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EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular)

Latest episodes

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Jan 25, 2024 • 2min

“GWWC Pledge featured in new book from Head of TED, Chris Anderson” by Giving What We Can, GraceAdams🔸

Chris Anderson, Head of TED, has just released a new book called Infectious Generosity, which has a whole chapter that encourages readers to take the Giving What We Can Pledge! He has also taken the Giving What We Can Pledge with the new wealth option to give the greater of 10% of income or 2.5% of wealth each year. This inspiring book is a guide to making Infectious Generosity become a global movement to build a hopeful future. Chris offers a playbook for how to embark on our own generous acts and to use the Internet to give them self-replicating, potentially world-changing, impact. Here's a quick excerpt from the book: “The more I’ve thought about generosity, the impact it can have, and the joy it can bring, the more determined I’ve become that it be an absolute core part of my identity. Jacqueline's work [...] --- First published: January 25th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/FWbaqM5PaFfrfAxaS/gwwc-pledge-featured-in-new-book-from-head-of-ted-chris --- 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.
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Jan 22, 2024 • 10min

“Rates of Criminality Amongst Giving Pledge Signatories” by Ben_West

I investigate the rates of criminal misconduct amongst people who have taken The Giving Pledge (roughly: ~200 [non-EA] billionaires who have pledged to give most of their money to charity). I find that rates are fairly high: 25% of signatories have been accused of financial misconduct, and 10% convicted[1] 4% of signatories have spent at least one day in prison Overall, 41% of signatories have had at least one allegation of substantial misconduct (financial, sexual, or otherwise) I estimate that Giving Pledgers are not less likely, and possibly more likely, to commit financial crimes than YCombinator entrepreneurs. I am unable to find evidence of The Giving Pledge doing anything to limit the risk of criminal behavior amongst its members. I conclude that the rate of criminal behavior amongst major philanthropists is high, which means that we should not expect altruism to substantially lower the risks compared to that of [...] ---Outline:(01:22) Methodology(02:01) How well do convictions correspond with immoral behavior?(03:56) Some Representative Cases(04:08) Are Giving Pledge signatories less likely to commit financial crimes?(06:05) Giving Pledge's Response to Criminal Behavior(07:08) PR Impacts(08:15) Implications for EAThe original text contained 9 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: January 22nd, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/d8nW46LrTkCWdjiYd/rates-of-criminality-amongst-giving-pledge-signatories --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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Jan 15, 2024 • 6min

“EA Wins 2023” by Shakeel Hashim

Crossposted from Twitter. As the year comes to an end, we want to highlight and celebrate some of the incredible achievements from in and around the effective altruism ecosystem this year. 1. A new malaria vaccine The World Health Organization recommended its second-ever malaria vaccine this year: R21/Matrix-M, designed to protect babies and young children from malaria. The drug's recently concluded Phase III trial, which was co-funded by Open Philanthropy, found that the vaccine was between 68-75% effective at targeting the disease, which kills around 600,000 people (mainly children) each year. The work didn’t stop there, though. Following advocacy from many people — including Zacharia Kafuko of 1 Day Sooner — the WHO quickly prequalified the vaccine, laying the groundwork for an expedited deployment and potentially saving hundreds of thousands of children's lives. 1 Day Sooner is now working to raise money to expedite the deployment further. 2. The [...] --- First published: December 31st, 2023 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8P2GZFLnv8HW9ozLB/ea-wins-2023 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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Jan 14, 2024 • 4min

“Survey of 2,778 AI authors: six parts in pictures” by Katja_Grace

Crossposted from AI Impacts blog The 2023 Expert Survey on Progress in AI is out, this time with 2778 participants from six top AI venues (up from about 700 and two in the 2022 ESPAI), making it probably the biggest ever survey of AI researchers. People answered in October, an eventful fourteen months after the 2022 survey, which had mostly identical questions for comparison. Here is the preprint. And here are six interesting bits in pictures (with figure numbers matching paper, for ease of learning more): 1. Expected time to human-level performance dropped 1-5 decades since the 2022 survey. As always, our questions about ‘high level machine intelligence’ (HLMI) and ‘full automation of labor’ (FAOL) got very different answers, and individuals disagreed a lot (shown as thin lines below), but the aggregate forecasts for both sets of questions dropped sharply. For context, between 2016 and 2022 surveys, the forecast [...] --- First published: January 6th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/M9MSe4KHNv4HNf44f/survey-of-2-778-ai-authors-six-parts-in-pictures --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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Jan 14, 2024 • 2min

