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client: ea_forum
project_id: curated
qa: mds
narrator_time: 1h40m
qa_time: 0h0m
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This is a linkpost for https://simonm.substack.com/p/strongminds-should-not-be-a-top-rated

GWWC lists StrongMinds as a “top-rated” charity. Their reason for doing so is because Founders Pledge has determined they are cost-effective in their report into mental health.

I could say here, “and that report was written in 2019 - either they should update the report or remove the top rating” and we could all go home. In fact, most of what I’m about to say does consist of “the data really isn’t that clear yet”.

I think the strongest statement I can make (which I doubt StrongMinds would disagree with) is:

“StrongMinds have made limited effort to be quantitative in their self-evaluation, haven’t continued monitoring impact after intervention, haven’t done the research they once claimed they would. They have not been vetted sufficiently to be considered a top charity, and only one independent group has done the work to look into them.”

Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ffmbLCzJctLac3rDu/strongminds-should-not-be-a-top-rated-charity-yet

Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.

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client: ea_forum
project_id: curated
feed_id: ai, ai_safety, ai_safety__governance
narrator: pw
qa: km
narrator_time: 5h00m
qa_time: 1h50m
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If you fear that someone will build a machine that will seize control of the world and annihilate humanity, then one kind of response is to try to build further machines that will seize control of the world even earlier without destroying it, forestalling the ruinous machine’s conquest. An alternative or complementary kind of response is to try to avert such machines being built at all, at least while the degree of their apocalyptic tendencies is ambiguous.

The latter approach seems to me like the kind of basic and obvious thing worthy of at least consideration, and also in its favor, fits nicely in the genre ‘stuff that it isn’t that hard to imagine happening in the real world’. Yet my impression is that for people worried about extinction risk from artificial intelligence, strategies under the heading ‘actively slow down AI progress’ have historically been dismissed and ignored (though ‘don’t actively speed up AI progress’ is popular).

Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vwK3v3Mekf6Jjpeep/let-s-think-about-slowing-down-ai-1

Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.

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client: ea_forum
project_id: curated
feed_id: ai, ai_safety, ai_safety__governance, ai_safety__technical
narrator: not_t3a
qa: not_t3a
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In previous pieces, I argued that there's a real and large risk of AI systems' aiming to defeat all of humanity combined - and succeeding.

I first argued that this sort of catastrophe would be likely without specific countermeasures to prevent it. I then argued that countermeasures could be challenging, due to some key difficulties of AI safety research.

But while I think misalignment risk is serious and presents major challenges, I don’t agree with sentiments along the lines of “We haven’t figured out how to align an AI, so if transformative AI comes soon, we’re doomed.” Here I’m going to talk about some of my high-level hopes for how we might end up avoiding this risk.

Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rJRw78oihoT5paFGd/high-level-hopes-for-ai-alignment

Narrated by Holden Karnofsky for the Cold Takes blog.

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client: lesswrong
project_id: curated
feed_id: ai, ai_safety, ai_safety__forecasting
narrator: pw
qa: mds
narrator_time: 4h30m
qa_time: 2h0m
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This post is inspired by What 2026 looks like and an AI vignette workshop guided by Tamay Besiroglu. I think of this post as “what would I expect the world to look like if these timelines (median compute for transformative AI ~2036) were true” or “what short-to-medium timelines feel like” since I find it hard to translate a statement like “median TAI year is 20XX” into a coherent imaginable world.
I expect some readers to think that the post sounds wild and crazy but that doesn’t mean its content couldn’t be true. If you had told someone in 1990 or 2000 that there would be more smartphones and computers than humans in 2020, that probably would have sounded wild to them. The same could be true for AIs, i.e. that in 2050 there are more human-level AIs than humans. The fact that this sounds as ridiculous as ubiquitous smartphones sounded to the 1990/2000 person, might just mean that we are bad at predicting exponential growth and disruptive technology.

Original article:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qRtD4WqKRYEtT5pi3/the-next-decades-might-be-wild

Narrated for LessWrong by TYPE III AUDIO.

