For people interested in subscribing to these updates, I've made a Substack here, and will probably stop cross posting to the EA Forum soon.
Main News
Last month the FTX Future Fund was announced, aiming to support ambitious projects in order to improve humanity's long-term prospects. They plan on distributing $100 million this year and potentially a lot more over time, this would put them at a similar level to Open Philanthropy who have been the largest funder of EA related projects in recent years.
You can read about their plans here and get a sense of the projects they want to fund, see what EA Forum users have suggested as potential ideas and read about their regranting program, you can also apply to be a regrantor as well.
New Projects
- Effective Ideas is a new $100,000 blog prize aiming to encourage a broader conversation around EA and longtermism
- Lizka Vaintrob, Joshua Teperowski Monrad and Fin Moorhouse are planning to run a contest for critiques in EA and are looking for feedback on this idea
- CEA has launched the University Group Accelerator Program
- Social Change Lab is a new project that is conducting research into whether protest could be a cost-effective way to achieve positive social change
- The Colombian Center for Effective Altruism has been set up, here is their first newsletter (in Spanish)
- Non-trivial Pursuits is a new organisation aimed at connecting teenagers to impactful career advice
- Animal Advocacy Careers is running a work placement programme for people to try out fundraising for different organisations
- 80,000 Hours have a new podcast - '80k After Hours', with episodes on 'The philosophy of The 80,000 Hours Podcast', 'Alex Lawsen on his advice for students' and 'Michelle and Habiba on what they’d tell their younger selves, and the impact of the 1-1 team'
Meta Effective Altruism
- Vaidehi Agarwalla with a post looking at some benefits and risks of failure transparency in EA
- Thomas Kwa with the post 'Effectiveness is a Conjunction of Multipliers'
- Ada-Maaria Hyvärinen with 'Unsurprising things about the EA movement that surprised me'
- Lucius Caviola, David Althaus, Stefan Schubert and Joshua Lewis with research on which psychological traits predict interest in effective altruism
- A post looking at the winners of the Future Fund’s project ideas competition
- Kuhan Jeyapragasan and Akash Wasil with 'Questions That Lead to Impactful Conversations' and also a post on how to improve your 1-1 conversations
- ALLFED with a case study on how to make the EA community more resilient to catastrophes
- Cristina Schmidt Ibáñez asking about peoples perceptions of social rewards in EA
- Fin Moorhouse with a list of EA projects he would like to see
- Giving What We Can with their plans for 2022
- Nuño Sempere on how to value research by eliciting comparisons from other researchers
- Milan Griffes on EA blindspots
- James Ozden with thoughts on recent EA funding announcements
- Julian Hazell on why it's okay to not be perfect at effective altruism
- High Impact Professionals with a list of companies with the most people interested in EA
- An update on the EA Librarian service, where you can submit any questions you have about EA
- One For The World with lessons and results from workplace giving talks
- Rose Hadshar with research ideas on the history of social movements and how that might help EA
- John Bridge looking at where intersectionality and effective altruism intersect
- Peter Wildeford with a post suggesting that 'A less cost-effective opportunity that is more scalable can be better than a more cost-effective but less scalable opportunity'
Careers
- 80,000 Hours with updates to their high impact careers page
- Akash Wasil with a curated list of forum posts about careers
- Yufeng Tao with a career story 'why I decided to leave corporate for now'
- Yonatan Cale on how to become a professional software developer
- Andy Morgan writing about being a policy analyst
- Ollie Base with the post 'Grantmaking is more like a skill than a path'
- 80,000 Hours have a post on China-related AI safety and governance paths
- A post on the demandingness of operations work
- 80,000 Hours with an updated profile on communication careers
- A post on why you should become a hacker rather than a consultant if you want to work in information security
- Jack Ryan and Olivia Jimenez with 23 career choice heuristics
Grants
- Open Phil have made 23 grants recently with a total value of $31,300,000
- $13,600,000 - Scientific Research
- $4,000,000 - Kainomyx — Antimalarial Drug
- $3,300,000 - Protein Design Research
- $3,200,000 - Universal Influenza Vaccines
- $5,400,000 - Other Areas
- 2,900,000 - Kurzgesagt - Video Creation and Translation
- 1,000,000 - Founders Pledge
- $5,000,000 - Global Catastrophic Risks
- $5,000,000 - The Degrees Initiative
- $2,900,000 - Potential Risks from Advanced AI
- $2,500,000 - Centre for the Governance of AI
- $2,000,000 - Farm Animal Welfare
- $1,500,000 - Criminal Justice Reform
- $900,000 - Immigration Policy
- $13,600,000 - Scientific Research
- Building a Stronger Future - a family foundation run by Sam Bankman-Fried - announced a $5,000,000 grant to ProPublica to support investigations into ongoing questions about the COVID-19 pandemic, biosecurity and public health preparedness
Global Development
- Rory Fenton arguing against cash benchmarking for global development RCTs
- Care International looking at the 10 most under reported humanitarian crisis in 2021
- Saloni Dattani on how randomised controlled trials work and why they matter
- Charity Entrepreneurship with a research report on road traffic safety
- Vox on what the Russian invasion of Ukraine could mean for global hunger
- The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk with a paper on the risks and externalities of using AI for agriculture
- Shruti Rajagopalan and Lant Pritchett discussing economic predictions and problems with randomised controlled trials
- The World Happiness Report for 2022 has been released
- Charity Entrepreneurship with a research report on aid quality advocacy
- A report on emerging trends and technologies in global development has been released by the WHO
- 80,000 Hours podcast with Karen Levy on fads and misaligned incentives in global development, and scaling deworming to reach hundreds of millions
- Spencer Greenberg in conversation with Elie Hassenfeld on why it's so hard to have confidence that charities are doing good
- Hannah Ritchie on how the war in Ukraine could impact global food supplies
- Max Roser looking at the progress made in reducing malaria
Animal Welfare
- The Good Food Institute with a review of 2021
- Max Carpendale with a report asking what divestment from animal agriculture achieves
- Ren Springlea with a report on the costs and benefits of a meat tax
- Tobias Baumann with a post suggesting how the animal movement could do even more good
- Emily Grundy with a summary of a meta review on 'What interventions influence animal-product consumption?'
