EA Talks

Developing country governments spend a considerable chunk of their budget on poverty alleviation. These are tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in funding every year. Governments also make decisions that have profound influence on their economy, which affects their residents, the world’s poor. A small probability to positively affect those has a very large expected utility effect. As the governments themselves, or as donors, we should think of the most cost-effective investments and pursue them. However, as individual EAs we should ask “how much change can I make?”. It’s possible that working with developing country governments is individually more effective than setting up cost-effective NGOs, and so should be an EA strategy. Based in UC Berkeley, the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA) is a network of 70+ academics on the West Coast who devise and test solutions to problems of poverty, often working with governments. We’ll present examples from CEGA research where involvement in government policy can have huge effects, and tentatively propose ways to pursue it.Source: Effective Altruism Global (video).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.

Fireside chat with Paul Shapiro, Vice President of Policy at the Humane Society of the United States and Bruce Friedrich the Executive Director of The Good Food Institute.Source: Effective Altruism Global (video).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.

A moral trade occurs when individuals with different values cooperate to produce an outcome that’s better according to both their values than what they could have achieved individually.Source: Effective Altruism Global (video).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.

Governments in developing countries are some of the biggest players in the fight against poverty, providing millions of low-income people with critical services daily. Scaling up effective, evidence-backed programs through governments is a critical path to alleviating human suffering worldwide. But how can governments begin to build a culture of EA thinking and evidence-informed policymaking, especially when ideology, inertia, and politics often drive policy decisions? Based at MIT, J-PAL is a network of economists who have run over 800 randomized controlled trials in over 80 countries to ensure that policy is informed by scientific evidence. Claire Walsh, head of J-PAL’s Government Partnership Initiative, will share lessons learned about how governments can adopt a more EA approach to policymaking based on our partnerships with over 30 national, state, and city governments in over 15 countries over the past decade. She will feature examples of randomized controlled trials that have led to national government scale-ups of effective programs in India, Indonesia, Peru, and Zambia.Source: Effective Altruism Global (video).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.

What makes effective altruism so “strange”? We’ll take a data driven look into this question using results from four new studies that we conducted, which examine perceptions on catastrophic risk, charity cost effectiveness, animal suffering, and self-reported personality.Source: Effective Altruism Global (video).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.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly improving. Superhuman AI in strategically relevant domains is likely to arrive in the next several decades; some experts think two. This will transform international politics, could be profoundly destabilizing, and could pose existential risks. Urgent research is needed on AI grand strategy. This requires a careful examination of humanity’s highest interests in the era of transformative AI, of the international dynamics likely to arise from AI, and of the most promising strategies for securing a good future. Much work will be required to design and enact effective global AI policy.Source: Effective Altruism Global (video).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 wisdom with which we develop and deploy new technologies will define the future of our civilization. Why do we conduct research in small teams of specialists who cannot reliably anticipate consequences on their own? Might it be better to share our best ideas and plans with others, actively inviting concerns, criticism, and possible improvements? Unfortunately, the current system has evolved to punish sharing. By highlighting the benefits of an open approach and the dangers of the status quo, gene drive may allow us to test a new approach and change the governing incentives.Source: Effective Altruism Global (video).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.

Source: Effective Altruism Global (video).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.

Source: Effective Altruism Global (video).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.

Duncan presents an introduction to the Center for Applied Rationality’s tools for increasing motivation, avoiding mistakes, and collaborating effectively.Source: Effective Altruism Global (video).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.