EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

LLM disclosure: I wrote this post myself, then asked an LLM to copy-edit it before posting. I manually made any edits I liked and copy-pasted no text from the LLM (my current practice for using LLMs in writing that I care about).

This is crossposted from my blog.

These are personal reflections on feelings that I’ve been sitting with recently. I’m posting them, because the last time I felt this way I regretted not doing so. I don’t really know how calibrated they are, but I’ve been noticing them more and more.

Around 6 months before FTX collapsed, I wrote a draft EA Forum post called “Concerns about the Carrick Flynn campaign.” At the time, I was on the verge of leaving EA. During the frothiest FTX days it seemed like many folks were energized by the money and attention, but I felt kind of gross. The amount of money pouring into EA, and the resulting “lowering of the bar” that happened felt like a degradation of community norms that was too severe, almost not worth the benefits. Of course, some people voiced these concerns at the time, but they were drowned out by the excitement of the moment.

[...]

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First published:

May 10th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/io3cqZeToEKsZEZWG/reflections-on-anthropic-and-ea

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post.

By Robert Wiblin | Watch on Youtube | Listen on Spotify | Read transcript

Episode summary

I want my children to live in a world where they will have a future and there will be a democracy for them to live in. Even a 1% chance of something going really, really bad is not acceptable to me. So I think it is really important that we explore all the possible promising ways to solve the technical issues. … The stakes are so high, we should try multiple approaches.

— Yoshua Bengio

Hundreds of millions already turn to AI on the most personal of topics — therapy, political opinions, and how to treat others. And as AI takes over more of the economy, the character of these systems will shape culture on an even grander scale, ultimately becoming “the personality of most of the world's workforce.”

The co-inventor of modern AI and the most cited living scientist believes he's figured out how to ensure AI is honest, incapable of deception, and never goes rogue. Yoshua Bengio — Turing Award Winner and founder of LawZero — is disturbed by the many unintended drives and goals present [...]

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Outline:

(00:21) Episode summary

(03:11) Highlights

(03:15) Can Scientist AI become an agent?

(05:43) Might Scientist AI actually be more capable than competitors?

(08:41) Were in a race against time: next steps for LawZero

(11:22) Yoshuas request for AI companies

(12:44) Yoshua thinks humans are now the scarier threat

(16:21) Why Yoshua changed his mind about AI risk

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First published:

May 7th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/oTBThbHvhryf5wYTt/yoshua-bengio-thinks-he-knows-how-to-build-safe

Linkpost URL:
https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/yoshua-bengio-scientist-ai/

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TL;DR: Coefficient Giving is running a major hiring round for 10+ grantmakers and senior generalists across five Global Catastrophic Risks (GCR) teams. We're allocating around $1 billion in 2026 across AI safety and catastrophic biorisk, and we’re acutely capacity-constrained. Apply here by May 17.

Why we’re hiring

A core premise of our work is that if a global catastrophe caused by transformative AI or biotechnology could be prevented by funding and isn't, we consider it our responsibility. The work our GCR teams fund today — from technical AI safety research and governance to biosecurity and pandemic preparedness — will shape how well humanity navigates some of the most consequential decisions of the coming decade. Timelines to transformative AI appear to be shortening: there's an overwhelming amount of work to do to make this go well, and quite plausibly only a few years to do it.

We expect to move around $1 billion in GCR grants in 2026 (and significantly more in future years), but we're significantly understaffed relative to the opportunities in front of us. We've previously helped jump-start the field of AI safety and address other existential threats like mirror bacteria, and we want to do considerably more.

[...]

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Outline:

(00:37) Why were hiring

(01:52) What were looking for

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First published:

May 8th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sHF2yjAnNNhxZ56jf/coefficient-giving-is-hiring-grantmakers-and-senior

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This forum post was first drafted using an LLM to summarise information from human-written job postings and was then edited/adjusted by hiring managers. The primary author/coordinator is Arden Koehler.

Overview

• 80,000 Hours has eight open positions across our advising, operations, video, and web teams, plus three expressions of interest open for video and operations roles.
• We're trying to scale up significantly this year — staff capacity is one of our biggest bottlenecks, and we'd love to hire more people who care about helping make advanced AI go well for the world. We recently grew to 50 staff and plan to grow more.
• If you've ever wanted to work at 80,000 Hours, now is a good time to apply. Application deadlines fall between May 25 and June 7, 2026.
• If you don’t see a role here that interests you, check back on our website later – there will be more posted soon, including a role in our marketing team.
• And if you're not interested in applying but you know someone who might be a great fit, we'd love referrals! Email [email protected] and indicate that it's a referral and the role the referral is for in the subject line. If we hire someone you introduced us [...]

