EA Talks

We must take evolution into account when we consider animal welfare — whether we’re thinking about which animals are sentient or how animals might respond to a given intervention. In this talk, Wild Animal Initiative’s Michelle Graham will present a brief introduction to the theory of evolution, explain how understanding evolution can help us conduct better research, and discuss the ways misconceptions about evolution lead us astray.Michelle also recommends this video.To learn more about effective altruism, visit effectivealtruism.orgThis talk was filmed at EA Global 2019: San Francisco. You can learn more about these conferences at eaglobal.org.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 we want to donate money, should we give it away now, or invest it to give away later? The answer depends on many considerations, including our expected rate of return, the chance of our personal values changing, and the question of whether we live at the “Hinge of History” — a time with high-impact opportunities which will soon vanish.In this talk, Phil Trammell of the Global Priorities Institute discusses how we can evaluate these considerations and change our giving strategy in response to what we learn.To learn more about effective altruism, visit effectivealtruism.orgThis talk was filmed at EA Global 2019: San Francisco. You can learn more about these conferences at eaglobal.org.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.

When you start a charity, you clearly want to do good directly — but you also have an opportunity for other forms of impact, from building the EA movement to generating knowledge that can be shared with many other people. In this talk, Katriel Friedman, CEO of Charity Science Health, will discuss his organization’s experiences with the indirect benefits of charity entrepreneurship.To learn more about effective altruism, visit effectivealtruism.orgThis talk was filmed at EA Global 2019: San Francisco. You can learn more about these conferences at eaglobal.org.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.

Demand for meat is projected to double by 2050. Bruce Friedrich, Executive Director of the Good Food Institute, believes we can meet that demand without massively scaling conventional animal agriculture (and the many adverse impacts of that industry). In this talk, he explains how our ability to produce meat directly from plants, or from animal cells, could lead to a new agricultural revolution. This talk was filmed at EA Global 2019: San Francisco. You can learn more about these conferences at eaglobal.org.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.

When GiveWell wrote that they were looking for charities to work on micronutrient fortification, Fortify Health rose to the challenge. With help from a $300,000 GiveWell grant, they began to work on wheat flour fortification, hoping to reduce India’s rate of iron deficiency. In this talk, co-founder Brendan Eappen discusses the charity’s story, and crucial decisions they faced along the way.This talk was filmed at EA Global 2019: San Francisco. You can learn more about these conferences at eaglobal.org.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, cell-based, and cultured proteins are taking off around the world. This presents us with a massive opportunity in the developing world — where demand for meat may grow explosively in the next few decades, but also where differences in culinary tradition and available ingredients could inspire major advancements to meat alternatives. In this talk, Varun Deshpande of the Good Food Institute discusses how these advancements could play out (using India as an example), and how individuals might contribute to building new food systems in low and middle-income countries.This talk was filmed at EA Global 2019: San Francisco. You can learn more about these conferences at eaglobal.org.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.

What if humanity suddenly had a thousand times as many resources at our disposal? It might make fighting over them seem like a silly idea, since cooperating would be a safer way to be reliably better off. In this talk from EA Global 2018: London, Eric Drexler argues that when emerging technologies make our productive capacity skyrocket, we should be able to make the world much better for everyone.You can read a transcript of this talk here: https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/ea-global-2018-paretotopian-goal-alignment/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.

In the early days of debate on advanced artificial intelligence, we didn’t yet have very good AI systems at all, so we had to rely on ideas about human thinking and extrapolate. Now, however, there are plenty of advanced AI systems, many of which are better than humans at narrow tasks. In this talk from EA Global 2018: London, Eric Drexler argues that using this new data, we should rethink our models for how superintelligent AI is likely to emerge and function.You can read a transcript of this talk here: https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/ea-global-2018-reframing-superintelligence/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.

When an AI wins a game against a human, that AI has usually trained by playing that game against itself millions of times. When an AI recognizes that an image contains a cat, it’s probably been trained on thousands of cat photos. So if we want to teach an AI about human preferences, we’ll probably need lots of data to train it. And who is most qualified to provide data about human preferences? Social scientists! In this talk from EA Global 2018: London, Amanda Askell explores ways that social science might help us steer advanced AI in the right direction.You can read a transcript of Amanda’s talk here: https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/ea-global-2018-ai-safety-needs-social-scientists/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 Plurality Pandemic by Aaron Hamlin from EA Global 2018: London.Subscribe to our channel:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEfA…Find out how to attend EA Global:https://www.eaglobal.org/.Join our Facebook community:https://www.facebook.com/effectivealt…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.