- Alene Anello with a post asking 'Who is protecting animals in the long-term future?'
- Neil Dullaghan with a post suggesting that forecasts estimate limited cultured meat production through 2050
- Jacob Peacock on the effectiveness of a theory-informed documentary to reduce consumption of meat and animal products
- A post on 'Why the expected numbers of farmed animals in the far future might be huge'
- There is a new documentary on the future of alternative proteins
Existential & Catastrophic Risks
- Holden Karnofsky with 'Important, actionable research questions for the most important century'
- The annual Next Generation for Biosecurity Competition has been launched, aiming to cultivate the next generation of global leaders in biosecurity, apply by April 18th
- The Global Catastrophic Risk Institute with a post on 'Pluralism in the Field of Global Catastrophic Risk'
- Seth Baum with reflections on the Russian invasion of Ukraine through the lens of global catastrophic risks
- A post on the strongest arguments against working on existential risk
Nuclear Safety
- Seth Baum in the BBC looking at how evaluate the risk of nuclear war
- A post looking at forecasting the risk of death from a nuclear strike on a major city in one month
- Will Aldred with an overview of the nuclear risk cause area stream within the Cambridge Existential Risks Initiative
- Kit Harris with an overview of a new nuclear security grantmaking programme at Longview Philanthropy
- Vox with details on the biggest funder of anti-nuclear war programs removing their money from the area
- Michael Aird with '8 possible high-level goals for work on nuclear risk'
- 80,000 Hours podcast with Joan Rohlfing on how to avoid catastrophic nuclear blunders
- Max Roser with the post 'Why reducing the risk of nuclear war should be a key concern of our generation'
- Chatham House with a paper on the uncertainty and complexity in nuclear decision-making
Improving Institutions
- Nadia Eghbal on the last decade of science funding in tech
- Ian David Moss with a landscape analysis of institutional improvement opportunities
- A post on unblocking research bottlenecks with non-profit start-ups
- Interview with Alec Stapp, co-founder of the Institute for Progress
- The National Institute for Health Research is trialling a fast grant programme in England
- The U.S. has launched the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health with $1 billion in startup investment
- Samuel Arbesman has created a database of new types of research organisation
- Adam Mastroianni on how grant funding is broken and how to fix it
- UK Research and Innovation have a new 5 year strategy, committing to spending £25 billion a year on research and development
- Sarah Hamburg with an overview of decentralised science
- Matt Clifford with Nadia Eghbal discussing Silicon Valley and the future of philanthropy
- A post suggesting that the United Nations should get more attention from organisations in EA
Environment
- Herbie Bradley with a climate change overview for the Cambridge Existential Risks Initiative summer research fellowship
- Open Philanthropy have funded the Degrees Initiative to support research on the potential implications of solar radiation management
Longtermism
- You can now pre-order Will MacAskill's new book 'What We Owe the Future'
- An update from Open Philanthropy’s Longtermism EA movement-building team
- Future Matters is a new newsletter focused on longtermism
- Richard Pettigrew with the Global Priorities Institute working paper 'Effective altruism, risk, and human extinction'
- Rhys Lindmark looking at how the FTX Future Fund might impact the longtermism ecosystem
- Our World in Data with a post and visualisations on longtermism
- The Global Catastrophic Risk Institute with the case for ecocentric space expansion
- Jan Kulveit and Gavin Leech on experimental longtermism as part of a series on learning from crisis
- Linch Zhang with 'Why short-range forecasting can be useful for longtermism'
- Giving What We Can with an introductory video on safeguarding the long-term future
- John Myers and Larks writing up their concerns with the Wellbeing of Future Generations bill
- Michael Townsend on the value of small donations from a longtermism perspective
- Sam Hilton on Hear This Idea podcast discussing 'Charity Entrepreneurship, Exploratory Altruism, and Longtermist Policy'
- The Center on Long-Term Risk's annual report
- Holden Karnofsky debating himself on whether 'extra lives lived' are as good as 'deaths prevented'
Artificial Intelligence
- Rob Bensinger with Twitter-length responses to 24 AI alignment arguments
- Aryeh Englander on presenting the case for AI risk
- An EA forum post arguing that AI risk should be explained with more sci-fi descriptions
- A post on the role of academia in AI safety
- Marius Hobbhahn with an AI safety starter pack
- Neel Nanda on how he formed his own views about AI safety
- The Future of Life podcast with Daniela and Dario Amodei on Anthropic
Ukraine
- Vox with ways to help Ukrainians
- EA Forum posts on the Ukraine-Russia conflict
- 80,000 Hours podcast with Samuel Charap on why Putin invaded Ukraine, the risk of escalation, and how to prevent disaster
Other Causes
- George Altman with a cause profile on cognitive enhancement research
- Bryan Caplan with a presentation on open borders as effective altruism
- A new Cambridge University interdisciplinary research programme will investigate life in the universe
- Tim Farkas with the post 'Mind Enhancement: A High Impact, High Neglect Cause Area?'
