EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

This is a link post.

I believe deeply in the existential importance of using AI to defend the United States and other democracies, and to defeat our autocratic adversaries.

Anthropic has therefore worked proactively to deploy our models to the Department of War and the intelligence community. We were the first frontier AI company to deploy our models in the US government's classified networks, the first to deploy them at the National Laboratories, and the first to provide custom models for national security customers. Claude is extensively deployed across the Department of War and other national security agencies for mission-critical applications, such as intelligence analysis, modeling and simulation, operational planning, cyber operations, and more.

Anthropic has also acted to defend America's lead in AI, even when it is against the company's short-term interest. We chose to forgo several hundred million dollars in revenue to cut off the use of Claude by firms linked to the Chinese Communist Party (some of whom have been designated by the Department of War as Chinese Military Companies), shut down CCP-sponsored cyberattacks that attempted to abuse Claude, and have advocated for strong export controls on chips to ensure a democratic advantage.

Anthropic understands that the [...]

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First published:

February 26th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/PnzfLxaG9mX6JrDKe/statement-from-dario-amodei-on-our-discussions-with-the

Linkpost URL:
https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post.

Is now the time to Boycott Chat GPT? I've raised boycotts here before and EAs seem a bit allergic, but I think @Rutger Bregman makes a strong case. Costs little, the time seems ripe and it might achieve something big.

If there was even a 5% chance that a boycott could seriously either harm Open AI or make them reform their approach (optimistic?) it, might it be worth putting some energy or even EA money into supporting this cause? Unfortunately OpenPhil probably couldn't as they have such a conflict of interest with Anthropic, but others could. That is if money is even needed to support htis.

I'm not sure about this but one short Linkedin post almost sold me on it! This guy Bregman sure knows how to communicate....

"... The Montgomery Bus Boycott wasn't a protest against all of American segregation. It targeted one bus company, in one city. A year later, it had broken the back of segregated transit.

I believe we're looking at a similar moment right now with ChatGPT.

Most people don't know that ChatGPT's president, Greg Brockman, donated $25 million to Trump's MAGA Super [...]

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First published:

February 25th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/J8FRrRRaCWHAmfvjY/bregman-makes-a-strong-argument-for-boycotting-chat-gpt

Linkpost URL:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7432447250624167936/

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Dear Beloved Fellow EAs,

Inspired to post this because it's draft amnesty week.

I'm sure others here have thought about this more than me, so maybe I'm missing a lot. But I just keep thinking:

When I turn on the news, it feels like half the world is trying to promote Democracy. I'm an American. So maybe what I really mean is: It feels like half of American society is trying to promote Democracy or save America from authoritarianism. When I go outside and walk just a few blocks from where I live, I repeatedly see large numbers of people protesting to save America's democracy. When I talk to my family, the issue of promoting American democracy is top of mind for all of them. I know a lot of my smart, hard-working, law school and college classmates are also very focused on protecting democracy.

But hardly any people seem to be focused on helping animals. And there are so many animals suffering egregiously all the time. There were before half of America started worrying about Democracy and, at this rate, there will be even more animals suffering after half of America stops worrying about Democracy.

Democracy mostly benefits [...]

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First published:

February 25th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LbYvPdeFjCvWaAaEj/half-the-world-is-trying-to-promote-democracy-shouldn-t-eas

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

GiveDirectly has launched their 3rd high-impact, evidence-backed Zakat fund in Mozambique, one of the most neglected crises in the world today. Through direct cash transfers, families receive support quickly, transparently, and with full autonomy over how to use it.

At a glance, this fund:

• Sends 100% of your Zakat directly to eligible Muslim families in northern Mozambique
• Provides $550 in unconditional cash per household
• Uses an evidence-backed approach supported by 1,000+ studies
• Is fully Zakat-compliant, certified by qualified Islamic scholars
• Uses no Zakat for overheads, with operational costs funded separately
• Preserves dignity and choice, allowing families to decide what they need most

Visit https://www.givedirectly.org/zakat2026/ to donate.

A forgotten crisis

Mozambique has been called “the forgotten crisis” — 4 in 5 of people were already living in extreme poverty (one of the highest rates of poverty in the world) before the country lost 70% of their U.S. aid funding from cuts last year.

