Hi, I’m Tandena Wagner. As part of my research for EcoResillience Initiative (an EA organization searching for the best ways to preserve biodiversity into the long-term future), I’ve investigated several common claims that various resource limitations could be disastrous for civilization – ie, that we’re approaching “peak oil”, or imminently running out of phosphorus, soil nitrogen, chromium, etc. For the most part, I’ve found these claims to be overblown, often thanks to systematic exaggeration caused by the poor epistemic environment of activist environmentalism. In general, Paul-Erlich-style resource limitations do not seem pressing compared to other risks to civilization.

However, there's one key resource that I’ve become increasingly concerned about: human civilization might be running out of low-hanging fruit.

This kid can’t reach the fruit because he's just a baby.  But soon, this kid's problem could be the WHOLE WORLD's problem.

Low-hanging fruit is essential for continued human thriving

You might [...]

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Outline:

(01:13) Low-hanging fruit is essential for continued human thriving

(03:35) What would it mean if humanity exhausted the low-hanging fruit?

(04:32) New ways of making fruit hang lower are getting harder to find

(05:52) Shorter trees -- lower fruit

(08:50) Low-hanging fruit has broad benefits

(10:28) The Fruit is Too Damn High

(13:07) A fruitful direction for future research

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First published:

April 1st, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5RNHhZ2KSesrGmSto/new-cause-area-low-hanging-fruit

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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For immediate release: April 1, 2025

OXFORD, UK — The Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) announced today that it will no longer identify as an "Effective Altruism" organization.

"After careful consideration, we've determined that the most effective way to have a positive impact is to deny any association with Effective Altruism," said a CEA spokesperson. "Our mission remains unchanged: to use reason and evidence to do the most good. Which coincidentally was the definition of EA."

The announcement mirrors a pattern of other organizations that have grown with EA support and frameworks and eventually distanced themselves from EA.

CEA's statement clarified that it will continue to use the same methodologies, maintain the same team, and pursue identical goals. "We've found that not being associated with the movement we have spent years building gives us more flexibility to do exactly what we were already doing, just with better PR," [...]

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First published:

April 1st, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pyXEB5uBsuzhgj8Zz/centre-for-effective-altruism-is-no-longer-effective

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Introduction

Misaligned AI systems, which have a tendency to use their capabilities in ways that conflict with the intentions of both developers and users, could cause significant societal harm. Identifying them is seen as increasingly important to inform development and deployment decisions and design mitigation measures. There are concerns, however, that this will prove challenging. For example, misaligned AIs may only reveal harmful behaviors in rare circumstances, or perceive detection attempts as threatening and deploy countermeasures – including deception and sandbagging – to evade them.

For these reasons, developing a range of efforts to detect misaligned behavior, including power-seeking, deception, and sandbagging, among other capabilities, have been proposed. One important indicator, though, has been hiding in plain sight for years. In this post, we identify an underappreciated method that may be both necessary and sufficient to identify misaligned AIs: whether or not they've turned red, i.e. gone rouge.

In [...]

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Outline:

(01:43) Historical Evidence for Rouge AI

(02:59) Recent Empirical Work

(05:18) Potential Countermeasure

(05:22) The EYES Eval

(06:27) EYES Eval Demonstration

(07:40) Future Research Directions

(08:42) Conclusion

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First published:

April 1st, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uKKoj9iqj2cWKsjrt/mitigating-risks-from-rouge-ai

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Hi everybody!

I'm Conor. I run the 80,000 Hours Job Board. Or I used to. As of today — April 1 — we are becoming Job Birds!

We've been talking to users for the last few years about making this change, and people have overwhelmingly been in favour (remember, there are six or more birds for every human on Earth). Whether it's the daily emails asking me to finally switch, or the flocks of people accosting me at conferences to urge a migration to Job Birds, the demand is overwhelming! Luckily, the wait is over!

I've included an FAQ below of the most common questions we receive.

FAQ

• Do these birds have jobs?
  • In a sense, no. In another, preferred sense, definitely! They have roles in ecological niches.
• What's a good bird to get started with?
  • The peregrine falcon.
• What's the theory of change?
  • Birds are [...]

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First published:

April 1st, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Lee6hyYo7F5BNQJEj/80-000-hours-job-birds

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Epistemic status: highly certain, or something

The Spending What We Must 💸11% pledge 

In short: Members pledge to spend at least 11% of their income on effectively increasing their own productivity.

This pledge is likely higher-impact for most people than the Giving What We Can 🔸10% Pledge, and we also think the name accurately reflects the non-supererogatory moral beliefs of many in the EA community.

Example

Charlie is a software engineer for the Centre for Effective Future Research. Since Charlie has taken the SWWM 💸11% pledge, rather than splurge on a vacation, they decide to buy an expensive noise-canceling headset before their next EAG, allowing them to get slightly more sleep and have 104 one-on-one meetings instead of just 101. In one of the extra three meetings, they chat with Diana, who is starting an AI-for-worrying-about-AI company, and decide to become a cofounder. The company becomes wildly successful, and [...]

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Outline:

(00:15) The Spending What We Must 💸11% pledge

(00:39) Example

(01:26) The 💸💸💸 Badge

(01:55) FAQ

(01:58) Is the pledge legally binding?

(02:08) What do you mean by effectively increasing productivity?

