EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

For two decades, I did a lot of public outreach: talking with people from the broad or general public (on the streets,…) to persuade them to do something good. Now I believe that most of such public outreach is not so effective, with one or a few exceptions. Here I want to give a concrete example of a public outreach that I believe to be one of the most cost-effective, generating the highest impact at the lowest costs: small-farmed-animal reducetarian deep questioning. This involves asking specific questions to make people think more deeply about the welfare of (small) animals used for food in order to encourage them to reduce their consumption of animal products (primarily from small animals such as chickens, fish and shrimp). I’ll first discuss why I think this is a top-effective strategy, and then present a specific example of a list of questions that I ask [...]

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Outline:

(01:00) Why is small-farmed-animal reducetarian deep questioning a top-effective public outreach?

(10:06) An example of deep questioning outreach

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As part of ongoing research into EA community attitudes and priorities, a supplemental EA community survey was fielded from December 2023 to January 2024. This survey included a number of questions requested by EA decision-makers and researchers. One such question concerned EA community attitudes regarding time preferences for impact. The question requested was:

Putting aside issues of tractability, what are your time preferences with respect to the altruistic impacts of your actions?

• I am at least roughly indifferent between benefiting someone today and benefiting someone to an equal extent indefinitely far in the future.
• I value benefiting someone today more than benefiting someone to an equal extent in the future, and the value I place on future benefits declines roughly exponentially per year by ___%.
• I value helping someone today less than helping someone to an equal extent in the future, and the value I place on future [...]

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Summary: In his most recent post (“Altruism and Vitalism as Fellow Travelers”), Scott Alexander tries to reconcile EA-style altruism with Nietzschean “vitalism.” He claims that the philosophies argue for different goals only in extreme cases, while having similar goals in reality. But his definition of vitalism misses the point: the goal isn’t to increase vital traits in the population, but to uplift rather than impede the vital type of person. So he fails to realize that the philosophies have different goals even in reality. They can still be reconciled but not in the way he thinks.

Definitions

The problem comes from his definitions:

Define altruism as “try to increase happiness and decrease suffering across a society” and vitalism as “try to increase strength and decrease weakness across a society”, where “strength” is defined as ability to achieve goals (and, in a tie-breaker, ability to win [...]

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Outline:

(00:44) Definitions

(02:40) Differences

(04:05) Synthesis

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I put together this reading list on AI agents, with a tilt more towards AI governance. I hope it may be of help to others working on this area. If you know of other great resources or have comments on these resources, please say so in the comments!

Top priority papers:

• OpenAI – Practices for Governing Agentic AI Systems
• OpenAI – Research into Agentic AI Systems
• Deepmind – The Ethics of Advanced AI Assistants
• Alan Chan et. al – Visibility into AI Agents (see also)

A bit about the agents that currently exist:

• VisualWebArena: EVALUATING MULTIMODAL AGENTS ON REALISTIC VISUAL WEB TASKS
• WebVoyager : Building an End-to-End Web Agent with Large Multimodal Models
• METR: An update on our general capability evaluations

Good background:

• METR – Autonomous replication threat models
• Evaluating Frontier Models for Dangerous Capabilities
• Introduction to Cooperative AI
• Governing AI Agents
• Peter's thoughts on AI loss of [...]

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80,000 Hours is hiring for several positions on our team!

Rather than posting about them separately, we’re taking Toby's advice and combining them all into this “ask me anything” with the hiring managers — Bella Forristal and Huon Porteous.

Why an AMA?

We know that applying for jobs at orgs working in EA areas can be a stressful, demoralising, and confusing process.

We’ve also heard the calls for increased transparency, and clearer communication about the hiring process.

What's more, we’ve heard that opaque and intimidating processes can be especially discouraging to applicants from underrepresented backgrounds.

We’ve made various adjustments to our job descriptions and recruitment process, but we think one of the best things we can do here is talk to candidates directly to address their questions or concerns.