In northern Mozambique, where your Zakat funds will go, families face overlapping crises: armed conflict and violence, worsening cyclones, and high rates of malaria and infant mortality.

Despite the scale of need, these Muslim communities are often overlooked by international aid organizations and remain unseen by Muslims giving Zakat.

GiveDirectly has [...]

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Outline:

(01:04) A forgotten crisis

(01:58) The evidence for cash

(03:36) Zakat and cash

(05:35) Recording of the Webinar

(06:05) About the Authors

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First published:

February 25th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2wPzWE8aoegdikFwf/effective-zakat-fund-2026

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Introduction

Democracy is in danger. This post examines how we can protect it.

It provides an overview of the global state of democracy, explains current threats to democracy and their causes, presents effective countermeasures against autocratization, and explores what role this issue should (or should not) play within effective altruism.

What this post does not include are concrete comparative figures on the effectiveness of different interventions, or a quantitative analysis of possible strategies. Nor does it aim to offer a one-size-fits-all set of recommendations.

Instead, my goal is to provide a broad first overview of the topic, drawing both on activist experience and on political-science research. I hope that every politically interested reader will find something in it that is relevant to them. If you feel that a part of the article is not relevant to you, you can simply skip it.

The post is based on a talk that I prepared for the German-speaking EA community. Accordingly, the post focuses primarily on developments in Germany, Western Europe and the United States. However, many of the trends and strategies discussed are also relevant to other parts of the world. The reason I do not cover them in the [...]

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Outline:

(00:12) Introduction

(01:32) Outline

(02:21) Why Are There No Footnotes?

(02:46) Initiative for Safeguarding Democracy

(03:27) What is Democracy?

(03:30) Electoral and Liberal Democracy

(05:03) Autocracy

(05:59) Autocratization and Democratization

(07:56) Democracy and Autocratization in the 21st Century

(08:02) The Third Wave of Autocratization

(10:27) Measuring Democracy

(12:28) Threats to Democracy

(16:59) Why People Become Opponents of Liberal Democracy

(19:43) What We Can Do

(19:46) Before and After the Onset of Autocratization

(20:49) How to be an Autocrat

(23:50) How to Resist Wannabe Autocrats

(27:25) Traditional activism

(30:24) Online Activism

(31:38) Reports to law enforcement authorities

(32:49) Donating

(33:43) Career

(34:58) Self-Protection Without Anticipatory Obedience

(36:50) Autocratization Does Not Affect Everyone Equally

(36:55) Targeted Repression

(39:09) Protecting Vulnerable Groups

(42:03) Safeguarding Democracy as an EA Cause Area

(42:09) Should EA be Political?

(43:06) How Neglected is Safeguarding Democracy?

(44:06) An EA Approach to Politics

(46:22) Acknowledgements

(46:37) Literature

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First published:

February 24th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/iTqSkovKqej8w9cuE/how-to-safeguard-democracy

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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This is a link post.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei until Friday evening to give the military unfettered access to its AI model or face harsh penalties, Axios has learned.

The big picture: Hegseth told Amodei in a tense meeting on Tuesday that the Pentagon will either cut ties and declare Anthropic a "supply chain risk," or invoke the Defense Production Act to force the company to tailor its model to the military's needs.

Why it matters: The Pentagon wants to punish Anthropic as the feud over AI safeguards grows increasingly nasty, but officials are also worried about the consequences of losing access to its industry-leading model, Claude.

• "The only reason we're still talking to these people is we need them and we need them now. The problem for these guys is they are that good," a Defense official told Axios ahead of the meeting.
• Anthropic has said it is willing to adapt its usage policies for the Pentagon, but not to allow its model to be used for the mass surveillance of Americans or the development of weapons that fire without human involvement.
• Anthropic's Claude is the only AI model currently used for the [...]

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First published:

February 24th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zgapPtx5XvpLKNWkL/exclusive-hegseth-gives-anthropic-until-friday-to-back-down-1

Linkpost URL:
https://www.axios.com/2026/02/24/anthropic-pentagon-claude-hegseth-dario

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

All views are my own, not Anthropic's. This post assumes Anthropic's announcement of RSP v3.0 as background.