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Outline:

(00:24) Overview

(01:45) Open positions

(01:52) Career services team

(02:48) Operations team

(04:16) Video team

(05:58) Web team

(07:05) Expressions of interest

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First published:

May 8th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4wafpx8DSn2dBDLRf/80-000-hours-is-hiring-a-lot-right-now-come-join-us

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post.

Could we have human-level AI within the next few decades? For a long time, many people have dismissed this idea as armchair speculation. In their view, we shouldn’t ground our beliefs about transformative technologies in vague hunches and fragile multi-step arguments. We need more solid evidence, like clear empirical trends. We need to be epistemically conservative.

I have some conservative instincts myself, but I’m not sure they favour long AI timelines anymore. That might have been the case ten or even five years ago, but things have changed.

Bio Anchors

It's no accident that the AI timelines debate long lacked empirical grounding. While climate change has a natural metric – temperature – AI progress doesn’t. As a result, forecasts have often relied on intuition.

But in recent years, some researchers have tried to put timeline forecasting on a firmer empirical footing. One attempt that received plenty of attention was Ajeya Cotra's Bio Anchors report (2020), which plotted compute projections against estimates of the human brain's compute usage. The model produced multiple forecasts of when it would become feasible to train transformative AI, with a median date around 2052.

Bio Anchors was an impressive research effort [...]

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Outline:

(00:47) Bio Anchors

(02:17) Capability benchmarks

(03:38) Revenue growth

(04:50) Expert surveys

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First published:

May 7th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qtfX67cC4tij2zoKC/the-tables-have-turned-on-ai-sceptics

Linkpost URL:
https://www.update.news/p/the-tables-have-turned-on-ai-sceptics

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Note: This post was crossposted from the Coefficient Giving Farm Animal Welfare Research Newsletter by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post.

Subtitle: The pork lobby is one farm bill away from gutting our strongest farm animal welfare laws

Last Thursday, the US House of Representatives passed a farm bill containing the “Save Our Bacon” Act. The Act's stated aim is narrow: to wipe out California and Massachusetts’ bans on the sale of pork from pigs confined in gestation crates.

Its reach is much wider. The Act would stop any state or locality from regulating the sale of meat based on how it's produced in another state. This would likely invalidate state and local bans on foie gras, crated veal, and more.

It would also halt future legislative progress. Congress hasn't passed a farm animal welfare law in decades. State laws are where reforms actually happen. The SOB Act would gut them by mandating they contain a giant loophole for out-of-state imports.

The Act has two notable exemptions. One is welcome: state bans on the sale of caged eggs aren’t covered. The other is telling: state [...]

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First published:

May 7th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/kTo9z5bscb4wQrkqs/save-our-pigs

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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New policy:

• You are welcome to use AI to help you write posts, but we ask that you disclose it when you do. Not disclosing that your post is AI-assisted could mean a rate-limit or a ban.[1] We won’t enforce this policy for comments and quick takes, though we’d appreciate a norm of disclosure there as well.

• We are (and have been) moving more low quality or off-topic writing off of the Frontpage. Fully AI written text is (at time of writing) overwhelmingly likely to be one of these.

More detail:

• Disclosure: If it is likely that there is substantial portions of AI-generated text[2] in your post at time of publishing, you must note this at the top of your post. You are not required to note if you used AI for research/ ideation. If you read a post which seems AI-generated, and you don’t see a disclosure — please report it.

  • To help get you started, we added a button to our post editor that provides some example disclosure statements. Like so:

  • If you’re unsure if your case applies, feel free to ask the Forum team before publishing.

• Removing content [...]

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Outline:

(00:10) New policy:

(00:43) More detail:

(02:13) Reasoning:

(04:16) Good and bad uses of LLMs

(04:31) Examples of recommended use of LLMs

(05:46) Examples of discouraged use of LLMs

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First published:

May 7th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bxA9fsY9Psgarcq6e/new-ea-forum-llm-use-policy

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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I started 2 EA(ish) group houses now, so I figured there's an opportunity to share my experience and how you too can start one!

There's a whole substack dedicated to community living, so I'll stick to the EA lens of it.

Note: My experiences are based in NYC and SF, which have a nice flow of travelers & concentration of like-minded folks. I also lived in ~4 group houses/communities prior to starting my own.

What is a Group House? (aka Intentional/Community Living)

Well, there's a few levels.

