Upcoming Events

• 6th August - Constraining Longtermism - organised by the Legal Priorities Project
• 8th August - Giving What We Can Virtual Meetup
• 19th August - Giving What We Can Open Forum - with Pablo Melchor from Ayuda Efectiva
• 21st August - Scout Mindset Reading Group - organised by EA Anywhere
• 25th August - Who is Creating Existential Risk? - Panel Discussion organised by the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk
• September to October - Three virtual programs, consisting of weekly meetings over two months
  • Introductory EA Program - For those new to EA, or who have some familiarity, but want to go through the core ideas
  • In-Depth EA Program - For graduates of the intro program or those with a similar level of experience, who want to dive deeper into EA ideas and examine their key uncertainties about how to best improve the world
  • The Precipice Reading Group - In this reading group, you will read and engage in structured discussions of Toby Ord’s The Precipice, a book about existential risks and safeguarding the future of humanity
• 29-31st October - EA Global: London 2021

Latest Research and Updates

Meta

• Benjamin Todd analysing whether EA is still growing
• Open Philanthropy is seeking proposals for outreach projects
• A post on the case against 'EA cause areas'
• CEA update for the second quarter of 2021
• An update from the EA Medicine network
• EA Survey 2020: Cause Prioritisation
• An update from EA for Jews, and a call for volunteers
• EA movement building funding is available to non-EA-branded groups
• EA Organisation Updates for July 2021
• There is a new Slack workspace for creatives and communicators interested in EA
• CEA retention statistics for 2021
• There is now an EA Forum podcast with recordings of popular posts
• Aaron Gertler with the post 'The most successful EA podcast of all time'
• Giving What We Can looking at the motivations behind why people pledge 10%+ of their income to charity
• The Jewish Effective Giving Initiative is looking for volunteers to help support their network

Grants

• Open Phil have made 13 grants recently with a total value of $8,300,000
  • $3,120,000 - Future of Humanity Institute
  • $2,760,000 - Farm Animal Welfare
  • $1,200,000 - Global Health & Development
  • $600,000 - Land Use Reform
  • $320,000 - Scientific Research
  • $300,000 - Criminal Justice Reform
• Animal Charity Evaluators have granted $1,000,000 to 35 organisations involved in movement building
• The Survival and Flourishing Fund grant applications are open until August 23rd

Global Development

• 80,000 Hours podcast with Alexander Berger from Open Philanthropy on improving global health and well being in clear and direct ways
• Max Roser looking at how big of a global problem smoking is
• Devex is tracking the programs that have been cancelled due to the UK aid cuts, including the Malaria Consortium program in Nigeria
• Hannah Ritchie with an overview of how much progress is being made on clean water and sanitation
• Hear This Idea interviewing Jeffrey Sachs on sustainable development
• The Centre for Global Development have launched the Global Skill Partnership Portal, looking at improving migration and reducing 'brain drain'
• Against Malaria Foundation has agreed to fund 8.1 million nets for distribution in Nigeria in early 2022
• Rethink Priorities with a report on agricultural land redistribution as an intervention
• Mark Lutter with thoughts on charter cities and effective altruism
• Sam Enright with notes on persistence and economic development
• Hauke Hillebrandt with an evaluation of Mind Ease, an anti-anxiety app

Animal Welfare

• ACE with their thinking around recommending Wild Animal Initiative as a top charity
• Lewis Bollard looking at plans for the EU to ban caged animals
• Richard Parr with an update on how GFI Europe has engaged with the UK government, resulting in £125,000,000 in funding for research and development of alternative proteins
• Wild Animal Initiative are launching a research fund

Existential & Catastrophic Risks

• The MacArthur Foundation is removing it's funding from nuclear policy work, this article claims they currently fund 40-55% of non-governmental funding worldwide on nuclear policy
• NASA and the European Space Agency are to test nudging asteroids off collision course with Earth
• Wellcome Leap has started a $60,000,000 program to support RNA-based manufacturing capabilities around the world to prepare for future pandemics
• A Nasa study predicts an increase in flooding due to an increase in the Moons gravitational pull combined with rising sea levels
• Spencer Greenberg interviewing Toby Ord on existential risks
• CSER presented 'Doom and Doubt: Uncertain Futures & Open Questions about Existential Risk' where researchers discussed how we can have open conversations about worst-case future scenarios

Improving Institutions

• 80,000 Hours podcast with Cal Newport on an industrial revolution for office work
• A report looking into whether prediction markets could predict outcomes in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's social science programme
• A post on the rise of ARPA style organisations
• Nadia Eghbal looking at ways to redesign university
• An article on the four waves of evidence revolution over the last thirty years
• Tony Blair and Patrick Collinson with a collection of essays on how to accelerate UK science and innovation including contributions from Seb Krier, José Luis Ricón, Saloni Dattani and Matt Clifford

Environment

• Bill Gates on Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, a coalition of philanthropists, companies, and governments aiming to invest in energy innovation
• The Breakthrough Institute looking at why carbon emissions grew slower between 2010-2019 than in the previous decade
• Kelsey Piper with an article looking at the degrowth movement
• The Future of Life podcast with Michael Klare on the Pentagon’s view of climate change and the risks of state collapse
• A paper suggesting that higher end warming is underrepresented in climate research

Longtermism

• Holden Karnofsky started a blog covering ideas related to longtermism, epistemology and ethics. His first post is called 'All Possible Views About Humanity's Future Are Wild' and is part of a series arguing that we are potentially living in one of the most important centuries
• Vox on how to be a good ancestor
• The BBC looking at the history of ideas behind building 'galactic civilisations'
• Founders Pledge with 'The case for longtermism and safeguarding the future'
• A post 'Towards a longtermist framework for evaluating democracy-related interventions'
• Luke Muehlhauser with a personal take on longtermist AI governance

Emerging Technology

• DeepMind says it will release the structure of every protein known to science
• Matt Clifford in discussion with Jeff Ding from the Centre for the Governance of AI on what's happening in Chinese AI
• Tom Davidson with thoughts on David Roodman’s GWP model and its relation to AI timelines
• 80,000 Hours Podcast with Chris Olah on what is going on inside neural networks

Other Links

• Stephen Fry narrating a video on effective altruism
• Marcus Daniell, founder of High Impact Athletes, won a bronze medal at the Tokyo Olympics
• Patrick Brinich-Langlois asking what can be done with $500,000
• Clearer Thinking with a framework for creating positive behaviours
• Dylan Matthews writing about the chances of intelligent life beyond Earth and the Fermi Paradox
• The initiative 'NLP for social good' has been launched
• Owen Cotton-Barratt with a post looking at different ways we can try do good and the tensions between them
• Peter Slattery has created a list of over 1900 related EA videos on YouTube
• A series of posts on the EA Forum where people talk about their jobs, including data scientist, researcher, professor and chemist
• Hear This Idea interviewing Anders Sandberg on the Fermi Paradox, Transhumanism, and more

Good News

• China has been certified malaria free by the WHO
• France bans crushing and gassing of male chicks from 2022