EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

This is a link post.

Oli Habryka of LessWrong and I recently spoke about his plans to improve the AI safety funding ecosystem with a better S-Process platform, and my new incubator for EA/AIS software projects, Surplus (since launched; apply now!)

We also cover: hot takes on different funders; what kinds of founders might succeed in the age of vibecoding; whether to do direct work or go meta; and what we respect and criticize in each other. Watch along here:

I've transcribed the full conversation at https://peruse.sh/ep/austin-chen-and-oliver-habryka-on-funding-incubating-project. (Beware: the AI makes notable edits for readability, sometimes distorting what the speaker meant. If specific phrasing is cruxy, listen to the audio.)

Selected quotes

The cursed game of philanthropy

Oli: "Philanthropy is one of the most cursed games in existence... The default outcome of what happens when rich people try to do philanthropy is that they think about starting a foundation, they imagine hiring someone on the market and ask themselves: who am I going to show up and feel comfortable trusting most of my net worth to? That doesn't make any sense.

And so what they often end up doing is making a family office. The only way to solve this [...]

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Outline:

(01:01) Selected quotes

(07:00) Chapters

(08:38) Referenced links

(09:08) Full transcript

(09:13) Critiques of SFF's grant process \[0:00\]

(11:32) The SFF application process \[2:26\]

(12:56) The speculation grant freeze for advocacy orgs \[3:40\]

(14:36) A lower-trust, more transparent funding process \[5:04\]

(16:32) How the S-process works \[6:53\]

(20:24) Naming and communicating the value to funders \[10:54\]

(25:49) EA philanthropy and the principal-agent problem: Open Philanthropy, Longview \[15:51\]

(31:18) How much funding is coming \[21:28\]

(32:39) Surplus: the incubator \[22:33\]

(34:52) Why for-profits over nonprofits \[24:37\]

(37:39) The ideal founder profile \[27:11\]

(40:58) Whether writers can found startups in the vibe-coding era \[30:26\]

(42:25) Monetizing public communications projects \[31:45\]

(53:07) Oliver's case for the incubator \[42:09\]

(54:41) On professional grantmakers \[44:04\]

(58:00) Whether infrastructure work is more direct than safety research \[47:36\]

(01:01:47) The case for a better AI safety journal \[51:08\]

(01:04:10) Mutual feedback \[53:17\]

(01:10:10) How to help: LessWrong, Surplus, and the S-process \[1:01:01\]

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First published:

June 27th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mFoK2kjauoGxsEFaQ/podcast-austin-and-oli-on-funding-and-incubating-projects

Linkpost URL:
https://manifund.substack.com/p/podcast-austin-and-oli-on-funding

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TL;DR

The best way to increase your odds of being accepted into Ambitious Impact's Charity Entrepreneurship Program is to build the relevant aptitudes for running an impactful charity. I provide some practical tips that I would recommend to anyone considering this career. Basically all of these steps are worth pursuing whether they shift your odds of acceptance or not.

The tips are:

1. Actually apply for the program
2. Read the book "How to Launch a High-Impact Nonprofit"
3. Design personalized aptitude building exercises based on the book
4. Start something new
5. Think deeply about what career you are best fit for

Background

I applied for Ambitious Impact's (AIM) Charity Entrepreneurship Program in early 2023 and went through the program in early 2024. Since then, I have launched Access to Medicines Initiative,[1] which saves lives and prevents unintended pregnancies by ensuring contraceptives are consistently available in Nigerian public health facilities.

I have been repeatedly asked at EAGs and other events how to get accepted into the Charity Entrepreneurship Program. I've generally given the same advice, and wanted to make that information more freely available. AIM previously posted about how to increase your odds of acceptance, and despite the post being over 6 [...]

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Outline:

(00:12) TL;DR

(00:57) Background

(02:13) Tip #1: Apply

(03:44) Tip #2: Read the Book

(05:33) Tip #3: Design Personalized Aptitude Building Exercises

(08:02) Tip #4: Start Things

(09:04) Tip #5: Think Deeply About Your Career Fit

(10:51) Conclusion

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First published:

June 29th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RozL8gzb2zkbTxY7u/how-i-got-accepted-into-aim-s-charity-entrepreneurship

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Summary: We’re making some big changes to the forum including a brand new post page. If you have any feedback, please let us know directly, or in the comments below.

