EA Talks

Oscar Horta is a Spanish animal activist and moral philosopher who is currently a professor in the Department of Philosophy and Anthropology at the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) and one of the co-founders of the organization Animal Ethics. He is known for his work in animal ethics, especially around the problem of wild animal suffering. He has also worked on the concept of speciesism and on the clarification of the arguments for the moral consideration of nonhuman animals. This talk was taken from EA Student Summit 2020. Click here to watch the talk with the PowerPoint presentation.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

Evan discusses some of the different proposals for building safe advanced AI that are currently actively being researched at OpenAI and DeepMind. Asya then discusses some recent updates on AI safety work she's excited about. Evan Hubinger is a research fellow at MIRI, and before that was an AI safety research intern at OpenAI. His current work is aimed at solving inner alignment for iterated amplification. He was an author on “Risks from Learned Optimization in Advanced Machine Learning Systems,” was previously a MIRI intern, designed the functional programming language Coconut, and has done software engineering work at Google, Yelp, and Ripple. He studied math and computer science at Harvey Mudd College.  Asya Bergal has an BA in computer science from MIT. Since graduating, she has worked as a trader/software engineer for Alameda Research, and as a research analyst at Open Philanthropy. Most recently, she has been at AI Impacts, heading up their operations and working as a researcher. This talk was taken from EA Student Summit 2020. Click here to watch the talk with the PowerPoint presentation.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

The EA Forum is the central place to discuss effective altruism. Many students worry that they don't have anything to contribute — but they probably do! In this talk, Aaron explains how you can use the Forum to share your views and get feedback from experts. He also leads a brainstorming session to help you think of ideas for new posts. Aaron runs the EA Newsletter and EA Forum, and helps with a wide range of other content projects. Before joining CEA, he worked in freelance positions throughout the EA community and spent a year earning-to-give at a software company. He holds a BA in cognitive science from Yale University, where he wrote a thesis on how charities can improve their communication with donors.  Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

Jonathan explores his experience organizing the graduate conference for his department (Ethics and Public Affairs, Carleton University). He outlines how he attempted to set a theme that would allow for effective altruism research topics, and what he would plan to do differently next time. Jon formerly served as the Director of Community, Director of Outreach, and Assistant Executive Director for Giving What We Can. In the past, he volunteered for a number of other poverty oriented non-profits, including a university chapter for the World Food Program he founded at his previous university. He holds a Master's degree in Philosophy from Oxford. This talk was taken from EA Student Summit 2020. Click here to watch the talk with the PowerPoint presentation.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

Cullen discusses promising options for law students and lawyers to do good from an effective altruism perspective. His talk draws on experience from the AI policy field; the founding of the Legal Priorities Project; and informal discussions with other lawyers on how to do the most good.Cullen O'Keefe is a lawyer and policy researcher interested in improving the governance of artificial intelligence using the principles of Effective Altruism. In May 2019, he received a J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School. he currently works as Associate Counsel for Policy & Governance at OpenAI.Cullen is also a Research Affiliate with the Centre for the Governance of AI at the Future of Humanity Institute; Founding Advisor and Research Affiliate at the Legal Priorities Project; and a VP at the O’Keefe Family Foundation.His  research focuses on the law, policy, and governance of advanced artificial intelligence. To learn more, visit his personal website, cullenokeefe.com.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

Juan presents the latest research on industrial food solutions for feeding everyone in the case of food-related global catastrophic risks. He focuses on sun-blocking global food catastrophes such as large asteroid impacts, supervolcanic eruptions and nuclear winter. The solutions presented include single-cell protein (SCP) from natural gas or from hydrogen and CO2, sugar from lignocellulosic biomass, and synthetic margarine from petroleum.Juan García Martínez is a Research Assistant at Alliance to Feed the Earth In Disasters. Juan obtained his master’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Twente and went on to join ALLFED as a research associate, where he had volunteered prior to finishing his studies. He has done research on carbon dioxide capture and utilization with his MSc thesis and his internship at the Energy Research Center of the Netherlands, and is eager to apply his energy and knowledge to new research on making humanity’s food system more resilient. This talk was taken from EA Global Asia and Pacific 2020. Click here to watch the talk with the PowerPoint presentation.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

Rossa gives a high-level introduction to global priorities research (GPR). He discusses GPI's research plans, and which other organisations are doing GPR. He also offers some thoughts about what students could do to find out more about GPR.Rossa O'Keeffe-O'Donovan is a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow in Economics at Nuffield College and the Assistant Director of the Global Priorities Institute at the University of Oxford. He completed my PhD in Economics at the University of Pennsylvania in May 2017. Before Penn, Rossa completed the M.Sc. in Economics for Development at the University of Oxford.His main research interests are in empirical microeconomics:Development economicsNetworks and peer effectsPublic goodsStructural estimationEffective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

Asia-Pacific is home to most of the world's farm animals, and some of the best opportunities to help them. Lewis outlines the current state of farm animal welfare and alternative protein opportunities across the region, including what's changed in 2020. Lewis Bollard leads Open Philanthropy’s strategy for Farm Animal Welfare. Prior to joining Open Philanthropy, he worked as Policy Advisor & International Liaison to the CEO at The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). Prior to that, he was a litigation fellow at HSUS, a law student, and an associate consultant at Bain & Company. He has a B.A. from Harvard University in Social Studies and a JD from Yale Law School. Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

Growing meat directly from plants, microbes, and animal cells will allow us to build a food system that is better for human, animal, and planetary health. However, catalyzing this paradigm shift is a vast, multidisciplinary effort that requires scientists and engineers from disciplines ranging from tissue engineering and synthetic biology to computational science and chemical engineering. This workshop explored the state of plant-based, cultivated, and fermentation-derived meat research with a focus on illuminating the white spaces in alternative protein science that need to be filled if we're to feasibly feed the world with these novel food technologies and power a transition away from industrial animal agriculture. Amy helps lead GFI’s efforts to transform universities into engines for alternative protein research and education. She supports students and researchers in developing research clusters, addressing key technological bottlenecks, and building the academic ecosystems needed to power the future of food. Amy has a background in global health, education, effective altruism, and design thinking. She holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard University and is thrilled to be devoting her career to accelerating alternative proteins in the service of human, animal, and planetary health. Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

How can we build (super) intelligent machines that are robustly aligned with human values? AI alignment researchers strive to meet this challenge, but currently draw upon a relatively narrow set of philosophical perspectives common in effective altruism and computer science. This could pose risks in a world where human values are complex, plural, and fragile. Xuan discusses how these risks might be mitigated by greater philosophical pluralism, describing several problems in AI alignment where non-Western philosophies might provide insight. Tan Zhi Xuan is a multi-disciplinary researcher broadly interested in cognitive approaches to building AI, so as to better understand and conform to human preferences, intentions, norms, and values. Current projects include developing probabilistic programming frameworks for Bayesian inverse planning and goal inference.This talk was taken from EA Global Asia and Pacific 2020. Click here to watch the talk with the PowerPoint presentation.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.