers (including Turing Award winners Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton), the California legislature, 77% of California voters, 120+ employees at frontier AI companies, 100+ youth leaders, unions (including SEIU, SAG-AFTRA, UFCW, the Iron Workers, and the California Federation of Labor Unions), 180+ artists (primarily from Hollywood), the National Organization for Women, Parents Together, the Latino Community Foundation, various start-ups developing or using AI (including Imbue, Magic.Dev, and Notion), non-profit organizations, and more. Over 4,000 supporters called the Governor's office in September asking him to sign the bill, and over 7,000 signed a petition [...]

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First published:

October 2nd, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ujbGNgYmce2pbPesM/sb-1047-was-vetoed-but-public-commentary-now-can-assist

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TL;DR

• The number of AI Safety groups worldwide has grown rapidly, but there are many important uncertainties around strategy and tactics.
• This guide summarizes the opinions of the organizers of 13 AI safety university groups on 27 strategy-related topics, and is intended primarily for other organizers.
• The opinions were collected through a virtual meeting, a series of retrospective documents, and an in-person structured group discussion.
• These opinions should be taken as rough early guesses on these topics, some more confident than others.

Introduction

Within the last few years, the number of AI safety university groups has grown from nearly zero to ~70. Many of these groups have spun out of existing Effective Altruism university groups but recently have become increasingly independent. While there is a solid body of work on effective organizing techniques for EA groups, the field of AI safety as a whole is still largely pre-paradigmatic [...]

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Outline:

(00:10) TL;DR

(00:49) Introduction

(02:42) Methodology

(05:28) Early takeaways

(05:45) Programming

(10:35) Recruitment

(12:35) Outreach

(13:55) Collaborations

(15:45) Community building

(17:45) Group strategy

(19:06) Appendix A: Retrospective document guidelines

(21:16) Appendix B: OASIS poll and discussion

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First published:

October 2nd, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/M4QLjhua5KmmePtvi/ai-safety-university-organizing-early-takeaways-from

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is an update to my previous post on changes in the funding landscape for wild animal welfare. My goal is to provide context for people considering donating to @Wild_Animal_Initiative (WAI[1]), so I discuss the implications for the movement as a whole, but I focus on the implications for WAI.

Summary

• Background: Good Ventures is requiring Open Philanthropy (OP) to exit the wild animal welfare space.
• Recent development: The Navigation Fund (TNF) plans to fill the gap left by OP, at least through the end of 2026.
• Implications for the movement: This extends the NYU Wild Animal Welfare Program's runway by about 1.5 years. If TNF continues to support the movement, they could play a pivotal role both by scaling existing initiatives and by launching new ones.
• Implications for Wild Animal Initiative: This extends our total runway by 3-6 months. While we hope TNF will continue funding us [...]

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Outline:

(00:26) Summary

(01:40) Recent developments

(01:44) Recap: OP is exiting wild animal welfare

(02:04) Support for neglected animals

(02:39) Support for Wild Animal Initiative

(03:05) Potential future support

(03:41) Implications for the movement

(03:45) Sustaining the NYU program

(04:47) Keeping the door open to growth

(06:50) Implications for WAI

(06:54) Extended runway

(07:27) Remaining risk

(07:50) Reducing reliance

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

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First published:

October 2nd, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/BL7ennvpCZKXJbbYH/update-on-the-wild-animal-welfare-funding-landscape

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

On request of the Meta Coordination Forum 2024 organisers, I had written a memo on the EA community's relationship to earning to give (EtG) going forward. This is not a topic I had spent a lot of time on before writing this memo: the main purpose of this memo is to refer to the existing resources I’m aware of, and get a discussion started around some concrete questions and (speculative/weakly held) proposals. I’m sharing this here (with very minor edits) in the hope it will be useful for others as well.

If you’re interested in contributing to any work GWWC might do on earning to give (note: there aren’t any significant plans currently; our focus is on the 10% Pledge!), please reach out to [email protected].

Why (more) EtG?

• This has been written up well elsewhere, e.g.
  • Individual arguments for and against EtG here by 80k
  • Case [...]

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Outline:

(00:53) Why (more) EtG?

(02:12) Recent developments

(03:56) Open questions

(09:07) Proposals (speculative/weakly held)

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First published:

October 2nd, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uH4STiwcDy9i3fHxM/thoughts-on-earning-to-give-mcf-2024-memo

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Introduction

As Chief Strategy Officer at Rethink Priorities, I am sometimes asked to share information with those interested in supporting or collaborating with us, or just wanting to learn more about us, so that they can understand the nature of our work, our motivations, and some of our past projects. This post intends to provide an accessible high-level overview, including some key uncertainties and considerations that help drive our approach, along with some select examples of our work, which overall may serve as a useful reference.

Fundamentally, Rethink Priorities (RP) works to do good at scale, but we’re not committed to advancing any particular type of good or limited to a specific approach.

In this piece, we will briefly lay out some of the uncertainties people face when trying to do good, which are some of the motivating factors for our approach. Key uncertainties include (a) limited [...]

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Outline:

(00:09) Introduction

(02:47) On the uncertainties

(04:28) Our approach applied: Some examples of impact

(04:33) How RP embraces uncertainty

(05:23) Example 1: Aligning donors’ decisions with their values while accounting for moral uncertainty

(06:24) How RP works with decision-makers

(08:46) Example 3: Broadening moral circles

(10:12) How RP supports field building

(10:51) Example 4: Escalating the importance of shrimp welfare within the animal advocacy field

(12:23) Reflections and looking forward

(13:45) Acknowledgments

The original text contained 3 images which were described by AI.

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First published:

October 2nd, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hqqcBA2QSHeJxHmjz/navigating-uncertainty-how-rethink-priorities-can-help-with

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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This is a link post.

Agentic AIs—AIs that are capable and permitted to undertake complex actions with little supervision—mark a new frontier in AI capabilities and raise new questions about how to safely create and align such systems with users, developers, and society. Because agents’ actions are influenced by their attitudes toward risk, one key aspect of alignment concerns the risk profiles of agentic AIs. What risk attitudes should guide an agentic AI's decision-making? What guardrails, if any, should be placed on the range of permissible risk attitudes? What are the ethical considerations involved when designing systems that make risky decisions on behalf of others?

Risk alignment will matter for user satisfaction and trust, but it will also have important ramifications for society more broadly, especially as agentic AIs become more autonomous and are allowed to control key aspects of our lives. AIs with reckless attitudes toward risk (either because [...]

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First published:

October 1st, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/avZw2ceAB4P9KmaiC/risk-alignment-in-agentic-ai-systems

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.