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Curated and popular this week
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Note: I am not a malaria expert. This is my best-faith attempt at answering a question that was bothering me, but this field is a large and complex field, and I’ve almost certainly misunderstood something somewhere along the way.
Summary
While the world made incredible progress in reducing malaria cases from 2000 to 2015, the past 10 years have seen malaria cases stop declining and start rising. I investigated potential reasons behind this increase through reading the existing literature and looking at publicly available data, and I identified three key factors explaining the rise:
1. Population Growth: Africa's population has increased by approximately 75% since 2000. This alone explains most of the increase in absolute case numbers, while cases per capita have remained relatively flat since 2015.
2. Stagnant Funding: After rapid growth starting in 2000, funding for malaria prevention plateaued around 2010.
3. Insecticide Resistance: Mosquitoes have become increasingly resistant to the insecticides used in bednets over the past 20 years. This has made older models of bednets less effective, although they still have some effect. Newer models of bednets developed in response to insecticide resistance are more effective but still not widely deployed.
I very crudely estimate that without any of these factors, there would be 55% fewer malaria cases in the world than what we see today. I think all three of these factors are roughly equally important in explaining the difference.
Alternative explanations like removal of PFAS, climate change, or invasive mosquito species don't appear to be major contributors.
Overall this investigation made me more convinced that bednets are an effective global health intervention.
Introduction
In 2015, malaria rates were down, and EAs were celebrating. Giving What We Can posted this incredible gif showing the decrease in malaria cases across Africa since 2000:
Giving What We Can said that
> The reduction in malaria has be
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"Part one of our challenge is to solve the technical alignment problem, and that’s what everybody focuses on, but part two is: to whose values do you align the system once you’re capable of doing that, and that may turn out to be an even harder problem", Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO (Link).
In this post, I argue that:
1. "To whose values do you align the system" is a critically neglected space I termed “Moral Alignment.” Only a few organizations work for non-humans in this field, with a total budget of 4-5 million USD (not accounting for academic work). The scale of this space couldn’t be any bigger - the intersection between the most revolutionary technology ever and all sentient beings. While tractability remains uncertain, there is some promising positive evidence (See “The Tractability Open Question” section).
2. Given the first point, our movement must attract more resources, talent, and funding to address it. The goal is to value align AI with caring about all sentient beings: humans, animals, and potential future digital minds. In other words, I argue we should invest much more in promoting a sentient-centric AI.
The problem
What is Moral Alignment?
AI alignment focuses on ensuring AI systems act according to human intentions, emphasizing controllability and corrigibility (adaptability to changing human preferences). However, traditional alignment often ignores the ethical implications for all sentient beings. Moral Alignment, as part of the broader AI alignment and AI safety spaces, is a field focused on the values we aim to instill in AI. I argue that our goal should be to ensure AI is a positive force for all sentient beings.
Currently, as far as I know, no overarching organization, terms, or community unifies Moral Alignment (MA) as a field with a clear umbrella identity. While specific groups focus individually on animals, humans, or digital minds, such as AI for Animals, which does excellent community-building work around AI and animal welfare while
I wonder if, on forms requiring someone to fill out, "How are you engaged with EA?"
With answers like:
"Accepted a job/changed career path due to EA", "Changed college studies...", "Committed to donating x% income/year", "Have gone to an EAG", "Engage with EA Forum/rationalist blogs", etc.
Would it make sense to include "Changed diet due to EA considerations"? (or perhaps 'my diet is in line with EA considerations for animal welfare'? Though I doubt EA really prescribes a certain diet... so perhaps here is a clue as to why it's not included.)
I just recall filling out a form with some org that had these options and not the last one, and I was surprised that animal welfare was not represented/something that I try to do and attribute to EA was not represented. Especially since I think, as a behavior, it could also be a decent proxy for someone's engagement (perhaps investment/sacrifice?) with EA.
So, I suppose not much of a call to action considering I cannot even name where I encountered this, more a comment on the breeze about how animal welfare feels waylaid to me. But if someone also has further insight into my predicament I'd appreciate the help.
Interesting point! Now that you mention it, I don't recall seeing that listed in some of the forms I've filled out, but it is definitely true that I have changed my diet due to my engagement with EA.
Recently I was looking around EA organizations and I thought it might be useful to have a visualization of this database compiled by Michel Justen. This visualization was rushed out as part of a hackathon with AE Studio and with the help of Jean Mayer, a dev there.
https://ae.studio/ea/organizations
This is pretty rudimentary and feedback is more than welcome, especially regarding how I might best compile some of the below data to include in a future version in an actual post.
Also, I think it could certainly look better by (spending more time on the visualization looking nice) having the cause areas be better truncated regarding some orgs with a lot of cause areas.
This could provide a cool visualization of the comparative efforts within our community by cause area by ‘bubble size’, and help people understand a bit more about EA organizations and what it means to be ‘EA’.