(02:33) Im an AI system. Can I take the 💸11% pledge?

(03:23) Why is the 💸11% pledge 3x more effective than the 🔸10% pledge?

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First published:

April 1st, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qCDad9dWE5hDkYevK/introducing-the-spending-what-we-must-pledge

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Epistemic status: highly certain, or something

The Spending What We Must 💸11% pledge 

In short: Members pledge to spend at least 11% of their income on effectively increasing their own productivity.

This pledge is likely higher-impact for most people than the Giving What We Can 🔸10% Pledge, and we also think the name accurately reflects the non-supererogatory moral beliefs of many in the EA community.

Example

Charlie is a software engineer for the Centre for Effective Future Research. Since Charlie has taken the SWWM 💸11% pledge, rather than splurge on a vacation, they decide to buy an expensive noise-canceling headset before their next EAG, allowing them to get slightly more sleep and have 104 one-on-one meetings instead of just 101. In one of the extra three meetings, they chat with Diana, who is starting an AI-for-worrying-about-AI company and decides to become a cofounder. The company becomes wildly successful, and [...]

---

Outline:

(00:14) The Spending What We Must 💸11% pledge

(00:39) Example

(01:25) The 💸💸💸 Badge

(01:54) FAQ

(01:57) Is the pledge legally binding?

(02:08) What do you mean by effectively increasing productivity?

(02:38) Im an AI system. Can I take the 💸11% pledge?

(03:29) Why is the 💸11% pledge 3x more effective than the 🔸10% pledge?

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First published:

April 1st, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qCDad9dWE5hDkYevK/introducing-the-spending-what-we-must-pledge

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In a recent Wired article about Anthropic, there's a section where Anthropic's president, Daniela Amodei, and early employee Amanda Askell seem to suggest there's little connection between Anthropic and the EA movement:

Ask Daniela about it and she says, "I'm not the expert on effective altruism. I don't identify with that terminology. My impression is that it's a bit of an outdated term". Yet her husband, Holden Karnofsky, cofounded one of EA's most conspicuous philanthropy wings, is outspoken about AI safety, and, in January 2025, joined Anthropic. Many others also remain engaged with EA. As early employee Amanda Askell puts it, "I definitely have met people here who are effective altruists, but it's not a theme of the organization or anything". (Her ex-husband, William MacAskill, is an originator of the movement.)

This led multiple people on Twitter to call out how bizarre this is:

In my [...]

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First published:

March 30th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/53Gc35vDLK2u5nBxP/anthropic-is-not-being-consistently-candid-about-their

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How the dismal science can help us end the dismal treatment of farm animals

By Martin Gould

Note: This post was crossposted from the Open Philanthropy 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.

This year we’ll be sharing a few notes from my colleagues on their areas of expertise. The first is from Martin. I’ll be back next month. - Lewis

In 2024, Denmark announced plans to introduce the world's first carbon tax on cow, sheep, and pig farming. Climate advocates celebrated, but animal advocates should be much more cautious. When Denmark's Aarhus municipality tested a similar tax in 2022, beef purchases dropped by 40% while demand for chicken and pork increased.

Beef is the most emissions-intensive meat, so carbon taxes hit it hardest — and Denmark's policies don’t even [...]

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First published:

March 20th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ehehif6dmiQco7bJA/five-insights-from-farm-animal-economics

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“I” refers to Zach, the Centre for Effective Altruism's CEO. Oscar is CEA's Chief of Staff. We are grateful to all the CEA staff and community members who have contributed insightful input and feedback (directly and indirectly) during the development of our strategy and over many years. Mistakes are of course our own.

Exec summary

As one CEA, we are taking a principles-first approach to stewardship of the EA community.

During the search for a new CEO, the board and search committee were open to alternative strategic directions, but from the beginning of my tenure, we’ve committed to a strategy under which we will:

• Operate as one CEA, rather than winding down, breaking up or renaming the organization. Instead of optimizing for each of our team's programs, we’ll be optimizing for EA as a whole.
• Take a principles-first approach to EA, rather than becoming an AI org or otherwise re-orienting [...]

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Outline:

(00:38) Exec summary

(04:15) What does stewardship mean for CEA?

(06:55) What does CEA's stewardship mean in practice?

(08:34) Growing the EA community

(14:54) Improving the EA brand

(18:20) Diversifying EA funding

(21:47) Strengthening CEA

(23:38) Why bother?

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First published:

March 28th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/QkE35oTsasMn37o7R/stewardship-cea-s-2025-26-strategy-to-reach-and-raise-ea-s-1

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After ~7 years, I am stepping away from being the CEO of AIM and will transition to a board member. My current planned last day is December 1st, giving ample time for a smooth transition. As is true for most times a CEO or co-founder leaves an organization, this is for a pretty large variety of reasons. The biggest three are that: 1) AIM is in a stable place, 2) My counterfactual impact, and 3) My fit for founder vs. CEO roles. You can see more details on each of these in my Substack post.

AIM has been one of the most meaningful parts of my life, and that's in no small part due to working with such driven and aligned people. When I first set out to create CE many years ago, I never could have envisioned we'd get to where we are today, and I have [...]

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First published:

March 15th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mh652ZDuqf3Tgh3Cv/joey-aim-transition-announcement

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.