The problem

The existing EA Forum codebase is relatively old and steeped in technical debt. New features and bug fixes (of which there are many) are slow, hosting is expensive, and server crashes are often time-consuming to fix. CEA also has considerably fewer resources dedicated to the forum than in the past (currently less than one full-time engineer), and we want to ensure the forum can continue to thrive in perpetuity whether or not that continues to be the case.

The forum has been developed alongside LessWrong for the past few years; both used the exact same code until recently, but with different configurations and different development teams. LessWrong completed their own migration last year, which consisted of taking the existing codebase and converting it to NextJS via some extremely large AI generated changes. This seems to have worked out nicely for them, but, for various reasons, we don’t believe that the same solution would have been right for us (that's not to say that I think it was [...]

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Outline:

(00:23) The problem

(01:30) The solution

(03:51) What this means for you

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First published:

June 29th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/t62uHkLG6K2xRWP5L/ea-forum-update-migrating-to-a-new-codebase

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Crossposted on Substack.

This recent podcast episode featuring Oliver Habryka and Austin Chen got me thinking about the social and political dimensions of EA. One moment in particular stood out to me.

Habryka: “And so I'm currently expecting that, like, a lot of Anthropic employees will be pretty burned in a year or two. When they are experiencing these dynamics, it becomes very clear that a huge amount of grants are never presented to them because people are worried that they will find them weird. People will see that there's a lot of politics behind the scenes about which grants get put in front of you and stuff like that. People will see that there's a lot of weird reputational management around like, wait, I can't make this grant because another funder would be angry at me, angry at you if you made this grant.”

I think I’m in a poor position to evaluate how true this claim is[1], and I have some nonspecific worries that what Habryka is doing here may be unproductive, but the pointedness of this claim makes it a good example of something I’d like to call the EA superstructure.

Since most EAs have little [...]

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First published:

June 28th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HqyPEXpJsJS9oSi2J/the-ea-superstructure

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Cavendish University has generously allowed us to use its residential property, which is located near several universities and high schools in Lusaka. Starting 4 July, we will begin hosting weekly workshops for students, graduates and young professionals who are trying to make better decisions about their education, careers and contribution to society.

This is a big milestone for us.

About two years ago, I began my journey as an effective altruist. I was excited, ready to learn, and ready to get to work. I applied for free career guidance, EA-related opportunities and did not get through. I also applied for the charity entrepreneurship charity incubation which did not work out either, and all that was just a humbling experience. I really recommend reading @Experience of a 'generalist' transitioning into AI safety in 2026 because this article needs to be pinned on some "Beginner's Guide to EA Work" board.

The lessons from Effective Altruism and 80,000 Hours made it difficult for me to simply stay quiet and do nothing in my own country so here is update #3 from @I have started a local community in Zambia for students, graduates, and professionals based on the principles outlined in the [...]

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First published:

June 23rd, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dWtDdm976S9KMi4i6/the-alphabet-institute-now-has-a-physical-facility-to-host

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Note: I am not associated with 80000 Hours. I just like the book.

TLDR: if any of your friends would benefit from career advice, giving them the newly released 80000 Hours book may be the most effective thing you can do.

The process

I graduated from university just around the time the 80000 Hours book came out, and I bought 4 copies of the book to give to my friends. This went way better than expected, and I’m writing this because I think more people should do the same.

It's really simple:

1. Find people in your circle who might benefit from career advice. For example, if they aren’t sure about their career plans, are job-hunting or aren’t feeling fulfilled.
2. Schedule a time to meet.
3. Give them the book and tell them how useful it is.

I was a bit hesitant it would be seen as evangelizing, but I’m surprised at how well it went. Most strikingly, I ended up giving a copy to a friend who had accepted a grad job at Jane Street. At first, I was sure that he wouldn’t actually want one - he certainly didn’t seem to need career advice of all people! But [...]

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Outline:

(00:27) The process

(01:34) Why this might be unusually effective

(03:30) But can't they get a free book anyways?

(04:29) Conclusion

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First published:

June 23rd, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Se5s5WE3o683RKxrw/the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-gifting-the-80000-hours

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

I think right now EAs might be making a significant mistake by paying insufficient attention to the political realm. As EAs we tend to figure out what's most impactful for us to work on and focus hard. That's great! But there are various actions that are ‘non-delegatable’ - the extent to which an individual can do the action is limited (like voting, going to a protest, making hard money contributions to particular campaigns). It might be useful if we were all more in the habit of doing various of these alongside what we’re most focused on. I think more attention is starting to go to this - as evidenced by Jeff's blog post about how he thinks political donations should be his primary method of giving going forward. But I think we probably have a ways to go.

