EA Talks

What if a single tool could utilize animal numbers as well as economic, political, and cultural data from a multitude of countries to help effective altruists identify where and how they can make the greatest impact for animals? Learn about the new Farmed Animal Opportunities Index, an open-source tool that offers a research-backed formula for evaluating high-impact opportunities to help animals.Leah is an animal advocate who has partnered with some of the largest food companies in the world with a mission to end factory farming. She is the President of Mercy for Animals and established, and was the first executive director of, Compassion in World Farming USA. She also serves on the advisory boards of Encompass and Seattle Food Tech. Leah’s work has been featured in many national and international media outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Buzzfeed, Vice Magazine, and the Chicago Tribune. She is a contributing author to the Huffington Post and Food Safety News. She is also the author of “Grilled: Turning Adversaries Into Allies to Change the Chicken Industry’.Original VideoEffective 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.

Nuclear weapons pose a grave threat to civilization. Public awareness of this threat has faded, but the weapons have not gone away. In fact, recent technological and geopolitical trends make nuclear war more likely than it has been in decades. Carl Robichaud discusses these developments and assesses the options for effective altruists seeking to contribute to nuclear risk reduction.As program officer in International Peace and Security at the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Carl manages a portfolio of grants to strengthen nuclear security. In this capacity, he heads the Corporation’s work on strengthening nuclear governance and investing in the next generation of nuclear experts.View Carl’s slides here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ExWYVAb40WMkXH4SDWd41sEc4gAL1ZGkOriginal VideoEffective 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.

Richard discusses the international expansion of The Good Food Institute, and some of the special considerations that alternative proteins face in non-US regions.Richard leads GFI’s work in Europe. He worked as Special Adviser to the UK Prime Minister between 2012 and 2016, and as Special Adviser to the Secretary of State for International Development from 2010-12 and 2016-18. In government, his main focus was on international development policy, and he worked closely on the formation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Richard holds an MA in Modern History from Oxford University.View Richard’s slides here:https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/13Ghl0tKntVoWIIOVrfb7QUhl-_hfvui_raa7qOaqKOgOriginal VideoEffective 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.

Thoughts on handling anxiety and loneliness during the coronavirus quarantine.Read Julia’s full post on the EA Forum.Original VideoEffective 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.

While we haven’t yet built aligned AI, the field of alignment has been chugging along for a few years now, producing many useful outputs. In this talk, Rohin will survey conceptual progress in AI alignment over the last two years. While the talk will assume basic knowledge of the arguments for AI risk, technical knowledge is not necessary.Rohin is a 6th year PhD student in Computer Science working at the Center for Human-Compatible AI (CHAI) at UC Berkeley. While he started his PhD working on program synthesis, he became convinced that it was important for us to build safe, aligned AI, and so moved to CHAI at the start of his fourth year. He now thinks about how to provide specifications of good behavior in ways other than reward functions, especially ones that do not require much human effort. He is best known for the Alignment Newsletter, a weekly publication with recent content relevant to AI alignment that has over 1700 subscribers.View Rohin’s slides here:https://drive.google.com/open?id=1cXUvfvv1G0E6V3Ps4GF400wn3vMjQYdeSubscribe to the Alignment Newsletter: https://rohinshah.com/alignment-newsletter/Original VideoEffective 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.

Plant-based, fermented, and cultivated protein technologies hold the potential to shift our food supply away from its dependence on conventional animal agriculture and its consequences on climate change, global food insecurity, public health, and animal welfare. But transforming the food system is a vast, multidisciplinary effort that requires disciplines ranging from synthetic biology and chemical engineering to economics and data science. Zak makes the case for rethinking meat, eggs, and dairy, discusses the levers we can push on to ensure the success of the alternative protein field, and explains how you can make a positive impact.Zak works at the Good Food Institute (GFI), an international nonprofit focused on creating a healthy, just, and sustainable food system through plant-based protein innovation, fermentation-derived proteins, and cellular agriculture. He consults with leading foodservice operators, food manufacturers, and alternative protein supply chain companies to help increase the quality and quantity of their plant-based meat, egg, and dairy offerings and meet the growing consumer demand for alternative protein foods. An active member of the Effective Altruism community, Zak holds a B.A. in Business Management from Cedarville University, and joined GFI after several years of experience in sales and working with startups.View Zak’s slides here.Original VideoEffective 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.

Politics is a notoriously short-termist enterprise. Political institutions generally operate on 2-to-4-year timescales (as the issue of climate change has shown). But this is not necessary or inevitable. In principle, the immense wealth, influence, and coercive authority of national governments could be used to vastly improve the long-term future. In this talk, Tyler analyzes major sources of political short-termism and describes high-priority institutional reforms that could improve alignment between the incentives of present governments and the interests of future generations.Tyler John is a PhD Student in Philosophy at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and a Global Priorities Fellow at the Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research. Tyler’s research focuses on longtermist political philosophy and animal moral, legal, and political philosophy. His current constellation of projects is focused on normative arguments for the State to consider the very long-term future, and empirical research into how it could do so effectively.​Before coming to Rutgers, Tyler was a fellow at the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. He is also the Education Advisor on the Board of Directors of Faunacción, and he has co-authored a book on chimpanzee legal rights.View Tyler’s slides here.Original VideoEffective 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.

If all goes well, human history is just beginning. Humanity could survive for billions of years, reaching heights of flourishing unimaginable today. But this vast future is at risk. For we have gained the power to destroy ourselves, and our entire potential, forever, without the wisdom to ensure we don’t. Toby explains what this entails, with emphasis on the perspective of humanity — a major theme of his new book, The Precipice (https://theprecipice.com).Toby Ord is a philosopher at Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute. His work focuses on the big picture questions facing humanity: What are the most important issues of our time? How can we best address them?Toby’s earlier work explored the ethics of global health and global poverty. This led him to create an international society called Giving What We Can, whose members have pledged over $1.4 billion to highly effective charities. He also co-founded the wider effective altruism movement, encouraging thousands of people to use reason and evidence to help others as much as possible.Original VideoEffective 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.

If all goes well, human history is just beginning. Humanity could survive for billions of years, reaching heights of flourishing unimaginable today. But this vast future is at risk. For we have gained the power to destroy ourselves, and our entire potential, forever, without the wisdom to ensure we don’t. Toby will explain what this entails, with emphasis on the perspective of humanity — a major theme of his new book, The Precipice (https://theprecipice.com).Toby Ord is a philosopher at Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute. His work focuses on the big picture questions facing humanity: What are the most important issues of our time? How can we best address them?Toby’s earlier work explored the ethics of global health and global poverty. This led him to create an international society called Giving What We Can, whose members have pledged over $1.4 billion to highly effective charities. He also co-founded the wider effective altruism movement, encouraging thousands of people to use reason and evidence to help others as much as possible.His current research is on avoiding the threat of human extinction and thus safeguarding a positive future for humanity, which he considers to be among the most pressing and neglected issues we face. He addresses this in his new book, The Precipice.To read a free chapter of The Precipice, sign up for Toby’s newsletter at the bottom of this page: https://theprecipice.com/Original VideoEffective 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.

Joan Gass, Managing Director at the Centre for Effective Altruism, gives the opening talk for the EA Global Virtual Conference.Original VideoEffective 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.