EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular)

Agreement78 % of my donations so far have gone to the Long-Term Future Fund[1] (LTFF), which mainly supports AI safety interventions. However, I have become increasingly sceptical about the value of existential risk mitigation, and currently think the best interventions are in the area of animal welfare[2]. As a result, I realised it made sense for me to arrange a bet with someone very worried about AI in order to increase my donations to animal welfare interventions. Gregory Colbourn (Greg) was the 1st person I thought of. He said: I think AGI [artificial general intelligence] is 0-5 years away and p(doom|AGI) is ~90% I doubt doom in the sense of human extinction is anywhere as likely as suggested by the above. I guess the annual extinction risk over the next 10 years is 10^-7, so I proposed a bet to Greg similar to the end-of-the-world bet between [...] ---Outline:(00:07) Agreement(03:53) Impact(05:18) AcknowledgementsThe original text contained 5 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: June 4th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/GfGxaPBAMGcYjv8Xd/i-bet-greg-colbourn-10-keur-that-ai-will-not-kill-us-all-by --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Since 2017, EA Funds has been providing grants across four distinct cause areas. While there are payout reports available, there is a lack of reports detailing the outcomes of these grants, so I delved out of curiosity into the Grants Database to review some of the proposals that received funding and evaluate their outcomes. Some of the findings were quite unexpected, particularly for the Long-Term Future Fund and the EA Infrastructure Fund. The case involving a $100.000 grant for a video game In July 2022, EA approved a $100,000 grant to Lone Pine Games, LLC, for developing and marketing a video game designed to explain the Stop Button Problem to the public and STEM professionals. Outcomes from looking into Lone Pine Games, LLC: After almost two years, there are no online mentions of such a game being developed by this company, except for the note on the [...] --- First published: June 3rd, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7Dp9phDw28h3dbAns/review-of-past-grants-the-usd100-000-grant-for-a-video-game --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TL;DR: I donated my kidney and you can too. If that's too scary, consider blood donation, the bone marrow registry, post-mortem organ donation, or other living donations (birth tissue, liver donation). Kidney donation sucks. It's scary, painful, disruptive, scarring. My friends and family urged me not to; words were exchanged, tears were shed. My risk of preeclampsia tripled, that of end stage renal disease multiplied by five. I had to turn down two job offers while prepping for donation. It is easy to read philosophical arguments in favor of donation, agree with them, and put the book back on the shelf. But it is different when your friend needs a kidney: Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Eighteen months ago, at 28-years-old, my friend Alan started losing weight. He developed a distinctive butterfly-shaped rash and became too weak to eat. On February [...] --- First published: May 30th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xiDKb3XvJxKiwNevJ/a-scar-worth-bearing-my-improbable-story-of-kidney-donation --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Ansh, a charity focused on delivering Kangaroo Care to premature babies in India, discusses their impact of saving 4 lives per month per facility. They aim to double their impact by expanding to more hospitals. The podcast explores the challenges and successes of implementing Kangaroo Care, with plans to scale up and expand to other countries in the future.