- Hauke Hillebrandt with a critique of Open Philanthropy's macroeconomic policy advocacy
- Matthew Barnett with thoughts on the risks from the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence
- David Chalmers and Azeem Azhar discussing potential moral issues in the metaverse
- Tobias Baumann with five recommendations for better political discourse
Other Links
- Dylan Matthews looking at how war became a crime
- Schmidt Futures are looking for people to help them create resources to help people make high impact career shifts
- Holden Karnofsky with his experience of working on vaguely defined problems
- A post comparing top forecasters and domain experts
- Finan Adamson with a nuclear preparedness guide
- Ben Kuhn with a post on searching for outliers
- Hear This Idea podcast with Glen Weyl on pluralism, radical markets and social technology
- There has been a breakthrough in underground mapping using quantum technology
- There is a new type of ultraviolet light that could make indoor air as safe as the outdoors
- Sam Bankman-Fried in discussion with Tyler Cowen on crypto and altruism
- Ben Williamson, Kristyna Stastna and Terezie Kosik with notes on managing highly stressful news and situations
- Magnus Vinding with a new book looking at politics based on ethical reasoning and empirical evidence
- INFER are running an EA college forecasting tournament from April to July
- Lizka Vaintrob highlighting a post by Chris Olah and Shan Carter on the benefits of making research easier to understand
EA in the Media
- Krista Hessey for Global News covering EA in Canada
- Ben Todd on the Waking Up podcast with Sam Harris discussing 80,000 Hours
- Oxford University looking at Giving What We Can
- Financial Independence Europe podcast with Luke Freeman and Rebecca Herbst on how to give effectively
- Zachary Brown on his discovery of effective altruism two years ago and how it intersects with religious beliefs
Upcoming Events
- 1-3rd April - EAGx Boston
- 15-17th April - EA Global London
- 13-15th May - EAGxPrague
- 22-24th June - Breakthrough Dialogue, Progress Problems is a hybrid conference in California, with speakers including Tamara Winter, Ezra Klein and Caleb Watney
- 26-29th June - Open Student Workshop on Global Priorities Research - Oxford, apply by 20th April
- 29-31st July - EA Global: San Francisco
- 23-25th September - EA Global: Washington, D.C.
Upcoming Virtual Events
- 19-21st April - Cambridge Conference on Catastrophic Risk
- 23rd April - Effective Altruism for Christians Annual Conference - Sign up by April 1st
- 7th May - 4th June - Red Team Challenge - Organised by Training for Good, sign up by April 15th
Fellowships
- Cambridge Existential Risks Initiative are running a 10 week Summer Research Fellowship - Apply by 3rd April
- Atlas Fellowship - A summer programme in California open to high school students globally and it comes with a $50,000 scholarship - 10th April
- Training for Good are running the European Technology Policy Fellowship from July to December - 19th April
- Open Philanthropy - EA Summer Communications Fellowship - 25th April
- New Science are running a one year fellowship in Massachusetts - 1st May
- Leaf are running an eight day residential program in Oxford in August for sixth formers on the theme 'Building a Better Future'
Good News
- There were 700,000 fewer Dengue cases in 2020 than the previous year as a result of Covid restrictions
- The fur trade has been ended in Belgium
- Saudi Arabia has eliminated trachoma as a public health problem
Why might you stop cross posting to the forum?
When I started I told myself that if each post gets roughly 10 votes than it's providing enough value to keep on doing, and the last month and this month have been just below that, so there seems to be declining interest, and the people that are interested can just sign up to get the updates.
I’m surprised that these posts get so few upvotes, I find them really valuable. Maybe they contain too much information that people already know about from elsewhere and so these updates are mostly interesting for the few people who want to have a particularly comprehensive overview over EA activities? 🤔
Ah. So you don't want to clog up the forum with something people aren't interested in?
Yep.