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A plea to EAG Boston presenter...
Some presentations stick with you after EAG. Some evaporate as you leave the room. While there is a lot of amazing content at EAG, I'd like to seem more consideration on how to deliver a message that sticks. From my experience presenting to the firing squad, here are some tricks of the trade -
1) Figure out who is your primary audience you are speaking to. If you try to cover everyone, you will usually lose everyone.
2) Narrow down to the one message you want them to walk away with.
3) Consider tying your main message to a Call to Action.
4) For an hour slot, consider the 10/20/30 rule.
10 slides - less is more;
20 minute talk (+ 20 minutes to fix the internet, A/V gear, etc + 20 minute buffer for audience interjections);
30 pt font - less is more;
5) Max 7 bullets per slide
6) DO NOT read the slide
7) Be authentic, for your audience to buy your message they need to buy into you
If you prefer to hear it from an ex-Apple evangelist saying it more charmingly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51TLge2peLc
Celebrating your users - this just popped into my inbox celebrating my double digit meetings using the Calendly tool. It highlights a great practice of understanding your users' journey and celebrating the key moments that matter. Onboarding and offboarding are key moments, but so are points that can transition them to a power user. From forum stalker to contributor. This allows me to reflect on how good an experience I've had that I keep using this tool (make sure it is good), and as a next step suggests tips on how I can use the tool more pervasively to get more embedded in the ecosystem. So think about how you can celebrate your users when community building.
Could EA benefit from allowing more space for contemplating a response after a post goes up?
This is a post from Jason Fried who write a lot about modern work practices implemented at his company 37 signals - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jason-fried_dont-be-a-knee-jerk-at-most-companies-activity-7043983774434414593-Y0jG
He describes not encouraging instant, first impression reactions to idea pitches through flipping the communication process. They put out long form content about the idea before the presentation so there can be more developed responses. For posts in the forum, I feel like posts go for quick comments and that helps it rise to the frontpage and gather more comments. Its good and bad to me and I wonder what an improvement could look like.
(Yes, I knee-jerk wrong about this after seeing the post. )
On the automation of wisdom -
Norman Douglas:
“There are some things you can’t learn from others. You have to pass through the fire.”
Shower thoughts: AI has advanced its intelligence so fast by running thousands of iterations of training. In a way, it has lived a thousand lifetimes during our human lifespan. If each training run was one life, could that be analogous to one human life? If AGI has a survival instinct, could that be analogous to the drive for the survival of the human race as a species? Does that then change the way to look at control or coexistence mechanisms with AGI?
The Atlantic article by Jacob Stern points out that there is no great analogy to capture the essence of Artificial Intelligence. But if there was, then AI would probably just be a subcategory of that idea. AI can be thought of as a combination of things but it is really its own category. Perhaps the best way to put it - AI is like a Chimera with the destructiveness of Nuclear weapons, the uncontrollable virality of Social Media, the double-edged sword of Drug discovery, and the transformative power of Electricity. It is like a lot of things but put together, it may have far reaching implications we have not begun to comprehend.
Curated and popular this week
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Advanced AI could unlock an era of enlightened and competent government action. But without smart, active investment, we’ll squander that opportunity and barrel blindly into danger.
Executive summary
See also a summary on Twitter / X.
The US federal government is falling behind the private sector on AI adoption. As AI improves, a growing gap would leave the government unable to effectively respond to AI-driven existential challenges and threaten the legitimacy of its democratic institutions.
A dual imperative
→ Government adoption of AI can’t wait. Making steady progress is critical to:
* Boost the government’s capacity to effectively respond to AI-driven existential challenges
* Help democratic oversight keep up with the technological power of other groups
* Defuse the risk of rushed AI adoption in a crisis
→ But hasty AI adoption could backfire. Without care, integration of AI could:
* Be exploited, subverting independent government action
* Lead to unsafe deployment of AI systems
* Accelerate arms races or compress safety research timelines
Summary of the recommendations
1. Work with the US federal government to help it effectively adopt AI
Simplistic “pro-security” or “pro-speed” attitudes miss the point. Both are important — and many interventions would help with both. We should:
* Invest in win-win measures that both facilitate adoption and reduce the risks involved, e.g.:
* Build technical expertise within government (invest in AI and technical talent, ensure NIST is well resourced)
* Streamline procurement processes for AI products and related tech (like cloud services)
* Modernize the government’s digital infrastructure and data management practices
* Prioritize high-leverage interventions that have strong adoption-boosting benefits with minor security costs or vice versa, e.g.:
* On the security side: investing in cyber security, pre-deployment testing of AI in high-stakes areas, and advancing research on mitigating the ris
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Summary
Immediate skin-to-skin contact (SSC) between mothers and newborns and early initiation of breastfeeding (EIBF) may play a significant and underappreciated role in reducing neonatal mortality. These practices are distinct in important ways from more broadly recognized (and clearly impactful) interventions like kangaroo care and exclusive breastfeeding, and they are recommended for both preterm and full-term infants.