“Zach Robinson will be CEA’s next CEO” by Ben_West, Eli Rose, ClaireZabel, lincolnq, Michelle_Hutchinson, MaxDalton, Oscar Howie

We, on behalf of the EV US and EV UK boards, are very glad to share that Zach Robinson has been selected as the new CEO of the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA). We can personally attest to his exceptional leadership, judgement, and dedication from having worked with him at Effective Ventures US. These experiences are part of why we unanimously agreed with the hiring committee's recommendation to offer him the position.[1] We think Zach has the skills and the drive to lead CEA's very important work. We are grateful to the search committee (Max Dalton, Claire Zabel, and Michelle Hutchinson) for their thorough process in making the recommendation. They considered hundreds of potential internal and external candidates, including through dozens of blinded work tests. For further details on the search process, please see this Forum post. As we look forward, we are excited about CEA's future with [...] The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration. --- First published: December 28th, 2023 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/R6qu7LhcLKLob7t9r/zach-robinson-will-be-cea-s-next-ceo --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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Jan 13, 2024 • 3min

“Double the donation: EA inadequacy found?” by Neil Warren

I'm only 30% sure [Edit Jan 7: 90% sure] that this is actually an inadequacy made by those whose job it is to maximize donations but I’ve noticed that none of the donations pages of GiveWell, Giving What We Can, Horizon Institute, or METR have this little tab in them that MIRI has (just scroll down after following the link): This little tool comes from doublethedonation.com. I was looking for charities to donate to, and I’m grateful I stumbled upon the MIRI donation page because otherwise I would not have known that Google would literally double my donation. None of the other donation pages except MIRI had this little “does your company do employer matching?” box. WHY. I would wager other tech companies have similar programs, and that a good chunk of EA donations come from employees of those tech companies, and that thousands of dollars a year [...] --- First published: January 5th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fbTE2cBtnxCqemWNp/double-the-donation-ea-inadequacy-found --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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Jan 12, 2024 • 16min

“Economic Growth - Donation suggestions and ideas” by DavidNash

There was a recent post about economic growth & effective altruism by Karthik Tadepalli. He pointed out that a lot of people agree that economic growth is important, but it hasn't really led to many suggestions for specific interventions. I thought it would be good to get the ball rolling[1] by asking a few people what they think are good donation opportunities in this area, or if not, do they think this area is neglected when you have governments, development banks, investors etc all focused on growth. I'm hoping there will be more in depth research into this in 2024 to see whether there are opportunities for smaller/medium funders, and how competitive it is with the best global health interventions. I have fleshed out a few of the shorter responses with more details on what the suggested organisation does. Shruti Rajagopalan (Mercatus Center): XKDR Forum - Founded by [...] The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration. --- First published: January 8th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/oTuNw6MqXxhDK3Mdz/economic-growth-donation-suggestions-and-ideas --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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Jan 12, 2024 • 1h 58min

“Are Far-UVC Interventions Overhyped? [Founders Pledge]” by christian.r, Rosie_Bettle

