Ava Mulla and I tried to tackle the brick kiln issue in Bangladesh with Building Pioneers in 2015-2017. Business model around helping existing kilns adopt new technologies and getting the national industry transformation fund on board didn't play out at the time, but soil tests, experiments with alternative materials, some contacts, and general experience in the local environment might still be relevant to new ventures. Happy to connect you with Ava, who was the CEO and engineer on the ground.

There is! You can use the technology behind Actually Relevant to create bespoke feeds with your own news sources and relevance criteria. I sent a DM to schedule a call.

Thanks so much for the feedback!

I submitted the podcast to PocketCasts. I should be available within a few days. (Also Podchaser and a few others I had missed.)

I agree that "Actually Relevant" can come off as dismissive or confrontational. I'll check how big of an issue this is for other people. Maybe we can balance this impression somehow with other aspects of the service. I'm hesitant about changing the name as that would be quite a hassle.

Thanks for the feedback!

The system has picked up on Sudan (https://actuallyrelevant.news/?s=sudan) to some extent, starting in May 2023 with the UN warning of a "full-blown catastrophe", in September 2023 on Sudan having fallen "over the edge of mass atrocities", in February 2024 with ~11m people uprooted and ~19m children out of school; and recently highlighting 18m affected by food insecurity.

Still, the system would probably benefit from news sources that specialize on under-reported conflicts. If anybody knows a good one, please let us know!

I'm looking for a diversified investment fund that engages in shareholder activism in a systematic way. Basically a Vanguard MSCI World, but with hundreds of lawyers whose only job is to push corporate agendas for the common good. In your research, did you come across any firms or products that I could take a look at? I've been doing a quick search once a year for some time now, but so far, I haven't found anything attractive that works for me as a retail investor.

I'd like to add three aspects of Chuck's philanthropy that are not mentioned in the post and that he shared with us for a report we published in 2022 called "Influence for Good":

• In addition to universities and hospitals, Chuck also supported various initiatives for systemic change, including the piece process in Ireland and the healthcare system in Vietnam.
• In his systems change philanthropy, he gave up control and put it in the hands of "proximate leaders".
• Chuck didn't just use his financial assets. He also invested large amounts of social and political capital to promote change.

See https://www.ashoka.org/en-us/influence-for-good for a profile on Chuck and more information on these principles.

I created a prototype that does this filtering with the help of AI: https://actuallyrelevant.news.

Not completely in line with the features you listed, but it does identify ~15 stories each week that are important for humanity (out of 1,000 that are evaluated) and analyzes the relevance.

Thanks so much for taking a deeper look at one of the articles! I think you're right: a somewhat lower rating seems more appropriate in this case.

I believe that two things are true for the algorithm behind Actually Relevant: 1) almost all posts are more important for humanity than 90% of news articles by other outlets. In that sense, it's already useful. 2) Many relevance analyses are still off by at least one grade on the rating scale, meaning that some posts get a "major" or "critical" tag that should not get it. The idea is to use community and expert feedback to finetune the prompts to get even better results in the future. I also want to involve a human editor who could double check and adjust dubious cases.

In the post you referenced, the AI says: "The eviction has affected over 70,000 people and risks cultural extinction for the Maasai people. It also highlights the need for a reevaluation of international legal norms and systems around land rights. In certain scenarios, this situation could lead to a broader movement for indigenous land rights in Tanzania and beyond, making it an issue that is far more relevant for humanity than the number of directly affected people would suggest." I think it's a good sign that the algorithm realized that the extinction of an entire culture and developments around indiginous land rights should lead to a higher rating than the number of directly affected people would suggest. It might still be off in this case, but I'm optimistic that additional finetuning can get us there.

EA-aligned news curation service - prototype online

Actually Relevant is a news curation service that evaluates stories based on how relevant they are for humanity and its long-term future. The website is a first prototype. I hope that Actually Relevant will promote EA causes and perspectives to more people, and that it will free EA-aligned readers from the headaches of irrelevant news.

I'm looking for

• feedback What do you like? How can we improve?
• interview partners 15 minutes to understand how you read the news and what you want to get out of your news consumption
• partners in crime Let me know if you want to get involved

I just started a project along similar lines called Actually Relevant. You can see a first prototype at https://actuallyrelevant.news/. Would love to be in touch with both you and @finm to discuss it! Please send a PM if you're interested.