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EA Organization Updates: May 2023
11 min read ·
We’re featuring some opportunities and job listings at the top of this post. Some have pressing deadlines. (See also the May 2023 EA Newsletter.)
You can see previous updates on the "EA Organization Updates (monthly series)" topic page, or in our repository of past newsletters. Notice that there’s also an “org update” tag, where you can find more news and updates that are not part of this consolidated series.
These monthly posts originated as the "Updates" section of the EA Newsletter. Organizations submit their own updates, which we edit for clarity.
(If you think your organization should be getting emails about adding their updates to this series, please apply here.)
The organization updates are in alphabetical order.
Consider also checking opportunities listed on the EA Opportunities Board.
Virtual fellowships and courses
A contest and some events
Consider also exploring jobs listed on “Job listing (open), and the 80,000 Hours Jobs Board.
Centre for the Governance of AI (GovAI)
Effective Institutions Project
Faunalytics
Founders Pledge
GiveWell
Giving What We Can
Happier Lives Institute
Open Philanthropy
Rethink Priorities
This month on The 80,000 Hours Podcast, Rob interviewed Tim LeBon on how altruistic perfectionism is self-defeating and Ajeya Cotra on accidentally teaching AI models to deceive us, and Luisa interviewed Tom Davidson on how quickly AI could transform the world.
And on 80k After Hours, Luisa and Keiran talked about free will, and the consequences of never feeling enduring guilt or shame.
One of Anima International’s current top priorities is getting the Polish Minister of Agriculture to support the EU ban on cages in animal farming. Before the government elections in the Autumn, they, along with Compassion in World Farming, aim to present the minister with an impressive amount of signatures on a petition. To support this, they just released a new campaign - “With one voice/vote” - engaging seven Polish celebrities with different backgrounds, political opinions, ages, and audiences which has already been a huge hit in the media. You can see the video with the option for English subtitles here.
Anima International will be presenting at Effective Altruism Global in London later this month.
Crossroads Blog Series: Crossroads is Animal Charity Evaluators’s (ACE) new blog series that explores what human-focused social movements can teach us about nonhuman animal advocacy. In part one, ACE spoke with Christopher Eubanks, a social justice advocate, creative, and public speaker that combats all forms of injustice. In part two, ACE learned from Dr. Robyn Gulliver, a multi-award-winning environmentalist, writer, and researcher who has served as an organizer and leader of numerous local and national environmental organizations. Learn more.
Anthropic recently published a blog post on NIST's AI policy.
BERI was recommended two grants through the Survival and Flourishing Fund’s recent S-Process round, both of which extend existing BERI projects: $522k to support Dr. Anthony Barrett’s work with UC Berkeley’s Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity on standards development for general-purpose AI, and an additional $481k to support the Center for Human-Compatible AI at UC Berkeley.
CEA published information about their search for a new Executive Director, including details about the hiring process and what they’re looking for in candidates. (Note that the deadline for candidate suggestions has now passed, but feedback is still welcome via this form.)
GovAI recently published their Quarterly Research Update. For those not signed up to the GovAI mailing list, the HTML version is here.
FEM recently completed a nine-month family planning campaign in Kano, Nigeria, reaching an audience base of 5.6 million over 2600 times.
The FEM team also tested their scaling model by airing short proof-of-concept campaigns in Abia, Anambra, Delta, Enugu, Kogi, Kano, Niger, and Ondo, reaching an estimated 20 million. FEM will do the same in Kaduna, Katsina, Ogun, Osun, Oyo, and Plateau in the coming months, bringing the total estimated listenership of these short campaigns to 35 million. These campaigns allow FEM to work out logistical hurdles and prepare to scale across Nigerian states once the content for longer campaigns is complete.
Simultaneously, FEM has begun research across fifteen states where the team believes their intervention can cost-effectively improve maternal and child health. FEM will conduct surveys and in-depth interviews and collect clinic data to determine the barriers to effective contraception faced in these regions.
Faunalytics has released a new study, Comparing U.S. Groups' Openness to Pro-Animal Actions, which surveyed thousands of people across the United States and asked how likely they would be to try a number of pro-animal actions, such as voting for a ballot measure, buying cruelty-free products, or giving up meat. The study includes an interactive graphing tool to easily view any and all results of interest.
Faunalytics is hiring for a Research Liaison. This new position will play an integral role in bringing research and data directly to the animal protection community, increasing impact for animals. Applications are due by May 28th.
Faunalytics is conducting their annual Community Survey and is requesting feedback from the EAA community. The survey is used to evaluate the impact of their research and learn how to improve the resources they provide. The survey should only take five minutes to complete, and participants have the option of entering to win a $100 gift card or animal charity donation.
Fish Welfare Initiative (FWI) recently published their quarterly update from Q1. Highlights include:
Meanwhile, FWI’s on-the-ground programming in India continues, currently operating with 78 farms to improve fish welfare via stocking density and water quality improvements.
This month, Founders Pledge published a long article discussing its approach to charity evaluation. This piece starts from first principles, and proceeds with a discussion of differences in charity effectiveness and a description of the different methodological tools in FP’s toolbox. FP’s research director, Matt Lerner, also received his official credential as a Superforecaster from Good Judgment, Inc.
