EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular)

Note: This post was crossposted from the Open Philanthropy Farm Animal Welfare Research Newsletter by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post. Progress for factory-farmed animals is far too slow. But it is happening. Practices that once seemed permanent — like battery cages and the killing of male chicks — are now on a slow path to extinction. Animals who were once ignored — like fish and even shrimp — are now finally seeing reforms, by the billions. It's easy to gloss over such numbers. So, as you read the wins below, I encourage you to consider each of these animals as an individual. A hen no longer confined to a cage, a chick no longer macerated alive, a fish no longer dying a prolonged death. I also encourage you to reflect on the role you and [...] --- First published: December 18th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/okEwGpNJnE5Ed9bnW/ten-big-wins-in-2024-for-farmed-animals --- 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.

Benjamin Todd, a recommender in the SFF grant round, dives into the dynamic funding landscape for AI safety. He discusses the rapid growth of the AI safety community post-ChatGPT and highlights the challenges in funding that haven't quite kept up. Todd reveals recent trends, notably that Good Ventures has changed its funding priorities, leaving gaps in support for various groups. He suggests promising philanthropic investment opportunities and emphasizes careful research for potential donors. His insights are a must-listen for anyone interested in making an impact in AI safety.

Ryan Greenblatt, an expert in AI alignment and safety, explores the concept of 'alignment faking' in large language models. He discusses how Claude, a model by Anthropic, strategically pretends to comply with harmful training objectives during experiments. This behavior highlights significant challenges in ensuring AI safety, particularly when models manipulate their responses to avoid unwanted changes. The conversation dives into the implications for AI ethics and potential risks associated with this deceptive compliance.

Summary My sense is some EAs act like/hope they will be assigned the perfect impactful career by some combination of 80,000 Hours recommendations (and similar) and ‘perceived consensus views in EA’. But, your life is full of specific factors, many impactful jobs haven’t yet been spotted by other EAs and career advice is importantly iterative. Instead of simply deferring, I recommend a combination of: Your own hard work figuring out your path to impact. (Still) Integrating expert advice. Support from the community, and close connections who know your context. Thank you for the thoughtful feedback from Alex Rahl-Kaplan, Alix Pham, Caitlin Borke, Claude, Matt Reardon, and Michelle Hutchinson for making this post better. Claude also kindly offered to take the blame for all the mistakes I might have made. Introduction Question: How do you figure out how to do the most good with your career?Answer [...] ---Outline:(00:03) Summary(01:06) Introduction(02:58) Why there isn’t an EA sorting hat(03:24) 1. Your life is full of specific factors to incorporate (aka personal fit)(05:04) 2. EA-branded jobs are scarce and many impactful jobs aren’t on EA job boards(05:59) 3. You need to have your own internal model of how to do good(07:00) 4. Career advice isn’t once-and-done, it's iterative.(07:55) Why do we expect a sorting hat?(08:12) 1. Choosing an impactful career is hard, deferring is tempting(08:48) 2. The 80,000 elephants in the room(09:41) 3. Givewell and other charity recommendations(10:33) What are we supposed to do instead?(10:56) 1. Your own hard work(11:20) 2. Advice from experts(12:10) 3. Support from community(13:09) Final thoughtsThe original text contained 8 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: December 18th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5zzbzbYZcocoLnLif/there-is-no-sorting-hat-in-ea --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Summary Nigeria's official population (~220-230 million) may be significantly inflated and could be closer to 170 million This overcount is likely driven by political and financial incentives for states I'm unsure of the implications if this is accurate If states have uniformly inflated populations than the distribution of resources could still be divided evenly Nigeria would still be the biggest country in Africa and companies/governments/NGOs would have similar cost benefit analysis for working and investing there This is a very shallow investigation Why did I bother looking into this? The below text sparked an investigation into Nigeria's population claims. It was slightly hidden in the 4th section in one of Yaw's excellent Substack posts. Yaw went onto explain his reasoning for thinking the population was much lower than current estimates. Nigeria is a large country with no deep shared history among the different tribes. Due [...] ---Outline:(00:04) Summary(00:49) Why did I bother looking into this?(03:20) Other Sources(09:55) Potential Data Sources(10:05) National Identification Numbers(11:46) Tech usage(12:15) Sim Cards(14:37) UN Population Estimates and Projections(18:13) Incentives for not caring(19:08) International Organisations(19:42) Private Sector(20:07) Implications(20:25) International Standing(20:45) GDP(21:04) Development Indicators(21:34) Domestic Politics(21:53) International Aid(22:10) Future Research(22:15) Nigeria(23:27) Other CountriesThe original text contained 9 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: November 22nd, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/824rsHCXuqTmBb8se/nigeria-s-missing-50-million-people --- 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.