Speaking personally, I (Bella) think this kind of AMA might have helped me [...]

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Outline:

(00:23) Why an AMA?

(01:10) What are the roles?

(02:18) AMA logistics

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We’re running applications to build two EAGx teams for events later this year:

• EAGxSingapore will take place 14-15 December in Singapore. Apply here to join the team.
• EAGxVirtual will take place on 15-17 November. Apply here to join the team.

The application for each event takes 15 minutes, and the deadline is Monday, August 26th at 11:59pm Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). We encourage you to apply ASAP, as we will review applications on a rolling basis.

About the conferences

Please see this post for more about the EAGx conference series. The application to express interest in running an event in your area is still open!

EAGxSingapore 2024

This will be the second EAGx conference in Singapore, following a very successful iteration in 2022. We are aiming to support local organizers in hosting EAGxSingapore this December.

We expect the event size to be around 200-350 attendees; the event will primarily [...]

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Outline:

(00:45) About the conferences

(00:59) EAGxSingapore 2024

(01:50) EAGxVirtual 2024

(02:36) About the organizer roles

(04:28) Role logistics

(05:48) Contact

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Applications are now open for AIM's Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program in 2025, with the next round taking place in February 2025. This program provides two months of intensive training in starting a non-profit, as well as co-founder matching, seed funding access, and recommended charity ideas.

This article provides an overview of our latest recommended charity ideas, which will be available to participants in the February 2025 cohort. We will publish full research reports for each recommended idea in the coming weeks.

Recommended Charity Ideas: One Paragraph Summary

Cage-Free Farming in the Middle East

We want to see a new organization implement the most successful and well-tested intervention of the animal movement – cage-free corporate campaigns – in a new, neglected region such as the Middle East, which farms over 300 million hens every year. Cage-free campaigns are the backbone of the existing animal advocacy [...]

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Outline:

(00:44) Recommended Charity Ideas: One Paragraph Summary

(00:50) Cage-Free Farming in the Middle East

(02:03) Reducing Keel Bone Fractures

(03:11) East Asian Fish Welfare

(04:19) Digital Pulmonary Rehabilitation

(05:49) Lead Research

(07:11) CBT to Prevent Crime

(08:21) A Direct Delivery Global Health Intervention (to be decided)

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[Versão em português abaixo]

This retrospective evaluates the conference, provides feedback to the CEA events team, and offers recommendations for future organizers. It is also a report about the event and an exercise in transparency. Feedback and comments on how to enhance EA conferences in the future are welcome.

Bottom Line Up Front

The AEBr Summit 2024 was a success. It had 220 attendees who felt welcome and satisfied, generating around 850 connections at a cost of $45.45 per attendee.

• Date: June 29, 2024
• Venue: INOVA.USP, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
• The first Brazilian national EA conference
• ~220 people attended (62% were new to EA)
• 36 speakers 
• 24 sessions including talks, panels, meetups, and office hours
• 5 organizations represented at the Career fair
• Feedback survey results:
  • A 9,2/10 likelihood to recommend score
  • An average of 6,1 new connections per person
• Photos and video!

The AEBr [...]

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Outline:

(00:29) Bottom Line Up Front

(01:40) The AEBr Summit Overview

(02:56) Highlights

(04:15) Team

(05:41) Budget

(06:51) Attendees and experience

(07:42) Production

(07:46) Preparations

(08:34) Workload balance

(09:20) Marketing

(10:41) Participants Guide

(10:54) Food and catering

(12:02) Event tech

(13:04) Shortcomings

(14:53) Versão em português

(15:20) Em resumo

(16:41) Visão geral do AEBr Summit

(18:08) Destaques

(19:39) Time

(21:23) Orçamento

(22:48) Participantes e experiência

(23:48) Produção

(23:51) Preparação

(24:55) Carga de trabalho

(25:56) Marketing

(27:36) Guia do Participante

(27:52) Alimentação e catering

(29:22) Tecnologia

(30:42) Pontos fracos

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