Today, Anthropic released its Responsible Scaling Policy 3.0. The official announcement discusses the high-level thinking behind it. This is a more detailed post giving my own takes on the update.

First, the big picture:

• I expect some people will be upset about the move away from a “hard commitments”/”binding ourselves to the mast” vibe. (Anthropic has always had the ability to revise the RSP, and we’ve always had language in there specifically flagging that we might revise away key commitments in a situation where other AI developers aren’t adhering to similar commitments. But it's been easy to get the impression that the RSP is “binding ourselves to the mast” and committing to unilaterally pause AI development and deployment under some conditions, and Anthropic is responsible for that.)
• I take significant responsibility for this change. I have been pushing for this change for about a year now, and have led the way in developing the new RSP. I am in favor of nearly everything about the changes we’re making. I am excited about the Roadmap, the Risk Reports, the move toward external [...]

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Outline:

(05:32) How it started: the original goals of RSPs

(11:25) How its going: the good and the bad

(11:51) A note on my general orientation toward this topic

(14:56) Goal 1: forcing functions for improved risk mitigations

(15:02) A partial success story: robustness to jailbreaks for particular uses of concern, in line with the ASL-3 deployment standard

(18:24) A mixed success/failure story: impact on information security

(20:42) ASL-4 and ASL-5 prep: the wrong incentives

(25:00) When forcing functions do and dont work well

(27:52) Goal 2 (testbed for practices and policies that can feed into regulation)

(29:24) Goal 3 (working toward consensus and common knowledge about AI risks and potential mitigations)

(30:59) RSP v3s attempt to amplify the good and reduce the bad

(36:01) Do these benefits apply only to the most safety-oriented companies?

(37:40) A revised, but not overturned, vision for RSPs

(39:08) Q&A

(39:10) On the move away from implied unilateral commitments

(39:15) Is RSP v3 proactively sending a race-to-the-bottom signal? Why be the first company to explicitly abandon the high ambition for achieving low levels of risk?

(40:34) How sure are you that a voluntary industry-wide pause cant happen? Are you worried about signaling that youll be the first to defect in a prisoners dilemma?

(42:03) How sure are you that you cant actually sprint to achieve the level of information security, alignment science understanding, and deployment safeguards needed to make arbitrarily powerful AI systems low-risk?

(43:49) What message will this change send to regulators? Will it make ambitious regulation less likely by making companies commitments to low risk look less serious?

(45:10) Why did you have to do this now - couldnt you have waited until the last possible moment to make this change, in case the more ambitious risk mitigations ended up working out?

(46:03) Could you have drafted the new RSP, then waited until you had to invoke your escape clause and introduced it then? Or introduced the new RSP as what we will do if we invoke our escape clause?

(47:29) The new Risk Reports and Roadmap are nice, but couldnt you have put them out without also making the key revision of moving away from unilateral commitments?

(48:26) Why isnt a unilateral pause a good idea? It could be a big credible signal of danger, which could lead to policy action.

(49:37) Could a unilateral pause ever be a good idea? Why not commit to a unilateral pause in cases where it would be a good idea?

(50:31) Why didnt you communicate about the change differently? Im worried that the way you framed this will cause audience X to take away message Y.

(51:53) Why dont Anthropics and your communications about this have a more alarmed and/or disappointed vibe? I reluctantly concede that this revision makes sense on the merits, but Im sad about it. Arent you?

(53:19) On other components of the new RSP

(53:24) The new RSPs commitments related to competitors seem vague and weak. Could you add more and/or strengthen these? They dont seem sufficient as-is to provide strong assurance against a prisoners dilemma world where each relevant company wishes it could be more careful, but rushes due to pressure from others.

(55:29) Why is external review only required at an extreme capability level? Why not just require it now?

(58:06) The new commitments are mostly about Risk Reports and Roadmap - what stops companies from just making these really perfunctory?

(59:18) Why isnt the RSP more adversarially designed such that once a company adopts it, it will improve their practices even if nobody at the company values safety at all?

(01:00:18) What are the consequences of missing your Roadmap commitments? If they arent dire, will anyone care about them?

(01:00:29) OK, but does that apply to other companies too? How will Roadmaps force other companies to get things done?

(01:00:40) Why arent the recommendations for industry-wide safety more specific? Why is it built around safety cases instead of ASLs with specific lists of needed risk mitigations?

