EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

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EAGxIndia 2024 will be held at The Conrad, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India. The conference aims to help attendees in the region find and accelerate their path to positive impact, using EA principles to foster connections and growth opportunities.

In 2023, 163 attendees participated in the first EAGxIndia, with 70% from India and others from the UK, US, Singapore, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Germany, and Brazil. This event enriched the local community with domestic and international connections, catalyzed movement growth, and had multiple reports of attendees transitioning into new impactful careers as a direct result of the conference. We are excited to build on these successes with a second, larger conference in just a few months!

Basics of EAGx and effective altruism:

EAGx (Effective Altruism Global X) is a series of regionally focused events uniting the global EA community, supported by the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) and organized by [...]

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Outline:

(01:08) Basics of EAGx and effective altruism:

(02:36) Why attend?

(03:24) Why India and Bengaluru?

(04:30) Should you apply?

(05:27) Schedule

(05:58) Application details

(06:12) Travel support

(06:37) Accessibility

(07:24) Meet the team

(09:45) Contact us

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

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First published:

August 1st, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tow3X7GQKZzKPMPad/join-us-at-eagxindia-2024-in-bengaluru-on-19-20-october-2024

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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One year ago, the EA Forum team ran a survey for EA Forum users. The results have been very helpful for us to clarify our strategy, understand our impact, and decide what to prioritize working on in the past 12 months.

From today through August 20[1], we’re running an updated version of the survey for 2024. All questions are optional, as is a new section about other CEA programs.

We estimate the survey will take you 7-15 minutes to complete (less if you skip questions, longer if you write particularly detailed answers). Your answers will be saved in your browser, so you can pause and return to it later.

Take the survey

We appreciate you taking the time to fill out the survey, and we read every response. Even if you do not use the Forum, your response is helpful for us to compare different populations (and you will [...]

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

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First published:

August 1st, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tztgWcmCbenFoESTp/take-the-2024-ea-forum-user-survey

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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: Vitalik Buterin on defensive acceleration and how to regulate AI when you fear government. Listen on Spotify, watch on Youtube or click through for other audio options, the transcript, and related links. Below are the episode summary and some key excerpts.

Episode summary

… if you’re a power that is an island and that goes by sea, then you’re more likely to do things like valuing freedom, being democratic, being pro-foreigner, being open-minded, being interested in trade. If you are on the Mongolian steppes, then your entire mindset is kill or be killed, conquer or be conquered … the breeding ground for basically everything that all of us consider to be dystopian governance.

If you want more utopian governance and less dystopian governance, then find ways to basically change the landscape, to try to make the world look more like mountains and rivers and [...]

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Outline:

(00:31) Episode summary

(04:19) Highlights

(04:22) Vitaliks d/acc alternative

(08:49) Biodefence

(12:41) How much do people actually disagree?

(18:17) Distrust of authority is a big deal

(22:14) Info defence and Xs Community Notes

(27:42) Quadratic voting and funding

(31:35) Vitaliks philosophy of half-assing everything

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First published:

July 31st, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tc7z9tA55i2ScZS7Z/194-defensive-acceleration-and-how-to-regulate-ai-when-you

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post.

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First published:

July 31st, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/w3zGFaFmfub2GpjCc/how-the-open-wing-alliance-has-helped-free-hundreds-of

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

I wrote an initial draft of this post much closer to the Manifest controversy earlier this summer. Although I got sidetracked and it took a while to finish, I still think this is a conversation worth having; perhaps it would even be better to have it now since calmer heads have had time to prevail.

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I can’t in good faith deny being an effective altruist. I’ve worked at EA organizations, I believe many of the core tenants of the movement, and thinking about optimizing my impact by EA lights has guided every major career decision I’ve made since early 2021. And yet I am ashamed to identify myself as such in polite society. Someone at a party recently guessed that I was an EA after I said I was interested in animal welfare litigation or maybe AI governance; I laughed awkwardly, said yeah maybe [...]

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Outline:

(03:49) Why might one tolerate this?

(09:31) Why does it have to be this thing in particular?

(12:50) On the subject of good faith

(15:19) Where do we go from here?

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

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First published:

August 1st, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MCxtGbzeyfFDmrJZx/ea-should-unequivocally-condemn-race-science

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

As a Psychology and Behavioural Sciences MSc student, I care about deepening the understanding of the underlying psychological and behavioural factors that facilitate and hinder altruism and pro-social behaviour. I am particularly interested in questions like: What makes people care about a certain global issue or cause? What drives people to engage in altruistic behaviours? What incentives and barriers exist for effective giving and pledging? By seeking and applying answers to these questions, I hope to make a meaningful impact.

