I think EAG/EAGx conferences should try (if possible) to avoid venues under active corporate campaign targeting for animal welfare failures.
I recently went to a protest against Marriott over their unfulfilled cage-free egg commitment and couldn't help but think back to EAGxDC which was held at one of their hotels in May.
I don't think the EAGxDC organizers intentionally ignored this; they probably didn't know, or the venue was just very logistically convenient (which I think outweighs this concern).
But I wonder whether organizers generally consider this when choosing venues. I feel like they should, assuming there are other options not under campaign targeting.
On LessWrong, the disagree button is on the left and the agree button is on the right. On EAF, the agree button is on the left and the disagree button is on the right.
Re Luna amendment, there was an additional Luna amendment that was trying to remove the SOB provision that died (even though the pesticide one went through). That was what I was referring to. https://www.nationalhogfarmer.com/farming-business-management/amendment-to-strike-down-save-our-bacon-act-rejected
You're right about 2, fixed. I didn't see the comment pointing this out as I don't check comments on posts more than a day after posting (otherwise I'd have way too many to check as I get a lot of comments).
Re 3, Didn’t mean to use the word PAC in the comment, was an error (not sure if I was confused at time or just a typo.). But the ampa themselves—not the PAC—are the things the donation link was to, and they’re just defeating sob. Other stuff the PAC is doing is also to defeat SOB (Craig is a big opponent of it).
Strong upvote - too many people see CEA as an authority source on everything EA, rather than a bunch of staff the EA community pays for to do the safe, repeatable stuff.
Hi James! There's actually a variety of EA-aligned charities in those areas. Some that come to mind:
They all have their own theories as to why they might be unusually effective.
As for why:
I used AI to assist in writing this post, but I’ve rewritten it extensively and endorse it.
On the counterfactual investment point - it's worth noting that alternative proteins has a very clear venture case that allowed it to pull in non-EA money (high market size, tech moat, disruption story). Welfare tech usually doesn't have this shape, so is much less likely to pull in significant unaligned capital. E.g. if you look at in-ovo sexing companies, only one of them is venture backed, and they have a much broader story than just in-ovo sexing (making cheaper MRI for other agriculture applications and humane health).
I think there's a "sweet spot" of returns that are positive but below market where the double appeal of impact and ROI is actually an upside for philanthropic capital, since its both counterfactual and can be reinvested.
On your last point - there are many stakeholders that that get "but for" credit, including the advocates but also the tech companies. Shrimp stunning might not have happened without SWP but it also wouldn't have happened without the tech company. If there are areas where there is an unmet need in the market, then getting those companies started could be a big counterfactual win.
I mostly agree with your other points!
TL;DR: We are rushing to build AGI/ASI using 20th-century political institutions and profit-driven motives, ignoring the "system dynamics" of safety. We call for an immediate shift in focus: prioritize process-based honesty (rewarding transparent reasoning over mere results), treat AGI as a global public asset rather than private property, and mandate a "Narrow AI First" approach to build institutional trust and safety infrastructure before attempting human-level or superinte...
Imagine this scenario: a doctor is asking a healthcare AI the differences between two drugs used to treat the same disease. However, the makers of Drug A gave wads of cash to the maker of the AI agent to recommend its products, despite Drug B having a better effect. If the doctor did not know the specifics between the two drugs, they had just prescribed their patient with a worse drug.
Researchers demonstrated that AI agents can perform so...
Thanks to @eigengender and especially Chris Lakin and Simon Dima for valuable comments on a draft.
In this post, I will present an alternate framing[1] of LessWrong-style decision theory. I believe it should make its concrete recommendations much more palatable to people...
(If you want to immediately skip to why I believe past attempts to incorporate LessWrong-style intuitions into standard decision theory are insufficient, go to footnote 16)
Biomedical research is now opening up new possibilities thanks to recent advances in artificial intelligence. Scientists are now able to use large language models (LLMs) to answer complex scientific questions, such as vaccine design. At the same time, concerns about possible misuse of AI in biology have prompted developers of cutting-edge AI systems to put protections in place to preclude models from helping with ta...
There’s been an interesting discussion this week in the "animals" channel of the Ambitious Impact Sl...
Hi Carlos. Great post.
If a value‑aligned candidate is as capable as a non‑aligned candidate, I don’t see why we wouldn’t want them in the running
Because they may have a greater (counterfactual) impact in a role where being value-aligned is more needed? In any case, I think it would still make sense for the organisation to make them an offer, and then be transparent about how they compare with the 2nd best candidate. This information could then be used by the value-aligned candidate to make a better choice about whether to accept the offer or not.
Welcome! Use this thread to introduce yourself or ask questions about EA, or the EA Forum.
The "Guide to norms on the Forum" shares more about the kind of discussions we'd like to see on the Forum, and when the moderation team intervenes. For resources that can help you learn ab...
Hi everyone, my name is Emily and I'm the CEO and cofounder of PermitPal focused on transforming the way that clean energy gets built.
I've been involved with effective altruism for the past 10 years but haven't been very active on the forum.
I'd love to connect with people thinking about questions like:
This post is a synthesis of 11 Metaculus analyses run between Oct 2024 and May 2026, seeking to summarize everything we know about AI forecasting and how to do it well. Conclusions from other papers, blogs, and benchmarks are also discussed in order to give a comprehensive overview of the field.
Top takeaways
Ask different funders whether they are aware that Africa is one of the most critical frontiers for animal welfare. The majority will probably say yes. Proceed to ask whether they would like to intervene. A number will also likely agree. Lastly, if Africa remains chronically underfunded relative to its scale and trajectory. The answer, again, is yes. So, then, why isn't more money moving into the continent?
This is the question I have been sitting wi...
In four days (July 11, 12-4pm), about ~200 of us (event link), including 13 different groups, will be marching on OpenAI, Anthropic and Google in SF asking the CEOs to commit to stop developing more powerful models if every other major AI company (and China) does the same. We're calling this The AI Protest (theprotest.ai).
We're gonna have some of the speakers from last time (Nate Soares (MIRI), David Krueger (Evitable), Will Fithian (Berkeley Professor)) but also try to get folks from different groups part of the coalition speaking too.
As Scott Alexander puts it: "Participants are about half from our conspiracy and half from random anti-data-center-type groups, which I think is how this basically has to work, so don’t be surprised if you run into the latter."
On why we're doing this, see: