EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

Hi everyone, Zershaaneh here!

80,000 Hours has published an article on using AI to improve societal decision making.

This post includes some context, the summary from the article, and the table of contents with links to each section.

Context

This is meant to be a medium-depth, introductory resource for understanding how AI tools could be used to enhance societal decision making — and why speeding up their development and adoption could make a huge difference to how the future unfolds.

It covers:

• The kinds of tools we think are especially promising, and the opportunity we might have to differentially speed up their development and adoption.
• The possible pitfalls of trying to advance AI decision making tools — like the chance the tools you work on would have already been built by default, and the risk of inadvertently speeding up more dangerous AI capabilities.
• Our all-things-considered take on how much we recommend working in this area — and what sort of person would be a good fit. (Right now, we’d be excited to see hundreds more people taking this path, but we don’t think it's a good option for everyone.)
• Lots of options for getting involved — including roles that don’t [...]

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Outline:

(00:28) Context

(01:34) Why are we posting this here?

(02:05) Summary (from the article)

(03:14) Overall view - Sometimes recommended.

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First published:

February 20th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/659FtQYTESH2ec9Dt/80-000-hours-problem-profile-on-using-ai-to-enhance-societal

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Digital minds may become one of the most consequential issues of the future — and the world needs people prepared to navigate it. We're launching the Digital Minds Fellowship, a fully funded week-long program at Cambridge for 15 participants looking to build careers in digital minds/AI welfare. Applications open now, deadline March 27.

Why this fellowship?

Unlike more established fields such as AI safety and governance, the digital minds field is still nascent. Identifying promising research questions is harder, career paths are less clear, and the community is smaller.

Program structure

The fellowship runs August 3–9, 2026 at Jesus College, Cambridge, and has three modules:

• Philosophical & Technical Foundations (2 days, led by Derek Shiller, Rethink Priorities) — covering LLM architectures, philosophical frameworks for consciousness and moral status, and what current systems might (and might not) imply for cognition and experience.
• Societal Implications & Strategy (2 days, led by me) — scenario planning, intervention design, policy frameworks, public communication, and stakeholder engagement.
• Project Scoping & Career Planning (1 day) — developing well-scoped project ideas and concrete next steps, supported by leading experts.

Fellows are paired with a mentor before the program and will also be invited to [...]

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First published:

February 19th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NRdWZKqGyNpsXRQfJ/apply-for-the-digital-minds-fellowship-aug-3-9-cambridge

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Hello!

I’ve recently been working on a memoir of my time in EA (Harri Besceli and the non methods of post-rationality).

However, AI timelines have led me to conclude that everything I had previously planned on doing over the course of the coming months or years, must now be completed as soon as possible, ideally by the end of the weekend.

Given that, I’m sharing the quick version now, and hope to complete the full version in the fullness of time. Here's my story in brief:

Proto EA

• As a child and teenager I was fairly smart and ‘successful’, I did well academically, had prestigious accolades and so on. 
• I had various heroic fantasies about my future, often imagining myself as James Bond. These fantasies became less common and less combat oriented as I got older, though I still had a sense that I was in some way destined to do important things and or save the world.  
• I was very into self-improvement, pop psychology and books kind of related to new atheism. 
• I often had a sense of intellectual and philosophical isolation. I wasn’t exactly lonely, though I also didn’t feel met by others [...]

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Outline:

(00:39) Proto EA

(01:24) Promising EA

(01:48) Professional EA

(03:00) Post EA

(04:05) Apotheosis EA Post Post EA

(04:48) Commentary

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First published:

February 19th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/oPyQ5MFD5GSCtu8LY/my-ea-story-in-brief-plus-some-comments-on-ea

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Hi all,

Do you know high school or college students eager to reduce farmed animal suffering? Applications are now open for the New Roots Institute Fellowship!

The Fellowship equips students with the knowledge, skills, and networks they need to challenge industrial animal agriculture. Students begin with our six-week virtual summer Leadership Academy, and many continue into the Academic Year Fellowship, where they launch and lead high-impact campaigns and can receive a project grant of up to $2,500 throughout the year.

