EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

This week, Open Phil launched the Lead Exposure Action Fund (LEAF) and became a founding partner of the Partnership for a Lead-Free Future (PLF). Given the interest around these initiatives, I thought an AMA might be a good way to share more.

At Open Phil, I’ve been fortunate to oversee our work on lead exposure with Santosh Harish and have been involved in some of the recent developments. I’ve particularly focused on helping get LEAF off the ground and contributing to the early stages of the PLF.

If you’re interested in learning more, here are a few useful resources:

• Blog post announcing the Lead Exposure Action Fund
• An op-ed on lead exposure in the Washington Post, co-authored by Alexander Berger and Administrator Samantha Power
• The Lead Exposure Action Fund website
• A video of the PLF launch, featuring remarks from Jill Biden and several global leaders

A bit more about [...]

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I’m on the Community Health team at CEA, and am an advisor for EA Funds. My perspective here is informed by my experience in these roles, but I don’t speak for my colleagues - their experiences and preferences might be quite different.

There's been some discussion about the value of decision-makers (e.g. grantmakers, hiring managers, advisers) giving feedback to community members they interact with, and some discussion on the costs of giving feedback (I broadly agree with what Linch says in this post).

In my early days in EA I was desperate for decision-makers to give a whole lot more feedback – some of my applications were rejected and I didn’t understand why (at least not well enough to know what to do next). Many of my EA friends had similar experiences. I’ve now been involved in decision-making and advising roles for 4.5 years – initially in the [...]

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(02:11) Useful things for people requesting/receiving feedback to know

(04:41) Things that have made me more happy to give feedback.

(06:27) Things that make me more reluctant to share feedback

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*** LINK TO DATABASE ***

In short

The Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED) is a nonprofit food security organization that aims to help build resilience to global catastrophic food system failures. ALLFED has a mature volunteering system for those contributors who want to invest their time in reducing global catastrophic risk. We have prepared a new database of research projects for volunteers interested in food security for global catastrophic scenarios, which you can find here. You can send your expression of interest for these projects in this form.

Screenshot of the database

Context

The Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED) is a nonprofit food security organization that aims to help build resilience to global catastrophic food shocks. We work on research, policy, and technology development: research to find the most promising interventions against these catastrophes, policy to transfer our recommendations to decision [...]

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(00:07) \*\*\* LINK TO DATABASE \*\*\*

(00:15) In short

(01:03) Context

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Dear EA Community,

I’m thrilled to announce that I have recently been appointed as the Director of Research at Plateau State University (PLASU), Nigeria. This is an exciting opportunity to lead and foster research development, build capacity, and encourage innovation across various fields. As someone deeply committed to impactful research, I see this role as a platform to expand and enhance the research ecosystem both locally and globally.

My Vision:

Strengthening Research Capacity:I will prioritize running workshops, training programs, and mentorship initiatives for postgraduate students and early-career researchers to help them navigate the complexities of academia and build their research skills.

Fostering Collaborative Research:I aim to create opportunities for collaboration with global research communities, institutions, and experts, particularly in areas like health, climate resilience, agriculture, and education, to tackle critical global and local challenges.

[...]

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On the 26th of September, each year, we celebrate Petrov day.

Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov was a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defence Force, working at Oko, the Soviet missile defence program. On this day in 1983, during a night shift, Petrov was on duty when his monitor alerted him of a missile inbound from the US. He froze.

"The siren howled, but I just sat there for a few seconds, staring at the big, back-lit, red screen with the word 'launch' on it," he says. (source: BBC News interview)

More missile warnings came in. It was Petrov's job to trust the computer system and relay its message up the command chain. If he had, the USSR would likely have started a retaliatory strike on the US.

But Petrov knew the computer system, and doubted that a true missile warning would have passed through [...]

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About The Event

CEEALAR (https://ceealar.org), née EA Hotel, is making the AI Winter we want to see in the world. Our very first ‘AI Winter’ season is now happening at our coliving/coworking hub in Blackpool, UK where we can host up to 30 people.

The season will last until end of January, and over that time we're looking to host a mix of grantees (individuals and teams) from each of the 'core' domains of AI Safety - technical research, conceptual research, governance/policy, outreach and field building.

We imagine some people will be staying with us for more or less the whole season (or longer! Our max stay is 12 months), while others will be staying for weeks or days to participate in smaller projects, hackathons or unconferences.

Our goal is to provide a critical mass of concentrated activity, workshops, bootcamps, in an environment with high potential for serendipitous [...]

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Outline:

(00:03) About The Event

(01:05) About Us

(01:33) Interested?

(01:44) YOU CAN MAKE AI WINTER HAPPEN

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Hi all! I'm creating a deep dive podcast episode about (the original) Leverage Research (for my podcast, Clearer Thinking). If you worked at (or currently work at) Leverage, or you have had experiences connected to Leverage, and you would like to either potentially:

(1) do an interview for the podcast

(2) talk to me totally off the record about your experiences (i.e., with your privacy totally protected)

Please reach out privately by using my contact form here. Or you can email our podcast (but multiple team members who work on the podcast will see it) here:

I have known many people involved in Leverage over the years (from its founding to the present day), and so I have heard a great deal of information about it from others. But I've never been a member of it, and there are still many things I don't know about it.

The [...]

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TLDR: We made a retreat which was not funded but was paid by attendees. We managed to find a very nice place very affordably, and the organization was quite light for quite nice results. We'd encourage other clubs to consider whether they could make meet-ups (either within the country or between countries) which are light on ops, don't require funding, but are a meaningful time for attendees.

In August 2024, EA Serbia and EA Hungary organized a self-funded, three-day EA Serbia retreat, bringing together 17 participants from 6 countries: Serbia, Romania, Hungary, and further afield, including Russia, Kenya, and Spain.

The retreat aimed to make and strengthen connections across regional EA communities, allowing participants to collaborate, exchange ideas, and engage deeply with the movement's core principles, as well as learn from how things are done in other countries.

The event was hosted at Majkin Salaš, an ethno venue [...]

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(01:42) Cost and Logistics:

(02:05) Program and Structure:

(03:04) What went well:

(03:53) What could have been better:

(05:02) Highlights for Other EA Communities to Consider:

(06:41) Next Steps and Future Plans:

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I like the epistemic norm of having multiple working hypotheses, and I think it is a valuable norm/skill for EAs to cultivate. Last night two of my kids gave me a nice reminder that even if we value an epistemic norm, we don’t always remember to employ it.

I was putting Earnie and Teddy to bed when they suddenly claimed they were hungry. This is after I made “yummy noodles”—the dinner they requested—and had a bit of a hard time getting them to actually sit down to eat it. We’d also just done baths and brushed teeth, and to be honest, I kind of exhausted and ready for bed. My first thought was, "This is definitely a stalling tactic."

We had a back and forth about it, and ultimately I decided to go ahead and get them something, even though I wasn’t fully convinced they were hungry. So [...]

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EA Sheffield is relaunching as a city group! Come to our first social on Thursday.

Check out the new website or subscribe to the EA Sheffield event newsletter.

You can help shape EA Sheffield by filling out this survey. It only has 6 quick questions. You can also always give anonymous feedback.

There are still a few inactive accounts from the uni group. For now, just use the EA Forum group page, the Facebook page and the website as a source of information while we get all the links updated.

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