GiveWell's Operations department is growing! We have roles open across multiple Ops functions: Grants Administration, People Operations, Talent Acquisition, Technology, and the offices of the CEO and COO. We hope to make multiple hires for many of these roles.

We’re hosting an Ask Me Anything session with our COO, Sai Jahann, to answer questions from the Forum community about what it's like to work at GiveWell, our Operations functions, this hiring round, and impactful Operations careers at GiveWell.

We plan to keep this AMA open through the next week. You can start sharing your questions on this post now, and Sai will plan to respond beginning Friday. We’ll prioritize the most upvoted questions if we can’t get to everything.

A few things we won't be able to cover: commentary on any active or past applications, individualized feedback on application materials, or insight into specific grantmaking decisions made by our Research team. If we’re unable to answer a question, we'll say so rather than skipping it.

This hiring round is a big event for us. If you’ve ever considered working at GiveWell in an Operations role, we are excited to take your questions and hope you’ll consider applying!

---

First published:

August 4th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RtTjTTLX6bTZWBEX6/ama-with-givewell-s-chief-operations-officer

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Summary

• The animal welfare movement has already seen an influx in funding and should prepare for the possibility of more.
• The EA Animal Welfare Fund is encouraging you to actively set aside time and resources now to concretely plan for scaling sustainably, and we’ll support you in doing that.
• We’re requesting you set concrete ambitious goals and submit your plans to be able to achieve them.
• This is a call for more ambitious concrete plans, not for lowering the bar for the sake of spending more.
• Our strategic priorities are here. We’ll be launching a series of calls for proposals stemming from these, but if you have related ideas, don’t wait. You’re encouraged to apply here and reach out to us to discuss here [email protected]. 

A call to prepare for scaling impact

The animal welfare space is looking to absorb an influx of funding this year, and expects more funding in future, as do other cause areas. We've seen a lot of online discussion and excitement about this, but relatively few concrete action plans proportional to the significance of the opportunity. We’re not talking about plans to absorb trillions of dollars to buy Tyson Foods and build cultivated meat on the Moon. [...]

---

Outline:

(00:12) Summary

(01:06) A call to prepare for scaling impact

(03:01) We're offering support

---

First published:

August 4th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NcrHNnnGzgoJz3YkY/the-animal-welfare-movement-could-scale-fast-have-you-made-a

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

BLUF:

• To determine whether AI is ‘improving exponentially’, ‘hitting the wall’, or any other claim which involves a quantity or magnitude (e.g. ‘This model was a big leap/small increment’). We need a good y-axis: an interval scale of AI capability which means +1 unit always represents the same degree of ‘how much better’, in the same way +1 degree Celsius is always the same amount of ‘how much hotter’.
• Yet there is no good y-axis for AI capability. All our measures are of something related-to but clearly not identical-with it, thus ‘true’ AI capability can be a funhouse-mirror reflection of whatever was measured. Specifically:
  • Benchmark score: One small step in benchmark score can be a giant leap in capability, or the opposite, or whatever else. (My 6/10 vs. your 4/10 ≠ I’m 50% better at maths than you).
  • Elo et al: Can give a real y-axis in terms of winning chances, but doesn’t translate outside of beating others. (Going from 50% to 73% to 88% chance to get a higher score than you on a maths test ≠ gaining 0 → 1 → 2 units of maths ability over you)
  • Epoch Capabilities Index: Analogous to IQ, so [...]

---

Outline:

(03:05) Introduction

(04:26) Both a poor reflection and a dark glass

(07:51) Human benchmarking also has a y-axis problem

(12:27) A metrological elegy

(12:49) The base case: benchmarks (cf. exams)

(13:30) Elo et al.

(16:25) (And maybe not quite 'game ability ≡ winning games', after all?)

(18:28) ECI (cf. IQ)

(20:56) Intervals Rarely True

(25:01) Measure endogeneity

(31:12) Forking IRT

(34:45) (Dimensions of being, and beating, a bat)

(39:40) Prediction (cf. chronometry)

(41:58) Time horizons

(44:34) Human "capability" is also exponential in time horizon

(47:38) Intuitive/interpretative prelude

(52:56) Time horizons and ECI share an axis kink

(57:13) Perhaps money, as a measure, stinks the least

(01:01:07) Finale: AI as normal epistemics

(01:06:48) Acknowledgements

The original text contained 33 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:

August 4th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CQvdadxjCpd7i7kjA/general-capability-and-capabilities-generally-have-no-good-y

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

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 crosspost from my blog post.

Many EAs use extensive “bayesian reasoning.” The basic idea behind it is that you should do the following:

1. Be willing to assign probabilities to the likelihood of anything occurring or being true.
2. Update these probabilities when you learn new information.
3. Act on these probabilities if they suggest that certain actions are higher in value than all other actions.