New Roots fellows have driven institutional dining reforms, advanced legislative advocacy, developed and implemented classroom curricula, with the support of our partners organizations. Fellows also receive ongoing career support and have gone on to work in high impact roles across sectors.

If you know ambitious students eager to create real change, we’d love to meet them. We would be grateful if you could:

• Nominate a student(s) who would be a great fit for the Fellowship, and they’ll receive special consideration in the application process
• Share the application with your networks

The priority deadline is February 25, and applications are accepted on a rolling basis until spots are filled.

Let me know if you have [...]

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First published:

February 18th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/i6wdsoK68kXB56L9L/applications-open-new-roots-institute-fellowship

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

Episode summary

Whether or not we get AGI in the next few years, a lot of people are starting to not really care about that question. They still expect the next 25 years or the next 50 years to play out kind of like the last 25 years or the last 50 years…

Whereas I think that there's a pretty good chance that by 2050 the world will look as different from today as today does from the hunter-gatherer era. It's like 10,000 years of progress rather than 25 years of progress driven by AI automating all intellectual activity.

— Ajeya Cotra

Every major AI company has the same safety plan: when AI gets crazy powerful and really dangerous, they’ll use the AI itself to figure out how to make AI safe and beneficial. It sounds circular, almost satirical. But is it actually a bad plan?

Today's guest, Ajeya Cotra, recently placed 3rd out of 413 participants forecasting AI developments and is among the most thoughtful and respected commentators on where the technology is going.

She thinks there's a meaningful chance we’ll see as much [...]

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Outline:

(00:22) Episode summary

(03:39) Highlights

(03:42) The spectrum of expectations about AGI

(06:50) Wildly different views about the economic effects of AI

(10:44) The most dangerous AI progress might remain secret

(14:08) White-knuckling the 12-month window after automated AI R&D

(17:06) EA as an incubator for avant-garde causes others wont touch

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First published:

February 17th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/baJ6LyAnAERWWz6XN/ajeya-cotra-on-whether-it-s-crazy-that-every-ai-company-s

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Back-of-the-Envelope Activist Math

There are about 118,000 vegetarians and vegans in the Seattle metro area. Of those, approximately 50 participate in any kind of regular activism (at least once every two months): Justice For Animals gets ~5-10 people; the Animal Rights Initiative gets around a dozen; the Northwest Animal Rights Network has ~20-30; and The Humane League has half-dozen.[1] Another 50 to 100 people participate irregularly, perhaps once or twice a year. Taking the more generous number of 150 volunteers, the participation rate shakes out to 0.1% of vegans and vegetarians (and 0.004% of the general population).[2] These are people who've already made the considerable personal and social shift to go vegan, and they’re deciding not to spend a few hours a month on activism that could reach many more animals than their diets.

It's not just that people don’t want to participate in activism in general. There are a number of movements that have much larger participation rates. BLM protests and climate protests top the charts at a participation rate of 6% of the American population attending at least one protest or rally. The Women's March had 1.0 to 1.6% of the population participate. If we look at [...]

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Outline:

(00:10) Back-of-the-Envelope Activist Math

(02:28) Animal Activism Sucks

(06:58) Missing Ingredients: Fun, Meaning, and Connection

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First published:

February 17th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pMjvfxumxhoW8iDFb/where-are-all-the-animal-activists

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This is a link post.

TLDR: This is my 8th year as a member of the Effective Altruism community, and I thought I would share some observations on building a mindset that can help others get jobs at high-impact organizations. The tone of this post is very informal as I am mostly copying and pasting it from my blog. It's for the admins to decide if that is OK, I hope it is.