Political actions look better than they used to

I think it's pretty unsurprising that EAs are sceptical of lobbying policy makers as a theory of change. By my lights, it looked decidedly less effective a decade ago. At that point, work on existential risk was very speculative, and mostly needed additional research. It was totally unclear what better legislation would [...]

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Outline:

(00:56) Political actions look better than they used to

(02:20) An example of making it tractable: PauseAI UK's campaign this week

(03:57) How valuable and achievable is it for us to do more of this?

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First published:

June 24th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dieuDkXYAveFsX48c/possible-mistake-eas-are-making-and-shout-out-to-pause-ai-uk

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

What if you ran effective altruism group where, every week, people congregated to contemplate topics such as:

• Eradicating malaria
• Whether AI should ever have legal rights
• What future people will wish we had done today
• Whether insects have moral worth
• How we can help others while taking care of ourselves

What if your group satisfied a deep need that many young people feel for an impartial, calm, and evidence-oriented environment to explore what “doing good” means? What if people formed deep friendships through your group? What if your group was composed of people who hold each other in high mutual regard despite differences in approaches and beliefs around taking effective altruistic action?

This vision might be called relational community building or pluralistic EA stewardship. In this model, group organizers are gardeners who craft ripe conditions for serious contemplation of ethical ideas and forging ties between individuals who deeply desire a better world. Crucially, the group should be built upon these core tenants:

1. It's important to help others
2. All sentient beings are equal
3. Helping more is better than helping less
4. Our resources are limited

Key components of a good effective altruism group

Norms and values (tilling the soil): Setting [...]

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Outline:

(01:26) Key components of a good effective altruism group

(03:36) Encouraging pluralistic groups

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First published:

June 23rd, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/kTdMAodJB3mf8EEbg/pluralistic-ea-stewardship

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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Bentham's Bulldog recently argued that AI won’t definitely make factory farms obsolete. I agree, but I’d go further and argue that by default AI won’t make factory farms obsolete. However, I think it's possible (though not guaranteed) that AI could make factory farms a lot more humane.

He throws out an 80% of cultivated meat being developed, and a 70% chance of it displacing factory farms contingent on it being developed. In particular, I think 70% is too optimistic.

An 80% chance of cultivated meat being developed contingent on TAI seems reasonable to me, insofar as its possible to forecast such things right now. We currently have no feasible technical roadmap for cultivated meat to be able to create all of the myriad kinds of animal products that people consume today. However, one could plausibly think that TAI means that any technology that's consistent with the laws of physics will become possible. Cultivated meat will be possible in these worlds, and some additional superset of these worlds.

However, I’d put a much lower chance of it being adopted in a significant way. To make a very vibesy forecast, I think there's maybe a 40% chance that cultivated [...]

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Outline:

(02:11) The worlds in which cultivated meat are possible are also ones in which animal protein is significantly cheaper

(04:42) People will choose whichever they want more, and we have no evidence people will want cultivated meat.

(06:42) Objections

(09:23) AI could make factory farming significantly more humane

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First published:

June 23rd, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YZoBtzuPy8qzJK6z5/ai-probably-won-t-make-factory-farms-obsolete

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Introduction:

I have been reflecting on recent discussions on this platform concerning the future of global development philanthropy, particularly on the argument that the next wave of philanthropy should place greater emphasis on emerging regions and locally led approaches. These discussions led me to consider a related question in animal welfare: if Africa is set to play an increasingly important role in shaping future food systems, what does that imply for animal welfare funding? In this article, I hope to add an African perspective to that conversation.

For additional context, over the last 4.5 years, I have worked as an advisor for the Effective Altruism Animal Welfare Fund and worked closely with animal welfare organizations across Africa through my work with the Open Wing Alliance (where I work as the Senior Africa Lead) and other funders in the movement. These experiences have led me to become increasingly convinced that Africa deserves much greater strategic attention within discussions about the future of animal welfare.

My argument is not primarily one of representation or fairness. It is grounded on the claim that Africa is becoming a key continent where the structure of future animal agriculture is still being formed. If that [...]

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Outline:

(00:13) Introduction:

(01:35) The Question We Should Be Asking:

(02:27) Africa Is Entering a Period of Transformation:

(04:03) We are at a Critical Juncture:

(04:56) Implications for Animal Welfare Funders:

(07:39) Conclusion

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First published:

June 21st, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9aRYApFJboCShcJXK/why-i-believe-africa-deserves-greater-strategic-attention-in

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.