Bayesian reasoning is helpful for a lot of everyday decision-making. If you’re trying to figure out whether to take a job in Los Angeles or in New York, it makes sense to try to guess how happy you’d be in each respective city. And, if you’re trying to compare career paths, you should assign probabilities to how likely you are to succeed in them.

But, to me, EAs take this kind of reasoning too far. EAs have variously tried to predict how many future humans there will be, asked non-domain experts how likely they think a catastrophic pandemic will be, and even tried to determine whether we should work on improving the lives of people in the far future.

Probably the most common (and representative) example of this, though, is the idea [...]

---

Outline:

(01:43) Reason #1: If you know very little about something, your guesses are completely arbitrary.

(02:29) Reason #2: If your guesses are completely arbitrary, updating won't bring you to the correct probability.

(03:21) Reason #3: We should expect most guesses about the future to be wrong.

(04:19) Reason #4: If your guesses are based on other people's guesses, you might all be wrong.

(04:45) Reason #5: People rarely offer extraordinarily low probabilities.

---

First published:

August 2nd, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ttk9RJw9sbSp8upgE/eas-should-use-less-bayesian-reasoning

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Please spend <5 minutes filling in the below polls on AI alignment!

Thank you to everyone who filled out last month's polls. It was great to see 60+ comments engaging with these issues.

This month's survey has already been taken by a panel of 15 alignment researchers, including Scott Alexander (ACX), David Manheim (ALTER), Jeff Sebo (NYU), and Tobias Baumann (CRS). We'll compare panel and community responses in an upcoming report, which we'll publish here and on LessWrong. To get notified when it's released, you can subscribe to our new Substack.

Many people we've talked to have very different intuitions about where the alignment community stands on the below issues. We hope that your responses to these polls, and the resulting report, will help map core areas of (dis)agreement within the field, and ground CaML's research agenda.

A few final things about the polls themselves:

• Timeframe: unless a statement says otherwise (e.g. post-AGI), read forward-looking claims as being about roughly the next 2 years.
• We're not trying to find the 'right' answers. Please answer based on your own best guess.
• % agree is your % credence in a given position
• Please let us know if you think the [...]

---

First published:

July 30th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5huXea9bB7mtMQbrX/community-polls-on-alignment-controversies-ii-1

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TLDR

Most urban animals, especially those other than cats and dogs, are highly neglected, even though probably tens of billions of them live in urban environments, and suffer from preventable harms. This post argues for a global nonprofit that would research the problem, test interventions and support local groups under the idea that cities are multispecies societies.

Despite major uncertainty about scale and expected value, this could directly help many urban animals and potentially have strong flow through effects: urban animals could serve as a bridge for empathy toward all animals, support wild animal welfare research, and bring new people and funding into the movement.

In my view, a nonprofit dedicated specifically to urban animal welfare, compared with programs run by organizations with a broader focus that work on animals both in nature and in cities, could better address the distinct challenges of urban environments, avoid some of the philosophical controversy surrounding interventions in nature, and attract more funding and people, including from outside the traditional animal advocacy movement.

Thanks to @Ben Stevenson, @Max Taylor, Richard Parr and Noa Deutsch for helpful comments on this post. All mistakes are my own.

Epistemic Status

Very unsure about the numbers I [...]

---

Outline:

(00:10) TLDR

(01:27) Epistemic Status

(01:48) What are Urban Animals

(02:54) What do Urban Animals Suffer From?

(04:34) Neglectedness

(05:39) Organizations Whose Work Includes Neglected Urban Animal Species

(07:38) Tractability

(10:35) Scale

(14:30) Reasons in Favor of This Idea

(18:18) Reasons Against This Idea

(19:21) What the Nonprofit Could Do

(21:28) Open Strategic Questions

(22:00) Conclusion

---

First published:

August 2nd, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/thEMWd6yA7kA2p4QE/urban-animals-deserve-a-global-nonprofit

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

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

And why our 2023 regrant to Timaeus was goated

We think the for-profit funding ecosystem has some cool properties. Different funders naturally come in at different stages, from angel investors who are good at spotting early opportunities to large funds who might invest in late-stage startups to public market traders. Funders race to back promising projects. And the more they get right, the more they’re rewarded with more money to invest in the future.

It would be great if more of those properties existed in nonprofit funding as well. We think that the flow from “person makes great early donation” → “person has more influence” is too weak. And as opposed to the VC world, where investors compete against each other to invest in something quickly, nonprofit funding is beset by “funder chicken,” in which a funder waits for other funders to fill an opportunity, each trying to preserve their capital. This makes fundraising a slog.