In line with Giving What We Can (GWWC)'s desire to make their work more evidence-based, we are conducting a study to better understand how to encourage more people around the world to donate to highly effective charities. We recognize that giving and pledging are not always the best ways for everyone to have an impact and that various factors can either facilitate or hinder effective giving and pledging. Therefore [...]

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First published:

July 31st, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EY3MDdjkfy8njaL2w/survey-on-barriers-and-facilitators-for-effective-giving-and

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This is a video and transcript of an AMA with Darren Margolias, the Executive Director of Beast Philanthropy. The interviewer is CEA's Emma Richter. See the questions Darren is answering in the AMA announcement post.

If you'd like to support the Beast Philanthropy x GiveDirectly collaboration, you can donate here. The first $150,000 of donations will be matched. GiveDirectly shares their thinking on donation matching here.

Video AMA- Emma interviews Darren

Short transcript

This transcript was cleaned up and shortened by ChatGPT. To my eye it seems to accurately represent Emma's questions and Darren's answers, but I've included the full, un-edited transcript at the end of this post so that you can cross-reference, get accurate quotes from Darren, or look for more detail. All errors in the GPT summary are my (Toby's) own (by a transitive property).

Emma
Hello everyone, I'm Emma from CEA. Welcome to [...]

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Outline:

(00:39) Video AMA- Emma interviews Darren

(00:47) Short transcript

(18:51) Full, more accurate, transcript

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First published:

July 30th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/nbuQdeiCEXDJxcj5a/video-ama-and-transcript-beast-philanthropy-s-darren

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post.

Some thoughts on open-source AI (copied over from a recent twitter thread):

1. We should have a strong prior favoring open source. It's been a huge success driving tech progress over many decades. We forget how counterintuitive it was originally, and shouldn’t take it for granted.

2. Open source has also been very valuable for alignment. It's key to progress on interpretability, as outlined here.

3. I am concerned, however, that offense will heavily outpace defense in the long term. As AI accelerates science, many new WMDs will emerge. Even if defense of infrastructure keeps up with offense, human bodies are a roughly fixed and very vulnerable attack surface.

4. A central concern about open source AI: it’ll allow terrorists to build bioweapons. This shouldn’t be dismissed, but IMO it's easy to be disproportionately scared of terrorism. More central risks are eg “North Korea becomes [...]

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First published:

July 31st, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YBYDFm4qDKutbNrCp/twitter-thread-on-open-source-ai

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Rethink Priorities’ Worldview Investigation Team (WIT) will run an Ask Me Anything (AMA). We’ll reply on the 7th and 8th of August. Please put your questions in the comments below!

What's WIT?

WIT is Hayley Clatterbuck, Bob Fischer, Arvo Munoz Moran, David Moss, and Derek Shiller. Our team exists to improve resource allocation within and beyond the effective altruism movement, focusing on tractable, high-impact questions that bear on strategic priorities. We try to take action-relevant philosophical, methodological, and strategic problems and turn them into manageable, modelable problems. Our projects have included:

• The Moral Weight Project. If we want to do as much good as possible, we have to compare all the ways of doing good—including ways that involve helping members of different species. This sequence collects Rethink Priorities' work on cause prioritization across different kinds of animals, human and nonhuman. (You can check out the book version here.)
• [...]

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Outline:

(00:22) What's WIT?

(02:08) What should you ask us?

(02:36) Acknowledgments

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First published:

July 31st, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ipxePnfnxsRuasZW2/ama-rethink-priorities-worldview-investigation-team

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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.

This is a link post.

Epistemic status: raising concerns, rather than stating confident conclusions.

I’m worried that a lot of work on AI safety evals matches the pattern of “Something must be done. This is something. Therefore this must be done.” Or, to put it another way: I judge eval ideas on 4 criteria, and I often see proposals which fail all 4. The criteria:

1. Possible to measure with scientific rigor.

Some things can be easily studied in a lab; others are entangled with a lot of real-world complexity. If you predict the latter (e.g. a model's economic or scientific impact) based on model-level evals, your results will often be BS.

(This is why I dislike the term “transformative AI”, by the way. Whether an AI has transformative effects on society will depend hugely on what the society is like, how the AI is deployed, etc. And that's a [...]

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First published:

July 31st, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JW9dJ2FPAGxK8b3Qn/twitter-thread-on-ai-safety-evals

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.