Epistemic Status: somewhat confident: I may have made coding mistakes. R code is here if you feel like checking. Introduction:  In their 2022 article, Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Kahneman looked to reconcile the results from two of their papers. Kahneman (2010) had reported that above a certain income level ($75,000 USD), extra income had no association with increases in individual happiness. Killingsworth (2021) suggested that it did. Kahneman and Killingsworth (henceforth KK) claimed they had resolved this conflict by (correctly) hypothesizing that: 1) There is an unhappy minority, whose unhappiness diminishes with rising income up to a threshold, then shows no further progress (i.e., Kahnemann's leveling off); 2) In the happier majority, happiness continues to rise with income even in the high range of incomes (i.e., Kllingsworth continued log-linear finding) (More info on this discussion can be found in Spencer Greenberg's thoroughly enjoyable blog post. Spencer [...] ---Outline:(00:18) Introduction:(03:04) Summary of Findings(04:07) Results(05:07) Median Regressions(05:21) Figure 1(06:16) Regressions at Various Percentiles(06:55) Figure 2(08:38) Implications(10:50) Table 1: Happiness at Different Percentiles (above, KK; below, me)The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: May 28th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/A5voYMFhPkWTrGkuJ/against-a-happiness-ceiling-replicating-killingsworth-and --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post. The report concludes that the cage-free fulfillment rate is maintaining its momentum at 89%. The producer, retailer, and manufacturer industries are some of the most cage-free forward sectors when it comes to fulfillment. Some major companies across sectors that fulfilled their commitments in 2023 (or years ahead of schedule) include Hershey (Global), Woolworths (South Africa), Famous Brands (Africa), Scandic Hotels (Europe), Monolog Coffee (Indonesia), Special Dog (Brazil), Azzuri Group (Europe), McDonald's (US), TGI Fridays (US), and The Cheesecake Factory (US). --- First published: May 24th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/SG38cPw5C7wLXAeFn/89-of-cage-free-egg-commitments-with-deadlines-of-2023-or --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post. A brief overview of recent OpenAI departures (Ilya Sutskever, Jan Leike, Daniel Kokotajlo, Leopold Aschenbrenner, Pavel Izmailov, William Saunders, Ryan Lowe Cullen O'Keefe[1]). Will add other relevant media pieces below as I come across them. Some quotes perhaps worth highlighting: Even when the team was functioning at full capacity, that “dedicated investment” was home to a tiny fraction of OpenAI's researchers and was promised only 20 percent of its computing power — perhaps the most important resource at an AI company. Now, that computing power may be siphoned off to other OpenAI teams, and it's unclear if there’ll be much focus on avoiding catastrophic risk from future AI models. -Jan suggesting that compute for safety may have been deprioritised even despite the 20% commitment. (Wired claims that OpenAI confirms that their "superalignment team is no more"). “I joined with substantial hope that OpenAI [...] The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration. --- First published: May 17th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ckYw5FZFrejETuyjN/articles-about-recent-openai-departures --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TL;DR It's time for an absurd challenge. On June 7th around 11:00, I'm going to (try to) break the world record for cycling without hands! 🚴🏻‍♂️ For more than 100km, I am raising money for the The Against Malaria Foundation (100% donated, costs covered by my company and myself) with the help of The Life You Can Save. Pledge your donation per kilometer or fixed amount here (tax deductibility possible in most countries, email me on vin@boas.co). The full story I'm Vin from Amsterdam, and I'm doing a world record attempt for cycling without hands for charity on the 7th of June. I am donating 100% to The Against Malaria Foundation, with the goal of saving at least one life (5.000 USD). You can participate and push me to go further by joining here. It's going too far to say that my bike saved my life, but at [...] --- First published: May 20th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/cj2Qauvc3tQRyXuBW/i-m-attempting-a-world-record-to-raise-money-for-amf --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

How well do you know the details of the Giving What We Can Pledge? A surprising number of people we’ve spoken to — including many who know a lot about effective giving — shared some or all of these pledge misconceptions. Misconception #1: If you sign the pledge, you have to donate at least 10% of your income each year. The Giving What We Can Pledge is a public commitment to donate at least 10% of your lifetime income to the organisations that can most effectively use it to improve the lives of others. Giving 10% of your income each year is a good rule of thumb for most people, as it helps them stay on track with their lifetime pledge. However, there are certainly cases where it doesn’t make sense to give annually. Provided you continue reporting your income[1] on your personal pledge dashboard, the “Overall Progress” bar [...] ---Outline:(00:20) Misconception #1: If you sign the pledge, you have to donate at least 10% of your income each year.(02:18) Misconception #2: Only the charities on the Giving What We Can Platform count towards your pledge(03:25) Misconception #3: The pledge is a legal document(04:43) Misconception #4: There's no good reason to sign the pledge if you’re already donating 10% or more(09:22) Misconception #5: There's only one pledgeThe original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: May 15th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Y5QKkt9PFhqvG7CEn/5-things-you-ve-got-wrong-about-the-giving-what-we-can --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

The Charity Commission for England and Wales has concluded its statutory inquiry into Effective Ventures Foundation UK (EVF UK), which was originally launched in 2023 following the collapse of FTX. The full report on the inquiry can be found here, and the Commission's press release on the inquiry can be found here. The inquiry's scope was to examine: The extent of any risk to EVF's assets. The extent to which the trustees were complying with their legal obligations to protect the charity's property The governance and administration of the charity by the trustees.[1] We are pleased that “the inquiry found that the trustees took appropriate steps to protect the charity's funds and complied with their legal duties acting diligently and quickly following the collapse of FTX.” The Commission's report notes the full cooperation of EVF's trustees and that they “sought to act in the charity's best interests.” Although [...] The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration. --- First published: May 22nd, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gGadLX9Dc7XPqLhZc/the-charity-commission-has-concluded-its-inquiry-into --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.