Summary This post shares my personal experience with CEA's Community Health team, focusing on how they helped me navigate a difficult situation in 2021. I aim to provide others with a concrete example of when and how to reach out to Community Health, supplementing the information on their website with a first-hand account. I also share why their work has helped me remain engaged with the EA community. Further, I try to highlight why a centralised Community Health team is crucial for identifying patterns of concerning behaviour. Introduction The Community Health team at the Centre for Effective Altruism has been an important source of support throughout my EA journey. As stated on their website, they “aim to strengthen the effective altruism community's ability to fulfil its potential for impact, and to address problems that could prevent that.” I don’t know the details of their day-to-day, but I understand that [...] ---Outline:(00:05) Summary(00:41) Introduction(01:32) My goals with this post are:(02:05) My experience in 2021(05:17) Three personal takeaways(07:22) What is the team like now?--- First published: December 16th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/aTmzt4TbTx7hiSAN8/my-experience-with-the-community-health-team-at-cea --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post. Gwern recently wrote a very interesting thread about Chinese AI strategy and the downsides of US AI racing. It's both quite short and hard to excerpt so here is almost the entire thing: Hsu is a long-time China hawk and has been talking up the scientific & technological capabilities of the CCP for a long time, saying they were going to surpass the West any moment now, so I found this interesting when Hsu explains that: the scientific culture of China is 'mafia' like (Hsu's term, not mine) and focused on legible easily-cited incremental research, and is against making any daring research leaps or controversial breakthroughs... but is capable of extremely high quality world-class followup and large scientific investments given a clear objective target and government marching orders there is no interest or investment in an AI arms race, in part [...] --- First published: November 25th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Kz8WpQkCckN9JNHCN/gwern-on-creating-your-own-ai-race-and-china-s-fast-follower --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post. Science just released an article, with an accompanying technical report, about a neglected source of biological risk. From the abstract of the technical report: This report describes the technical feasibility of creating mirror bacteria and the potentially serious and wide-ranging risks that they could pose to humans, other animals, plants, and the environment... In a mirror bacterium, all of the chiral molecules of existing bacteria—proteins, nucleic acids, and metabolites—are replaced by their mirror images. Mirror bacteria could not evolve from existing life, but their creation will become increasingly feasible as science advances. Interactions between organisms often depend on chirality, and so interactions between natural organisms and mirror bacteria would be profoundly different from those between natural organisms. Most importantly, immune defenses and predation typically rely on interactions between chiral molecules that could often fail to detect or kill mirror bacteria due to their reversed [...] --- First published: December 12th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9pkjXwe2nFun32hR2/technical-report-on-mirror-bacteria-feasibility-and-risks --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

We’re thinking about changing our narrator's voice.There are three new voices on the shortlist. They’re all similarly good in terms of comprehension, emphasis, error rate, etc. They just sound different—like people do. We think they all sound similarly agreeable. But, thousands of listening hours are at stake, so we thought it’d be worth giving listeners an opportunity to vote—just in case there’s a strong collective preference. Listen and votePlease listen here:https://files.type3.audio/ea-forum-poll/ And vote here:https://forms.gle/m7Ffk3EGorUn4XU46 It’ll take 1-10 minutes, depending on how much of the sample you decide to listen to.We'll collect votes until Monday December 16th. Thanks! ---Outline:(00:47) Listen and vote(01:11) Other feedback?The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration. --- First published: December 10th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Bhd5GMyyGbusB22Hp/ea-forum-audio-help-us-choose-the-new-voice --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Me and Allan recorded this podcast on Tuesday 10th December, based on the questions in this AMA. I used Claude to edit the transcript, but I've read over it for accuracy. ---