(01:02:06) What is the point of making commitments if you can revise them anytime?

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First published:

February 24th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DGZNAGL2FNJfftwgE/responsible-scaling-policy-v3-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Introduction

(Written with extensive AI-assistance, including in drafting)

Effective altruism has moved billions of dollars toward evidence-based interventions and saved lives. The analytical machinery the community has built (cost-effectiveness models, uncertainty quantification, comparative frameworks) represents a real contribution to how philanthropy works. These achievements are what makes the problem I'm describing so costly.

EA assembled one of the most capable, motivated, and intellectually diverse groups of people on earth. Tens of thousands of people with backgrounds spanning medicine, technology, policy, behavioral science, philosophy, and more, drawn together by a shared commitment to figuring out how to do the most good.

Then it built a system that asks for their labor and money while largely ignoring what they know.

EA is exceptionally good at one epistemic task: given a cause area, identifying the most cost-effective interventions within it. But there's a different task, discovering entirely new categories of opportunity, that the community is structurally resistant to performing.[^1] The primary reason is that EA treats its members as resources to be deployed, not as sources of insight to be listened to.

This post argues that EA's most important epistemic resource is the distributed knowledge and diverse perspectives of its members, and [...]

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Outline:

(00:13) Introduction

(02:10) The Telescope Array

(03:57) How Ideas Actually Enter EA Priorities

(07:59) The Exceptions That Prove the Rule

(11:17) Why Path 5 Fails

(16:06) Why the Equilibrium Persists

(18:19) What Would a Functional Path 5 Look Like?

(20:19) Conclusion

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First published:

February 23rd, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/oeoMD6HRTZmmrFEkG/the-discovery-problem-why-ea-can-t-find-what-it-isn-t

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Otherwise known as: Effective givers should bankroll more effective giving infrastructure

Do you donate a significant amount to GiveWell's Top Charities, perhaps because you have pledged money and you want to end preventable childhood death? Would you like more money to go to GiveWell's Top Charities? You should instead consider donating to:

• A professional effective giving fundraising organisation, that employs staff to fundraise on behalf of GiveWell's Top Charities. There are a load of them around with 3x or greater multipliers and real funding gaps. I'd actually like to see someone do a proper public analysis of this space to work out where the reasonable multipliers and consistent funding gaps are.
• Your local EA community-builder or local EA group's operations costs, or other small EA thing happening in your local area. Tell them you would like effective giving towards GiveWell's Top Charities to be a more visible and valued part of the EA movement and that is the purpose of your donation. There are many EA community-builders who are able to use extra money to expand the EA movement in such a way as GiveWell's Top Charities get extra money at at least a 1x multiplier. They [...]

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First published:

February 23rd, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Z9gdKj7eGsy3rzurH/you-should-donate-to-ea-fundraisers-or-community-builders

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

I joined Effective Altruism Australia as CEO back in July 2025, after spending 3.5 years as the Head of Marketing at Giving What We Can. I wanted to share a few blog posts from our website, that help give some insight into our work and direction going forward.

What does Effective Altruism Australia do?

Effective Altruism Australia (EAA) champions the principles of effective altruism in Australia and connects Australians to practical actions through giving and community.

We primarily raise money for effective charities in global health and climate change (through the EAA Environment charity). We would likely fundraise for other causes if they were tax-deductible in Australia, but that's a story for another time.

We also have a national community building team who support EAGxAustralasia, as well as the EA community across the country.

Effective Altruism Australia's Strategy Summary for 2026

Our guiding motto for 2026 is “Strengthen the Soil, Test What Grows”. This reflects our aim to consolidate best practices and build a strong foundation for future growth. Our focus is on strengthening core programs, improving consistency and quality of fundraising and communications practices, and ensuring EAA is well-positioned to scale sustainably over time.

Why EAA is [...]

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Outline:

(01:08) Effective Altruism Australias Strategy Summary for 2026

(01:41) Why EAA is Investing in Growth (And How Were Funding It)

(02:36) 2025. Giving Multiplier: Scaling Impact Without Compromising Efficiency

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First published:

February 24th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/c2JxgQfb36NhMjkeZ/3-recent-posts-from-effective-altruism-australia-about-our

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.