We’ve redesigned effectivealtruism.org to improve understanding and perception of effective altruism, and make it easier to take action.

View the new site

I led the redesign and will be writing in the first person here, but many others contributed research, feedback, writing, editing, and development. I’d love to hear what you think, here is a feedback form.

Redesign goals

This redesign is part of CEA's broader efforts to improve how effective altruism is understood and perceived. I focused on goals aligned with CEA's branding and growth strategy:

1. Improve understanding of what effective altruism is
   Make the core ideas easier to grasp by simplifying language, addressing common misconceptions, and showcasing more real-world examples of people and projects.
2. Improve the perception of effective altruism
   I worked from a set of brand associations defined by the group working on the EA brand project[1]. These are words we want people to associate [...]
   

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Outline:

(00:44) Redesign goals

(02:09) Before and after

(02:22) Landing page

(03:50) Site navigation

(04:24) New Take action page

(05:03) Early results

(05:40) Share your thoughts

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

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First published:

May 27th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZbQKtMMsDP6GnXuwr/revamped-effectivealtruism-org

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Summary 

While many people and organisations in the EA community can be great connections, don't assume that just because a person has been in the EA community for a long time, they'll be a good fit for you to work with or be friends with.

Don’t assume that just because a project or org has been around for a long time, it would be a good place for you to work. It may be a great opportunity, but it might not. Do some of the usual things you would do to check that this is a good interaction for you (e.g. talk to people who know or have worked with them before starting a collaboration, take time to get to know someone before placing large amounts of trust on them, and pay attention to any signals that this interaction might not be a good for you).

[...]

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Outline:

(00:11) Summary

(01:27) Choosing to work with another person

(03:04) Conference attendance

(03:38) Working with organisations

(04:06) Personal Interactions with Community Members

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First published:

May 22nd, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yNm58h8cvufPfBPLP/don-t-update-too-much-from-ea-community-involvement

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Article 5 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

"Obviously, no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

OK, it doesn’t actually start with "obviously," but I like to imagine the commissioners all murmuring to themselves “obviously” when this item was brought up.

I’m not sure what the causal effect of Article 5 (or the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture) has been on reducing torture globally, though the physical integrity rights index (which “captures the extent to which people are free from government torture and political killings”) has increased from 0.48 in 1948 to 0.67 in 2024 (which is good). However, the index reached 0.67 already back in 2001, so at least according to this metric, we haven’t made much progress in the past 25 years. Reducing government torture and killings seems to be low in tractability.

Despite many [...]

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

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First published:

May 18th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7FvDvMQypyua4kTL5/most-painful-condition-known-to-mankind-a-retrospective-of

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Introduction

I have been writing posts critical of mainstream EA narratives about AI capabilities and timelines for many years now. Compared to the situation when I wrote my posts in 2018 or 2020, LLMs now dominate the discussion, and timelines have also shrunk enormously. The ‘mainstream view’ within EA now appears to be that human-level AI will be arriving by 2030, even as early as 2027. This view has been articulated by 80,000 Hours, on the forum (though see this excellent piece excellent piece arguing against short timelines), and in the highly engaging science fiction scenario of AI 2027. While my article piece is directed generally against all such short-horizon views, I will focus on responding to relevant portions of the article ‘Preparing for the Intelligence Explosion’ by Will MacAskill and Fin Moorhouse.

Rates of Growth

The authors summarise their argument as follows:

Currently, total global research effort [...]

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Outline:

(00:11) Introduction

(01:05) Rates of Growth

(04:55) The Limitations of Benchmarks

(09:26) Real-World Adoption

(11:31) Conclusion

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First published:

May 2nd, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/meNrhbgM3NwqAufwj/why-i-am-still-skeptical-about-agi-by-2030

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Are you looking for a project where you could substantially improve

indoor air quality, with benefits both to general health and reducing

pandemic risk?

I've written

a bunch

about

air

purifiers

over the past few years, and its frustrating how bad commercial

market is.