Baseline: Cohabiting

• Multiple people (3+) cohabit in a single abode. There's common spaces like the kitchen or living room.

Level 1: Friendly

• You like to talk to each other in common spaces.

Level 2: Spending Time

• You join in on serendipitous activities happening inside the house - joining someone playing video games or watching a movie. Cooking and sharing food.

Level 3: Intentionality

• You initiate house activities, have active rituals ((like weekly house meetings or monthly brunch), communication channels beyond necessary logistics (sending memes or interesting articles). You enjoy spending time together inside or outside the house.

Level 4: Schelling Point Hub

• Your house is a schelling point [...]

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Outline:

(00:40) What is a Group House? (aka Intentional/Community Living)

(01:50) Things That Happened to Me Because I Lived in an EA Group House

(02:04) I became AI Safety-pilled!

(02:30) We hosted a slew of out-of-towners visiting

(03:00) I got connected to opportunities.

(03:18) We became a somewhat informal Schelling point.

(03:41) Misconceptions

(03:45) Im an introvert.

(04:10) Do you just talk about EA all the time? Is it just a prolonged EA meetup in your home?

(04:36) I dont know anyone to start this with. None of my friends want to do a group house.

(05:08) Great For...

(05:50) Not Great For...

(06:25) Heres How

(06:28) 1. Plant a Flag (Find a Place to Rent)

(06:52) 2. Find People (What most people are afraid of. Indeed, the most legwork.)

(07:20) 3. Have a Vision

(07:37) 4. Select and Sign the House

(07:45) 5. House Governance & Logistics

(08:50) 6. Things That Might Happen Over Time

(09:09) Ask: In the comments, share your experience of the EA Group House life!

(09:28) Resources

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First published:

May 6th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/g84GTm6BcKwxCjYXq/the-ea-case-for-an-ea-group-house-how-to-start-one-its-easy

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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I'm Svetha Janumpalli, founder and CEO of New Incentives. We run a conditional cash transfer program in northern Nigeria that provides small incentives to caregivers to complete routine infant vaccination schedules.

Today, we operate across over 7,000 clinics and have enrolled 6.8 million infants.

GiveWell's most recent analysis suggests our program is substantially more cost-effective than earlier estimates.

Our program currently costs roughly $16 per infant enrolled. During our RCT period, we averaged ~27,000 monthly cash transfers. In 2025, we averaged over 760,000 per month, a ~28× increase.

While we’re confident in the core results, there are still important open questions, particularly around long-term effects, scalability to new contexts, and how the model performs outside our current operating areas. We are interested in testing whether variations of the model can work in lower-density or differently constrained settings.

I’d love to answer your questions about what we’ve learned along the way, and I’m happy to engage on detailed or critical questions. We’ve learned a lot from mistakes and ongoing uncertainty. A few areas I'm especially happy to dig into:

• Operations and scale. What it takes to go from a small pilot to thousands of clinics in northern [...]

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First published:

May 6th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/aqyGLEvmbCrwyNHvH/ama-svetha-janumpalli-ceo-and-founder-of-new-incentives

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This post was cross-posted from Positive Sum by the Forum team. The author notes: I'm not saying every abundance goal meets this bar, e.g. high speed rail in America would not. This post is intended as a clarifying abundance's relation to EA, rather than a criticism of EA prioritization.

Subtitle: Functional governance and democracy helps many EA cause areas. A thousand small government failures compound into civilizational risk.

This piece is written for the effective altruism community, people focused on finding the highest-impact ways to do good, especially through a lens of whether something is important, tractable, and neglected. I’m giving a version of this piece as a talk at EA Global x DC next week.

Effective Altruism has a great track record. In 2023 alone, an EA-backed organization prevented 40,000 deaths and 20 million malaria cases. Another moved over $1 billion in cash directly to the world's poorest families and changed how USAID measures its own effectiveness.

But EA has a blind spot: systems change. It's harder to measure, the benefits are diffuse, and it seems less tractable. But it's often more impactful.

China's decision to liberalize its economy lifted hundreds of millions out of extreme poverty. The [...]

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Outline:

(01:51) We focused on bednets while a malaria vaccine was stuck for 35 years

(02:49) Abundance, at its core, is responsive governance

(03:36) Why abundance is important

(08:21) Why abundance is neglected

(09:31) Why abundance is tractable

(10:24) What this means for AI risk

(11:31) The movement needs people

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

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First published:

May 5th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LtwbmXhNouBBGGBzL/effective-altruism-focused-on-bednets-while-a-malaria

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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