Meta
- Open Philanthropy Project on their progress in 2020 and plans for 2021
- Happier Lives Institute with their research agenda for 2021 and review of 2020
- For people using Clubhouse there is a space there for people interested in EA
- WANBAM with a new video on what their community finds most helpful about the mentorship programme
- 80,000 Hours have launched a new resource, ten curated podcasts to give people an introduction to effective altruism
- EA organisation updates for April
- Ben Schifman with the post 'EA for Jews - Proposal and Request for Comment'
- An overview of the EA Debate Championship and lecture series
- A quarterly update from the Centre for Effective Altruism
- Richard Ngo asking 'What are your main reservations about identifying as an effective altruist?'
- For Spanish speakers there is a Slack group 'Altruismo Eficaz y Racionalidad' that brings together people interested in EA from around the Spanish-speaking world
Grants
Open Phil have made 14 grants recently with a total value of $70,929,000
- $61,218,000 - Global Health & Development
- $27,077,000 - Malaria Consortium
- $18,683,000 - New Incentives
- $8,059,000 - Helen Keller International
- $4,103,000 - Evidence Action
- $2,796,000 - Sightsavers
- $500,000 - Give Directly
- $7,500,000 - Centre for Effective Altruism
- $1,434,000 - Potential Risks from Advanced AI
- $1,430,000 - Adversarial Robustness Research at MIT
- $577,000 - Farm Animal Welfare
- $150,000 - Criminal Justice Reform
- $50,000 - Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness
Global Development
- Kelsey Piper looking at how a new malaria vaccine could make a difference
- Sanjay Joshi on why SoGive is not updating charity ratings after malaria vaccine news
- Karolina Sarek with a summary of 'RCTs in Development Economics, Their Critics and Their Evolution'
- Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee discussing ways to make capitalism fairer
- Think Global Health on the importance of neglected tropical diseases
- The BBC looking at how satellite images are used to help distribute cash to people in areas with high poverty
- Evidence Action on the 'evidence to policy pipeline'
- A paper looking at the connection between states possessing reconnaissance satellites and militarised interstate disputes
Animal Welfare
- An in depth article from Vox looking at wild animal welfare as a cause
- Bruce Friedrich and Liz Specht from GFI on the Sam Harris podcast discussing alternative proteins, the environment and pandemic risk
- Animal Charity Evaluators with their 2021 goals
- Neil Dullaghan with strategic considerations for upcoming EU farmed animal legislation
- An overview of a GFI report looking at the current state of the plant based food industry
- Vox with an overview of fish welfare
- A post on the EA Forum with concerns about Animal Charity Evaluators
- Animal Ask on 'Measuring Animal Welfare: Philosophical Foundations, Practical Indicators, and Overall Assessments'
- Jamie Harris with 'Social Movement Lessons from the Fair Trade Movement'
Existential & Catastrophic Risks
- Prevent Epidemics looking at epidemics that didn't happen
- Martin Rees in the Independent writing about existential risks
- Jaan Tallinn on the Future of Life Institute podcast talking about 'Avoiding Civilizational Pitfalls and Surviving the 21st Century'
- The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk has released a new report looking at bridging the gap between global risk and policy engagement
- Jeff Ohl with a post on international cooperation as a tool to reduce x-risks
Improving Institutions
- Vox looking at how the UK’s Covid-19 Recovery Trial has been successful
- Brian Resnick looking at how the Psychological Science Accelerator are attempting to improve the psychology field
- Eva Vivalt on Hear This Idea discussing evidence-based policy and forecasting social science
- Sören Mindermann & Mrinank Sharma are on the Turing podcast discussing research they've recently had published on inferring the effectiveness of government interventions against Covid-19
Environment
- 80,000 Hours podcast with Kelly Wanser on whether to deliberately intervene in the climate
- The Breakthrough Institute looking at how accurate claims of economic decoupling from emissions are
- A chapter by chapter summary of Bill Gates's new book 'How to Avoid a Climate Disaster'
- The Roots of Progress asking why nuclear power hasn't been more successful
- Olamide Oguntoye looking into ways technological innovation can be used to make progress on climate change
- Our World in Data has a new section on biodiversity
Longtermism
- Evelyn with a post on moral pluralism and longtermism
- A post introducing the Simon Institute for Longterm Governance
- Michael Aird investigating the core reasons why he focuses on longtermism
- A post on the longtermist case for working on farmed animals
- The Long-Term Future Fund has room for more funding
Emerging Technology
- Kelsey Piper with an article on how the US government is thinking about shaping AI policy
- The Center for Security and Emerging Technology mapping India’s AI potential
- A new website has been set up to inform people interested in reducing the threats from lethal autonomous weapons
- Tom Davidson from Open Philanthropy with a report on semi-informative priors as an approach to forecasting artificial general intelligence
- Jia Yuan Loke from the Center on Long-Term Risk with case studies of self-governance to reduce technology risk
- CSER commenting on the EU's world-first AI regulation
- Beth Barnes discussing debate and imitative generalisation on the AI X-risk research podcast
- An interview with Jess Whittlestone discussing her work on AI policy and ethics
Other Links
- A look at how Elon Musk has donated $150,000,000 in the first four months of 2021, including $100,000,000 that will be awarded to entrepreneurs who come up with the best technologies to capture carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
- A transcript of a talk by Sanjay Joshi and Ellen Quigley on how to improve ESG investing
- 80,000 Hours podcast with Nina Schick on disinformation and synthetic media
- Stefan Schubert and Judith Lichtenberg debating the benefits of effective altruism
- The Global Priorities Institute has an essay prize inviting submissions on topics in global priorities research from philosophy graduate students
- Spencer Greenberg talking to Julia Galef about her new book - The Scout Mindset
- 80,000 Hours podcast with Mike Berkowitz on keeping the U.S. a liberal democratic country
- Abby Hoskin asking 'What are the highest impact questions in the behavioural sciences?'
- Clearer Thinking are looking for ideas for their second annual micro grants program, with a chance to win $595, closing May 17th
- A paper measuring news and its impact on democracy in America, suggesting that fake news is maybe a smaller issue than previously thought
- Vaidehi Agarwalla sharing her outlook on discovering EA
- Rutger Bregman, Dutch historian and author, has taken the Giving What We Can Pledge
Good News
- Cote d’Ivoire has eliminated sleeping sickness as a public health problem
- Executions were down last year by 36% compared to 2019