The most glaring problem is the widespread use of HEPA filters. These

are very effective filters that, unavoidably, offer significant

resistance to air flow. HEPA is a great option for filtering air in

single pass, such as with an outdoor air intake or a biosafety

cabinet, but it's the wrong set of tradeoffs for cleaning the air

that's already in the room. Air passing through a HEPA filter removes

99.97% of particles, but then it's mixed back in with the rest of the

room air. If you can instead remove 99% of particles from 2% more

air, or 90% from 15% more [...]

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First published:

May 11th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8BEqanpJFGhisETBi/better-air-purifiers

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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First published:

May 16th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LeCJqzdHZZB3uBhZg/the-daily-show-did-a-segment-on-ea-and-shrimp-welfare

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Americans, we need your help to stop a dangerous AI bill from passing the Senate.

What's going on?

• The House Energy & Commerce Committee included a provision in its reconciliation bill that would ban AI regulation by state and local governments for the next 10 years.
• Several states have led the way in AI regulation while Congress has dragged its heels.
• Stopping state governments from regulating AI might be okay, if we could trust Congress to meaningfully regulate it instead. But we can’t. This provision would destroy state leadership on AI and pass the responsibility to a Congress that has shown little interest in seriously preventing AI danger.
• If this provision passes the Senate, we could see a DECADE of inaction on AI.
• This provision also violates the Byrd Rule, a Senate rule which is meant to prevent non-budget items from being included in the reconciliation bill.

What can I do?

Here are [...]

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First published:

May 15th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qWcabjNqxEBNQY3cv/urgent-americans-call-your-senators-and-tell-them-you-oppose

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

I am Jason Green-Lowe, the executive director of the Center for AI Policy (CAIP). Our mission is to directly convince Congress to pass strong AI safety legislation. As I explain in some detail in this post, I think our organization has been doing extremely important work, and that we’ve been doing well at it. Unfortunately, we have been unable to get funding from traditional donors to continue our operations. If we don’t get more funding in the next 30 days, we will have to shut down, which will damage our relationships with Congress and make it harder for future advocates to get traction on AI governance. In this post, I explain what we’ve been doing, why I think it's valuable, and how your donations could help.

This is the first post in what I expect will be a 3-part series. The first post focuses on CAIP's particular need [...]

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Outline:

(01:33) OUR MISSION AND STRATEGY

(02:59) Our Model Legislation

(04:17) Direct Meetings with Congressional Staffers

(05:20) Expert Panel Briefings

(06:16) AI Policy Happy Hours

(06:43) Op-Eds & Policy Papers

(07:22) Grassroots & Grasstops Organizing

(09:13) Whats Unique About CAIP?

(10:26) OUR ACCOMPLISHMENTS

(10:29) Quantifiable Outputs

(11:21) Changing the Media Narrative

(12:23) Proof of Concept

(13:44) Outcomes -- Congressional Engagement

(18:29) Context

(19:54) OUR PROPOSED POLICIES

(19:58) Mandatory Audits for Frontier AI

(21:23) Liability Reform

(22:32) Hardware Monitoring

(24:11) Emergency Powers

(25:31) Further Details

(25:41) RESPONSES TO COMMON POLICY OBJECTIONS

(25:46) 1. Why not push for a ban or pause on superintelligence research?

(30:17) 2. Why not support bills that have a better chance of passing this year, like funding for NIST or NAIRR?

(32:30) 3. If Congress is so slow to act, why should anyone be working with Congress at all? Why not focus on promoting state laws or voluntary standards?

(35:09) 4. Why would you push the US to unilaterally disarm? Don't we instead need a global treaty regulating AI (or subsidies for US developers) to avoid handing control of the future to China?

(37:24) 5. Why haven't you accomplished your mission yet? If your organization is effective, shouldn't you have passed some of your legislation by now, or at least found some powerful Congressional sponsors for it?