FP also announced a successful close of the maiden fund of Pledge Ventures, a new, value-aligned venture fund that will invest exclusively in Founders Pledge member companies. Operating in partnership with Founders Pledge, Pledge Ventures will donate 85% of carried interest and up to 50% of management fee to Founders Pledge, and is a potentially transformative fundraising mechanism for FP. 95% of LPs are existing Founders Pledge members, so successful entrepreneurs who have committed to philanthropy are powering a future generation of impact-focused founders.
GiveDirectly’s zakat funding effort with Giving What We Can and Muslim Impact Lab has raised $185,000+ to date and at least 60% of those who gave were first-time GiveDirectly donors (2x what they usually see for campaigns), a sign this campaign has helped grow effective giving (read more in this EA Forum post).
They have been employing AI / Machine Learning tech to improve their ability to provide disaster relief after climate disasters, including last month in Mozambique. You can read more about this technology in this blog post.
In January this year, GiveWell directed an $87.5 million grant to Malaria Consortium's seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) program. This is the largest grant in GiveWell's 16-year history, and is expected to save over 20,000 lives, mostly children's lives, that otherwise would have been lost to malaria.
GiveWell has published a page about this grant, along with the following other new research materials:
GiveWell has also published a blog post about its grant to fund the implementation of the RTS,S malaria vaccine, plus its plans to explore other approaches to malaria control.
GiveWell top charity, New Incentives, has published a "day in the life" blog post (with photos) about one of its field officers, Abubakar Aliyu. In the remote areas of Nigeria where New Incentives works, its 1,500 field officers use simple tools to verify eligibility, confirm receipt of cash transfers, and effectively communicate with community members. This post is recommended for anyone who's curious to know more about what New Incentives' program looks like up close.
Giving What We Can is hiring a research communicator. This role will help Giving What We Can produce engaging content to communicate core effective giving concepts and our research, as well as flexing to help with some operations work at times. Read more about this remote role and apply by the 28th May.
A new paper “Who gives? Characteristics of those who have taken the Giving What We Can pledge” has been published by researchers Matti Wilks, Jessica McCurdy, Paul Bloom. Giving What We Can is excited to see the results of this paper which concluded that “GWWC pledgers were better at identifying fearful faces, more morally expansive and higher in actively open-minded thinking, need for cognition and two subscales of utilitarianism and, tentatively, lower in social dominance orientation.”
The Global Priorities Institute (GPI) has a new Director. Eva Vivalt, Assistant Professor in Economics at the University of Toronto, joined GPI in April to take over the directorship. Eva has written a blog about her current plans for the role (crosspost in the EA Forum). They’d also like to use this opportunity to thank Hilary Greaves, who was GPI's inaugural Director from the establishment of the institute in 2018 until her term ended in 2022.
HLI just published a shallow report on Lead Exposure, the third of the three reports commissioned by Founders Pledge. The research indicates that lead exposure in childhood has very long-lasting and overall large effects on well-being.
They are hiring a communications manager to lead all aspects of external and internal communications and be responsible for promoting HLI’s recommendations and methodology to their target audiences. For more information, see the job advert or contact them at [email protected].
HLI’s Director, Dr. Michael Plant will be debating Taking Happiness Seriously: Can We? Should We? Would It Matter If We Did? with Professor Mark Fabian, Assistant Professor of Public Policy at Warwick University. Mark has recently published A Theory of Subjective Wellbeing with Oxford University Press. Michael is attending with Samuel Dupret (HLI researcher).
The Humane League (THL) has set an ambitious goal to spare 6,700,000 hens from extreme confinement this year. See more here.
Additionally, THL published their 2022 Annual Report and their first quarterly progress report for 2023. Both provide detailed insights to THL’s mission to end the abuse of animals raised for food, and the global progress being made for farmed animals.
The Legal Priorities Project published their Annual Report for 2022, outlining key successes, statistics, bottlenecks, and issues from their work in 2022. It also summarizes their priorities for 2023 and their methodology for updating their priorities.
They also launched the Legal Priorities Blog. The blog features shorter pieces by LPP teammates and invited authors, as well as some organizational updates. Some of the pieces published include:
Matthijs Maas gave a talk on “Pausing AI? The Ethics, History, Epistemology, and Strategy of Technological Restraint” at the Chalmers AI Research Centre of the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Research Affiliate Cecil Abungu was one of three respondents invited to speak to UN member states about the Secretary General's Policy Brief “To Think and Act for Future Generations,” which proposes strategies to increase the protection of future generations.
Luke Muehlhauser, Open Philanthropy’s senior program officer for AI Governance and Policy, shared a list of 12 tentative policy ideas that he believes could help reduce existential risk from AI.
Senior research analyst Ajeya Cotra and Vox reporter Kelsey Piper co-launched Planned Obsolescence, a blog about AI alignment and the future of AI.
Whitney Childs joined RP’s growing Operations Department as a Senior Development Officer to support the organization’s sustainability. RP’s recent research tackled questions such as:
RP’s newest blog posts include:
Epoch—an AI research initiative fiscally sponsored by Rethink Priorities—launched a dashboard of key numbers from their research (with links and levels of confidence) to help understand the present and future of machine learning.
Based on the transformative power in education, The Life You Can Save has launched an Education For All fund which includes new recommended charities Educate Girls and Teaching at the Right Level Africa.