Much attention recently has focused on far-UVC light, part of the spectrum of germicidal UV (GUV), and its promise for pandemic prevention. In the following medium investigation, we examine different kinds of GUV, their strengths, weaknesses, and crucial considerations in the real-world deployment of these interventions. Throughout the report, we emphasize four points that we believe have been lost in some public discussions of far-UVC: A great deal of uncertainty remains around far-UVC interventions, to the point that we remain uncertain over the relative cost-effectiveness, all things considered, of far-UVC light versus conventional (~254nm) GUV in many settings. Cost-effectiveness depends on deployment context, including the dimensions of rooms, installation type (upper-room, full-room, etc.) assumptions about the mixing of air, etc. Combined with certain physical facts about air and light (e.g. the inverse square law), this complicates strong claims about far-UVC's promise. GUV of any kind will not [...] ---Outline:(02:39) Medium Investigation: Germicidal Ultraviolet Light and Disease Transmission Reduction(10:30) Key Terms and Abbreviations(13:12) Importance: Why Biological Indoor Air Quality Matters(17:23) Current status of indoor air quality in the US(20:22) What is GUV?(22:49) Full-Room Systems(23:45) Far-UVC Light(24:41) Upper-Room GUV(25:27) In-Duct GUV(26:42) Benefits of GUV as a biosecurity intervention(30:24) What do we know about the safety of far-UVC light?(31:14) Primary Concerns: Skin and Eye Damage(36:13) Additional Safety Concerns(36:17) Ozone Production(37:28) Indoor Air Pollution(41:08) Skin Microbiome(42:12) Overall view on safety(44:10) Additional Risks(44:14) Public Reaction Considerations(47:17) Dual-Use Potential and Security Risks(50:18) Resistance risks(52:01) Damage to Plastics and Other Materials(54:47) Comparing Different Types of GUV(56:08) Is far-UVC technology overhyped?(59:42) The Complexity of Comparing Different GUV Systems and Wavelengths(01:04:41) Efficacy(01:07:35) The Challenges of Studying Real-World GUV Effectiveness(01:16:53) Safety(01:17:02) Skin/Eye Effects(01:18:39) Indoor Air Pollution(01:19:06) Cost(01:21:31) Limits to real-world use(01:23:30) Additional benefits(01:24:07) Overall View(01:26:06) Neglectedness(01:32:11) What Could a Philanthropist Do?(01:33:29) Grantmaking under Uncertainty: Impact Multipliers for GUV(01:36:52) Placing Wavelength-Agnostic Bets(01:41:28) Leveraging Societal Resources Via Advocacy(01:42:42) Prioritizing shaping RandD incentives over funding specific RandD(01:44:14) Focusing on high-income countries first(01:45:37) Focusing on good information over rapid deployment(01:50:32) Potential funding pathways(01:55:48) Conclusions and Next Steps(01:57:03) About Founders PledgeThe original text contained 157 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: January 9th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EZZveBtxoZJjSighP/are-far-uvc-interventions-overhyped-founders-pledge --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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Jan 8, 2024 • 0sec

[Podcast AMA] Rob Mather, Founder and CEO of the Against Malaria Foundation

This podcast is an Ask Me Anything with Rob Mather, Founder and CEO of the Against Malaria Foundation, hosted by Toby Tremlett, the EA Forum’s Content Manager.If you’re interested in Effective Altruism, you’ve probably heard of Rob Mather’s charity, the Against Malaria Foundation. For almost two decades, they’ve been doing crucial work to protect people, especially children, from Malaria.To date, around 450 million people have been protected with malaria bed nets from this charity. Once all of their currently funded nets have been distributed, AMF estimates it will have prevented 185,000 deaths. And it’s not just AMF saying this, they’ve been a GiveWell Top Charity since 2009.Listen to this episode to find out more about how Rob ended up starting one of the most effective global health charities, Rob’s tips for running a charity, how AMF’s work integrates with other NGOs that work on Malaria, and much more.The original AMA post, which features Forum user’s questions for Rob, more information about AMF, and a link to a transcript for this episode, can be found here.Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rWRSvRxAco2bLoXKr/podcast-transcript-ama-founder-and-ceo-of-the-againstPublished for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO. ---
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Jan 5, 2024 • 14min

“MIRI 2024 Mission and Strategy Update” by Malo

As we announced back in October, I have taken on the senior leadership role at MIRI as its CEO. It's a big pair of shoes to fill, and an awesome responsibility that I’m honored to take on. There have been several changes at MIRI since our 2020 strategic update, so let's get into it.[1] The short version: We think it's very unlikely that the AI alignment field will be able to make progress quickly enough to prevent human extinction and the loss of the future's potential value, that we expect will result from loss of control to smarter-than-human AI systems. However, developments this past year like the release of ChatGPT seem to have shifted the Overton window in a lot of groups. There's been a lot more discussion of extinction risk from AI, including among policymakers, and the discussion quality seems greatly improved. This provides a glimmer of hope. [...] ---Outline:(03:27) MIRI's mission(05:47) MIRI in 2021–2022(10:10) New developments in 2023(13:03) Looking forwardThe original text contained 7 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: January 5th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Lvd2DFaHKfuveaCyQ/miri-2024-mission-and-strategy-update --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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