(40:56) OUR TEAM

(41:53) Executive Director

(44:04) Government Relations Team

(45:12) Policy Team

(46:08) Communications Team

(47:29) Operations Team

(48:11) Personnel Changes

(48:49) OUR PLAN IF FUNDED

(51:58) OUR FUNDING SITUATION

(52:02) Our Expenses & Runway

(53:02) No Good Way to Cut Costs

(55:22) Our Revenue

(57:02) Surprise Budget Deficit

(59:00) The Bottom Line

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First published:

May 7th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9uZHnEkhXZjWzia7F/please-donate-to-caip-post-1-of-3-on-ai-governance

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Or on the types of prioritization, their strengths, pitfalls, and how EA should balance them

The cause prioritization landscape in EA is changing. Prominent groups have shut down, others have been founded, and everyone is trying to figure out how to prepare for AI. This is the first in a series of posts examining the state of cause prioritization and proposing strategies for moving forward.

 Executive Summary

• Performing prioritization work has been one of the main tasks, and arguably achievements, of EA.
• We highlight three types of prioritization: Cause Prioritization, Within-Cause (Intervention) Prioritization, and Cross-Cause (Intervention) Prioritization.
• We ask how much of EA prioritization work falls in each of these categories:
  • Our estimates suggest that, for the organizations we investigated, the current split is 89% within-cause work, 2% cross-cause, and 9% cause prioritization.
  • We then explore strengths and potential pitfalls of each level:
    • Cause [...]

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Outline:

(00:37) Executive Summary

(03:09) Introduction: Why prioritize? Have we got it right?

(05:18) The types of prioritization

(06:54) A snapshot of EA

(16:45) The Types of Prioritization Evaluated

(16:57) Cause Prioritization

(20:56) Within-Cause Prioritization

(25:12) Cross-Cause Prioritization

(30:07) Summary Table

(30:53) What factors should push us towards one or another?

(37:27) Possible Next Steps

(39:44) Conclusion

(40:58) Acknowledgements

(41:01) en-US-AvaMultilingualNeural__ Modern geometric logo design with text RETHINK PRIORITIES

(41:55) Appendix: Strengths and Pitfalls of Each Type

(42:07) Within-Cause Prioritization Strengths

(42:12) Decision-Making Support

(42:37) Comparability of Outputs

(44:18) Disciplinarity Advantages

(45:45) Responsiveness to Evidence

(46:48) Movement Building

(48:06) Within-Cause Prioritization Weaknesses and Potential Pitfalls

(48:12) Responsiveness to Evidence

(50:54) Decision-Making Support

(52:45) Cross-Cause Prioritization Strengths:

(53:06) Decision-Making Support

(54:49) Responsiveness to Evidence

(56:08) Movement Building

(56:22) Comparability of Outputs

(56:45) Decision-Making Support

(57:14) Cross-Cause Prioritization Weaknesses and Potential Pitfalls

(57:20) Comparability of Outputs

(58:01) Disciplinarity Advantages

(58:41) Movement Building

(59:09) Decision-Making Support

(01:00:27) Cause Prioritization Strengths

(01:00:32) Decision-Making Support

(01:02:01) Responsiveness to Evidence

(01:02:52) Movement Building

(01:03:28) Cause Prioritization Weaknesses and Potential Pitfalls

(01:04:28) Decision-Making Support

(01:06:08) Responsiveness to Evidence

The original text contained 23 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

April 16th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZPdZv8sHuYndD8xhJ/doing-prioritization-better-2

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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This is a Forum Team crosspost from Substack.

Whither cause prioritization and connection with the good?

There's a trend towards people who once identified as Effective Altruists now identifying solely as “people working on AI safety.”[1] For those in the loop, it feels like less of a trend and more of a tidal wave. There's an increasing sense that among the most prominent (formerly?) EA orgs and individuals, making AGI go well is functionally all that matters. For that end, so the trend goes, the ideas of Effective Altruism have exhausted their usefulness. They pointed us to the right problem – thanks; we’ll take it from here. And taking it from here means building organizations, talent bases, and political alliances at a scale incommensurate with attachment to a niche ideology or moralizing language generally. I think this a dangerous path to go down too hard and my impression [...]

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Outline:

(02:39) What I see

(06:35) The threat means pose to ends

(11:12) Losing something more

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

May 8th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CKKAga4HfQyAranaC/the-soul-of-ea-is-in-trouble

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.