My story with working in EA-aligned organizations starts in 2018, when a friend of mine mentioned that some weird project she’d been working on in Vancouver was hiring for a position that could be a perfect fit. I applied, and it was. The project was called Charity Entrepreneurship, and I worked on its communications, outreach, and recruitment for 6 years, as well as on its rebrand to Ambitious Impact. I currently work at Rethink Priorities and the EA Animal Welfare Fund, so as you can see, I am pretty lucky to be working on amazing, impact-focused projects, and I hope this trajectory will continue.

As someone responsible for EA talent outreach for a few years, I spoke with many individuals at EAG conferences about their career [...]

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Outline:

(01:39) Value-aligment

(03:31) Impact focus

(08:29) Flexibility

(10:27) Being useful

(12:57) Luck

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First published:

February 15th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sGobtEGubAmgvfgyQ/how-to-get-a-job-in-ea-unpractical-guide-to-an-impact-useful

Linkpost URL:
https://ulazarosa.substack.com/p/how-to-get-a-job-in-ea

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This is a link post.

The tl;dr
I have written a new book on philanthropy! It is called “Twice As Good - Practical Tools To Double the Impact of Your Philanthropy”

Who it's for

This book is best fit for foundations and philanthropists who are keen on giving more effectively. Currently, there aren’t many tools for donor education - you can’t exactly get a Master's degree in philanthropy - and I have found many grantmakers who want to learn but have limited options. The space is currently dominated by books on the psychology of giving or authors advocating for a specific cause. I have always been a bit more optimistic about teaching tools and methods instead of prescribing a solution. The book is aimed to be “pop-science” enough that a brand-new giver can get value from it, but because the space is relatively empty, experienced foundations have found it useful as well.

How it's different:

The book covers a lot of the same content as our AIM grantmakers training or my previous textbook, but in a way that I hope is more concrete and entertaining. It includes more stories about how foundations work internally and offers more easily digested take-home [...]

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First published:

February 16th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yvSFsw9GwD6L5xtR6/i-wrote-a-book-about-philanthropy-twice-as-good

Linkpost URL:
https://measuredlife.substack.com/p/i-wrote-a-book-about-philanthropy

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Introducing our newest recommended ideas

We are excited to share four new charity ideas recommended for the September 2026 cohort of the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program.

Over the second half of 2025, we evaluated a range of interventions aimed at improving health and well-being in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This round focused in particular on two broad areas:

• improving access to essential health services where delivery systems remain weak, and
• addressing large, persistent gaps in care or prevention that lead to avoidable suffering or poor life outcomes.

The resulting recommendations span several sectors and approaches. They include expanding access to modern contraception through mobile clinics; improving access to pain relief for people in palliative care in LMICs; delivering guided digital self-help for depression; and policy advocacy to reduce the health burden of sugar-sweetened beverages.

Across these ideas, the common thread is tractability. Each intervention addresses a well-evidenced problem, has a clear path to implementation, and shows potential to deliver meaningful impact at scale. Short summaries of each recommendation are provided below, with full reports linked. We are grateful to the many external experts who contributed their time and insights to this research, as well [...]

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Outline:

(00:31) Introducing our newest recommended ideas

(02:34) Reducing diet-related disease through taxes on sugary drinks

(03:30) Improving access to pain relief for people with serious illness

(04:31) Improving access to depression care through guided self-help

(05:31) Expanding access to contraception through mobile clinics

(06:32) Apply to our program to help launch these organizations

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First published:

February 16th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ukkLit2SpWC2Dmj6Z/introducing-our-newest-charity-recommendations-from-mobile

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This is a link post.

Staff members at the United States's premier infectious-disease research institute have been instructed to remove the words “biodefense” and “pandemic preparedness” from the institute's web pages, according to e-mails Nature has obtained.

The directive comes amid a broader shake-up at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of 27 institutes and centres at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIAID is expected to deprioritize the two topics in an overhaul of its funded research projects, according to four NIAID employees who spoke to Nature on the condition of anonymity, because they are not authorized to speak to the press.

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First published:

February 15th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/aGdkpgc5wafNn8MiS/exclusive-key-us-infectious-diseases-centre-to-drop-pandemic

Linkpost URL:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00468-1

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