A large evidence base indicates that immediate SSC and EIBF substantially reduce neonatal mortality. Many randomized trials show that immediate SSC promotes EIBF, reduces episodes of low blood sugar, improves temperature regulation, and promotes cardiac and respiratory stability. All of these effects are linked to lower mortality, and the biological pathways between immediate SSC, EIBF, and reduced mortality are compelling. A meta-analysis of large observational studies found a 25% lower risk of mortality in infants who began breastfeeding within one hour of birth compared to initiation after one hour.
These practices are attractive targets for intervention, and promoting them is effective. Immediate SSC and EIBF require no commodities, are under the direct influence of birth attendants, are time-bound to the first hour after birth, are consistent with international guidelines, and are appropriate for universal promotion. Their adoption is often low, but ceilings are demonstrably high: many low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) have rates of EIBF less than 30%, yet several have rates over 70%. Multiple studies find that health worker training and quality improvement activities dramatically increase rates of immediate SSC and EIBF.
There do not appear to be any major actors focused specifically on promotion of universal immediate SSC and EIBF. By contrast, general breastfeeding promotion and essential newborn care training programs are relatively common.
More research on cost-effectiveness is needed, but it appears promising. Limited existing
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Our Mission: To build a multidisciplinary field around using technology—especially AI—to improve the lives of nonhumans now and in the future.
Overview
Background
This hybrid conference had nearly 550 participants and took place March 1-2, 2025 at UC Berkeley. It was organized by AI for Animals for $74k by volunteer core organizers Constance Li, Sankalpa Ghose, and Santeri Tani.
This conference has evolved since 2023:
* The 1st conference mainly consisted of philosophers and was a single track lecture/panel.
* The 2nd conference put all lectures on one day and followed it with 2 days of interactive unconference sessions happening in parallel and a week of in-person co-working.
* This 3rd conference had a week of related satellite events, free shared accommodations for 50+ attendees, 2 days of parallel lectures/panels/unconferences, 80 unique sessions, of which 32 are available on Youtube, Swapcard to enable 1:1 connections, and a Slack community to continue conversations year round.
We have been quickly expanding this conference in order to prepare those that are working toward the reduction of nonhuman suffering to adapt to the drastic and rapid changes that AI will bring.
Luckily, it seems like it has been working!
This year, many animal advocacy organizations attended (mostly smaller and younger ones) as well as newly formed groups focused on digital minds and funders who spanned both of these spaces. We also had more diversity of speakers and attendees which included economists, AI researchers, investors, tech companies, journalists, animal welfare researchers, and more. This was done through strategic targeted outreach and a bigger team of volunteers.
Outcomes
On our feedback survey, which had 85 total responses (mainly from in-person attendees), people reported an average of 7 new connections (defined as someone they would feel comfortable reaching out to for a favor like reviewing a blog post) and of those new connections, an average of 3
A plea to EAG Boston presenter...
Some presentations stick with you after EAG. Some evaporate as you leave the room. While there is a lot of amazing content at EAG, I'd like to seem more consideration on how to deliver a message that sticks. From my experience presenting to the firing squad, here are some tricks of the trade -
1) Figure out who is your primary audience you are speaking to. If you try to cover everyone, you will usually lose everyone.
2) Narrow down to the one message you want them to walk away with.
3) Consider tying your main message to a Call to Action.
4) For an hour slot, consider the 10/20/30 rule.
10 slides - less is more;
20 minute talk (+ 20 minutes to fix the internet, A/V gear, etc + 20 minute buffer for audience interjections);
30 pt font - less is more;
5) Max 7 bullets per slide
6) DO NOT read the slide
7) Be authentic, for your audience to buy your message they need to buy into you
If you prefer to hear it from an ex-Apple evangelist saying it more charmingly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51TLge2peLc