EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular)

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.

We’re excited to announce a new volunteer-run organisation, UK Voters For Animals, dedicated to mobilising UK voters to win key legislative changes for farmed animals. Our goal is to recruit and train voters to meet with MPs and prospective MPs to build political support for our key asks. Due to the upcoming general election, we think this is a crucial time to apply pressure on politicians. If you want to use your political power to win change for farmed animals, sign up to get involved here. Please share with anyone who may be interested – we’re looking to find people in all 650 constituencies around the UK so no small feat! We think people in the EA community would be a great fit for helping out with this work because they are often thoughtful, pragmatic, and impact-focused. The minimum commitment required is attending a training, and participating in [...] --- First published: May 14th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/BmWuycesbhnXhmy5D/announcing-uk-voters-for-animals --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a quickly-written opinion piece, of what I understand about OpenAI. I first posted it to Facebook, where it had some discussion. Some arguments that OpenAI is making, simultaneously: OpenAI will likely reach and own transformative AI (useful for attracting talent to work there). OpenAI cares a lot about safety (good for public PR and government regulations). OpenAI isn’t making anything dangerous and is unlikely to do so in the future (good for public PR and government regulations). OpenAI doesn’t need to spend many resources on safety, and implementing safe AI won’t put it at any competitive disadvantage (important for investors who own most of the company). Transformative AI will be incredibly valuable for all of humanity in the long term (for public PR and developers). People at OpenAI have thought long and hard about what will happen, and it will be fine. We can’t [...] --- First published: May 21st, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9iLgAbu9KtpLupitk/what-s-going-on-with-openai-s-messaging --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Latest Draft Here Abstract. Here, I present GDP (per capita) forecasts of major economies until 2050. Since GDP per capita is the best generalized predictor of many important variables, such as welfare, GDP forecasts can give us a more concrete picture of what the world might look like in just 27 years. The key claim here is: even if AI does not cause transformative growth, our business-as-usual near-future is still surprisingly different from today. Results In recent history, we've seen unprecedented economic growth and rises in living standards.Consider this graph:[1] How will living standards improve as GDP per capita (GDP/cap) rises? Here, I show data that projects GDP/cap until 2050. Forecasting GDP per capita is a crucial undertaking as it strongly correlates with welfare indicators like consumption, leisure, inequality, and mortality. These forecasts make the future more concrete and give us a better sense [...] ---Outline:(00:39) Results(02:45) Discussion(05:40) Values and Culture(09:01) Growth could be much faster(11:49) Implications for AI(16:57) Will growth slow?(19:56) Methods(22:05) Persistence of growth(23:26) Future Research(29:05) Appendix: Further reading(29:09) The World in 2050(30:55) Economics(30:59) GDP as a proxy for welfare(31:03) AI(36:32) Forecasting(36:35) Fiction(36:38) Appendix: Causal Model Between Growth, Liberal Democracy, Human Capital, Peace, and X-Risk(36:59) Economic Growth causes…(37:47) Democracy causes...(40:02) Human capital causes…(40:44) Peace and stability causes...The original text contained 79 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: May 6th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ubZjxQocGqeZJJXE9/gdp-per-capita-in-2050 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

I am a lawyer. I am not licensed in California, or Delaware, or any of the states that likely govern OpenAI's employment contracts. So take what I am about to say with a grain of salt, as commentary rather than legal advice. But I am begging any California-licensed attorneys reading this to look into it in more detail. California may have idiosyncratic laws that completely destroy my analysis, which is based solely on general principles of contract law and not any research or analysis of state-specific statutes or cases. I also have not seen the actual contracts and am relying on media reports. But. I think the OpenAI anti-whistleblower agreement is completely unenforceable, with two caveats. Common law contract principles generally don't permit surprises, and don't allow new terms unless some mutual promise is made in return for those new terms. A valid contract requires a "meeting of [...] --- First published: May 18th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AJAhePexStoEhAwto/call-for-attorneys-for-openai-employees-and-ex-employees --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

The podcast pays tribute to Marisa, co-founder of EA Anywhere, who dedicated her life to alleviating suffering for others. It reflects on her impressive work ethic, sense of humor, and the importance of seeking help for mental health issues. The chapter highlights her impact on the effective altruism community and the need to prevent suicide contagion.

We are thrilled to introduce nine new charities launched through our February-March 2024 Incubation Program. This is an AIM record with an average of five charities launched per round in the previous years. We are also proud to announce that thanks to very generous donors from the Seed Network Funding Circle, these new organizations have secured over $1 million in funding! This is a significant milestone for AIM as an organization. We are very grateful for the support of our funders, mentors, and, most of all, the talented applicants who decided to pursue entrepreneurial careers in the nonprofit sector. We are committed to ongoing support for these new initiatives through mentorship, operational assistance, free co-working space in London, and access to an ever-expanding entrepreneurial network of funders, advisors, interns, and fellow charity founders. This article provides a brief introduction to our new organizations. You will find more information [...] ---Outline:(02:24) Centre for Aquaculture Progress(06:00) Notify Health(09:50) Learning Alliance(15:03) Novah(20:05) Access to Medicines Initiative (AMI)(23:52) FarmKind(28:31) Ark Philanthropy(32:02) Taimaka--- First published: May 14th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tDQm4Z5aQytRE2RKn/presenting-nine-new-charities-a-record-for-the-aim-ce --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

We’re excited to share a new addition to our site: an impact-focused job board! We’ve considered launching a job board for some time, so we’re happy to add this feature to the Probably Good site. The job board aims to: Help people find more promising job opportunities, including in cause areas that aren’t as thoroughly covered by other impact-focused boards such as 80,000 Hours and Animal Advocacy Careers. Direct our audience to concrete opportunities that meet a high standard of impact. Reduce friction for people on our site to take the first step towards a career change, by providing opportunities to apply for or just exposing them to new options. As Animal Advocacy Careers have highlighted before, job boards are often the primary gateway to career advice sites, and so we hope the job board will also extend our content's reach and general impact. Why we’re launching a job [...] ---Outline:(00:59) Why we’re launching a job board(02:34) How you can help(03:09) Final Notes--- First published: May 6th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZPB87ayzzwAoxycvN/probably-good-launched-a-new-job-board --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.