What if donating to nonprofits worked more like investing in companies? Impact markets have been talked about in EA for a while. At Manifund, we dream of bringing impact markets to the AI safety funding ecosystem. And at the very least, we want [...]

---

Outline:

(01:28) Timaeus: a case study in charitable ROI

(03:44) Donate early, donate fast

---

First published:

July 31st, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/v8W6SGxkvzP8Pzwy2/when-you-donate-can-matter-more-than-where

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TL;DR: Applications are open for AIM's first ever animal-only incubation round. The program runs February 2027, and it is different from any round we've run before: we’ve rebuilt the research process with animal welfare in mind, recommending frontier problems rather than fully-scoped solutions, there is a new funded three-month exploration phase after the core program, and two weeks in San Francisco alongside the movement's biggest funders and thinkers. Aaron Boddy (co-founder of Shrimp Welfare Project) has joined to help design and run it. Applications close 13th September.

--

A few months ago, we wrote about why now might be the best time ever to start an animal charity. In short: the bottlenecks that limited us to incubating roughly two to four animal charities a year are easing on both sides, us finding more superstar founders excited to work on animal welfare and mid-stage funding becoming less of a limiting factor than it was a few years ago. Meanwhile, the animal movement needs more new interventions and organizations in the pipeline so that efforts to fix factory farming can scale in the coming years. The low-hanging fruit hasn't been picked because barely anyone is in the orchard: Incubating more trailblazing [...]

---

Outline:

(01:41) What's different about this round

(06:08) More on "frontier problems"

(07:42) The research process

(08:21) Illustrative examples we're excited about

(08:50) Welfare tech

(09:31) Enabling primary animal welfare research.

(10:14) Talent meta-charities.

(10:48) Neglected animal populations.

(11:19) You don't need to be an "animal person"

(11:41) Key dates and how to apply

(11:45) The animal round

(12:34) But what about other cause areas?

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

---

First published:

August 3rd, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MsH3w5FdmEjr2aE7b/aim-s-first-ever-dedicated-animal-welfare-incubation-program

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Blogs have shaped our philosophical worldviews, found us careers and friends, and changed our lives. There's a good chance that a great blog of yore is the reason you’re reading this right now.

But many great bloggers have stopped blogging. The pile-on dynamics of the internet discourage unfiltered thoughts, and algorithmic feeds amplify ragebait and slop. Fear of scrutiny leads people to confine things to private Google docs and group chats. And good blogs are often victims of their own success — someone with a lot of good thoughts is at risk of becoming an adult with a demanding job and not that much free time.

It's not all bad. Substack has led to a renaissance of email newsletters, and our friends at Inkhaven host a bootcamp for bloggers. These are awesome, but they structurally encourage posting every day. We’d rather read the marginal post from an accomplished but erstwhile blogger, than one from a daily Substacker — even if the latter is a better writer!

So we’re launching the Blog Revival Project, to crowdfund $1,000+ bounties for good bloggers.

Sign up and pledge money towards reviving your favorite defunct blog! Or (though we kind of designed the website [...]

---

Outline:

(02:06) FAQ

(03:29) FAQ for bloggers

---

First published:

July 27th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dNG5MPjFiN86FN98d/blog-revival-project

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

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

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the design of grant programs, from small microgrants to regranting to ambitious new platforms to galaxy-brained schemes for impact markets. Here are five components that I think any grant program needs to be good:

1. Money

This one is obvious: a grant program needs money to give out.

Historically in EA and AI safety, this started as individual small donations from earning-to-give, to Dustin Moskovitz's money via Good Ventures, to an ill-fated boom around the FTX Future Fund, and now everyone preparing for the frothy Anthropic and OpenAI dollars.

2. Taste

This is also kind of obvious. Most people's image of “what makes a good grantmaker” is “excellent taste”, which is to say, the ability to discern between good or bad projects.

Grant taste comes in a few forms:

• Taste in people: founders of projects, leaders of orgs
• Taste in ideas: whether a particular idea might succeed; whether it’d be good if it did
• Taste in fields: cause prio across technical AI safety vs policy vs fieldbuilding

One problem with taste is that everyone invariably thinks that they have good taste. Also, there isn’t necessarily One True Taste, so it can [...]

---

Outline:

(00:26) 1. Money

(00:50) 2. Taste

(01:59) 3. Dealflow

(03:07) 4. Hustle

(04:19) 5. Trust

(06:13) Breaking down some recent grant programs

(06:18) ACX Grants

(06:55) grantmaking.ai

(07:30) Lightcone Commons

(08:05) Coefficient Giving

(08:41) Can money buy taste/dealflow/hustle/trust?

(10:00) Appendix

---

First published:

July 30th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NFsWzsZSZEPdthCqf/money-taste-dealflow-hustle-trust

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.