EA Updates for December 2020

Upcoming Virtual Events

• 30th November - International Effective Giving Day with talks from Michael Kremer, Johannes Ackva, Leah Edgerton and Neil Buddy Shah
• 30th November - Working as an AI Strategist with Miles Brundage from OpenAI and The Future of Humanity Institute
• 2nd December - Career Profile - Daniela Amodei from OpenAI
• 6th December - Giving What We Can meetup
• December -  Giving What We Can pledge drive for 2020

Meta

• The 2020 Effective Altruism Survey just opened. If you’re interested in EA, it’s useful to fill out to get a sense of how the community is changing over time
• There is a new network for people working in healthcare and interested in effective altruism
• A new career advising organisation has been set up to cover areas neglected by 80,000 Hours and Animal Advocacy Careers
• 80,000 Hours have released an updated career guide
• Thoughts on the benefits and drawbacks of the EA Donor Lottery
• Rethink Priorities with their 2020 overview and plans for 2021
• EA Organisation updates for October
• A post looking at what EA Brazil has been up to
• A post introducing Ayuda Efectiva, an organisation that makes effective giving easily accessible for donors in Spain
• Giving Tuesday will be on December the 1st, find out how to get your donation doubled here
• Kuhan writing about an alternative to running a charity fundraiser on your birthday
• 80,000 Hours podcast with Benjamin Todd on what the effective altruism community most needs
• EA Oxford are running an in depth fellowship, find out more here
• Post on the EA forum asking where people are donating this year and why
• Open Philanthropy staff have written up their suggestions for individual donors here

Grants

• Open Phil have made 17 grants recently with a total value of $15,869,000
  • $10,6375,000 - Scientific research
    • $6,500,000 - COVID-19 Vaccine Development
    • $3,175,000 - Malaria Prevention Research
  • $4,280,000 - Farm animal welfare
    • $3,600,000 - Open Wing Alliance
  • $630,000 - Criminal justice reform
  • $308,000 - Potential risks from advanced AI
  • $275,000 - Global health & development
• Animal Charity Evaluators funded 23 projects with a total value of $289,745

Global Development

• GiveWell with their giving recommendations for 2020
• Founders Pledge with an overview of how individual donors fit into the larger development landscape
• Happier Lives Institute with research on the effect of cash transfers on subjective well-being and mental health
• The Gates Foundation on why they invest in innovation
• An article looking at research gaps in global health
• Reflections from seven years of research in J-PAL’s Post-Primary Education Initiative
• An article looking at why large NGOs don't tend to scale up external solutions
• Our World in Data with a post looking at how pandemics allow us to understand why our ancestors lived in poverty

Animal Welfare

• Animal Charity Evaluators with their giving recommendations for 2020
• Animal Advocacy Careers with a new job board
• Jason Schukraft with research looking into the intensity of valenced experience across species
• Lewis Bollard with a talk on doing the most good for animals post-COVID-19
• Faunalytics looking at animal welfare in academia

Existential & Catastrophic Risks

• The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk with a report on promoting epistemic security in a technologically-advanced world
• Toby Ord writing in the Economist on future risks
• The Global Catastrophic Risks Institute with an overview of their work in 2020 and plans for 2021
• ALLFED with a review of their work in 2020
• A post looking at risks from autonomous weapons
• The New Yorker covering Toby Ord on existential risks

Environment

• Giving Green has been re-launched, a new initiative incubated at IDinsight that aims to guide donations towards evidence-backed climate change projects
• A look into how Jeff Bezos is using his $10,000,000,000 Earth Fund
• A paper critiquing EA and it's perceived support of offsetting and geoengineering

Long Term Future

• A review of the Future of Humanity Institute's summer research fellowship 2020
• A response to the Will MacAskill post; "Are we living at the most influential time in history?"
• Tobias Baumann looking at the intersection of animal advocacy and longtermism

Emerging Technology

• EA Global talk from Chongli Qin on ensuring safety and consistency in the age of machine learning
• UK Research and Innovation has invested £33,000,000 launching six new research projects to tackle challenges to the development of trustworthy autonomous systems

Other Links

• Lynette Bye with a post on being being productive with chronic health conditions
• A post on the forum asking "What quotes do you find most inspire you to use your resources to help others?"
• New research suggesting that behavioural nudges fail more often than reported
• Happier Lives Institute with a report into the problem area of pain
• There is a new organisation funding 15-17 years olds anywhere in the world who are interested in improving the world
• The Organisation for the Prevention of Intense Suffering with a policy paper on legalising access to psilocybin for the treatment of cluster headaches
• Effective altruism from an anarchist perspective
• Aaron Gertler donating $10,000 after getting to the final two in a Magic: The Gathering tournament
• CSER with a comic version of their Bioengineering Horizon Scan 2020 journal article
• Sophia Cheng, Allan Saldanha and Matthew Allcock in 'The i' newspaper discussing why they have taken the Giving What We Can pledge
• Nicole Ross on being in a cycle of desperation, inadequacy and burn out

Good News

• There has been a large decline in the number of people with lymphatic filariasis, a neglected tropical disease. From ~200 million people in 2000 to ~50 million people in 2018
• Cambodia is closer to eradicating Malaria with a 70% reduction in cases this year compared to last year
• The Global Terrorism Index reports that deaths from terrorism have reached a five year low
• The UAE government has updated its legal system, with progressive changes to personal and civil laws