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client: 80000_hours
project_id: articles
narrator: pw
qa: km
narrator_time: 2h40m
qa_time: 0h50m
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We’ve argued that preventing an AI-related catastrophe may be the world’s most pressing problem, and that while progress in AI over the next few decades could have enormous benefits, it could also pose severe, possibly existential risks. As a result, we think that working on some technical AI research — research related to AI safety — may be a particularly high-impact career path.
But there are many ways of approaching this path that involve researching or otherwise advancing AI capabilities — meaning making AI systems better at some specific skills — rather than only doing things that are purely in the domain of safety. In short, this is because capabilities work and some forms of safety work are intertwined, and many available ways of learning enough about AI to contribute to safety are via capabilities-enhancing roles.
So if you want to help prevent an AI-related catastrophe, should you be open to roles that also advance AI capabilities, or steer clear of them?

Original article:
https://80000hours.org/articles/ai-capabilities/

Narrated for 80,000 Hours by TYPE III AUDIO.

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client: ea_forum
project_id: summaries
narrator: cs
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Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8bcPkqdLYG78YbnTh/ea-and-lw-forums-weekly-summary-5th-dec-11th-dec-22

This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.

Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).

Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.

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client: 80000_hours
project_id: articles
narrator: pw
qa: km
narrator_time: 1h0m
qa_time: 0h10m
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If you want to have an impact, the aim is to find a job that has the potential to make a big contribution to a pressing problem, and that’s a good fit for you. But how can you find a job like that?
In the strategy section of our key ideas series, we discuss the value of exploration and career capital, as well as many other ideas, like why to be more ambitious. Here we sum them up into a simple career strategy.

Original article:
https://80000hours.org/articles/key-career-stages/

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client: 80000_hours
project_id: articles
narrator: pw
qa: km
narrator_time: 1h0m
qa_time: 0h30m
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We took 10 years of research and what we’ve learned from advising more than 1,000 people on how to build high-impact careers, compressed that into an eight-week course to create your career plan, and then compressed that into this summary of the main points.
(It’s especially aimed at people who want a career that’s both satisfying and has a significant positive impact, but much of the advice applies to all career decisions.)

Original article:
https://80000hours.org/career-planning/summary/

Narrated for 80,000 Hours by TYPE III AUDIO.

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client: 80000_hours
project_id: articles
narrator: pw
qa: km
narrator_time: 3h15m
qa_time: 0h30m
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Question 1: What are these lists based on?

Our aim is to find the problems where an additional person can have the greatest positive social impact, given how effort is already allocated in society.
The primary way we do that is by trying to compare global issues based on their scale, neglectedness, and tractability. To learn about this framework, see our introductory article on prioritising world problems.
To assess the problems based on this framework, we mainly draw upon research and advice from subject-matter experts and advisors in the effective altruism research community — including the Global Priorities Institute, Rethink Priorities, and Open Philanthropy — though we also make some of our own judgement calls in borderline cases.
To see the reasons why we listed each individual problem, click through to see the full profiles.
Assessments of the scale and tractability of different global issues depend on your values and worldview. You can see some of the most important aspects of our worldview in the ‘foundations’ section of our key ideas series, especially our article on how we define social impact.
All this has led to a few themes in the issues we tend to prioritise most highly:

Original article:
https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/#problems-faq

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client: 80000_hours
project_id: articles
narrator: pw
qa: km
narrator_time: 1h30m
qa_time: 20m
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Why your career is your biggest opportunity to make a difference to the world

When people think of living ethically, they most often think of things like recycling, fair trade, and volunteering.
But that’s missing something huge: your choice of career.
We believe that what you do with your career is probably the most important ethical decision of your life.
The first reason is the huge amount of time at stake. You have about 80,000 hours in your career: 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year, for 40 years. That’s more time than you’ll spend eating, socialising, and watching Netflix put together.
And it means (unless you happen to be the heir to a large estate) that time is the biggest resource you have to help others.
So if you can increase the overall impact of your career by just a tiny amount, it will likely do more good than changes you could make to other parts of your life.
Or, to look at it another way: it’s worth thinking a lot about how to make even just small improvements to your career. For instance, if you could increase the impact of your career by 1%, it would be worth spending up to 800 hours working out how to do that.
And that brings us to the second reason why your choice of career is so important: some careers give you the opportunity to do vastly more good for the world than others — to a much greater extent than people realise.
In fact, we’ll argue that some career paths open to you likely have 10, 100, or even 1,000 times more impact than others. And this makes it even more important to think hard about your career.
Why do careers differ so much in impact?

Original article:
https://80000hours.org/make-a-difference-with-your-career/

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