EA UK April 2024
Novo Nordisk, Open Phil updates and shutting down MHI
This month I wanted to highlight an overlooked organisation that is having a large impact in the world - Novo Nordisk. They are most well known for their weight loss drug Wegovy and diabetes drug Ozempic, which has been shown to lower the risk of kidney disease progression, major cardiac events and death by 24% in diabetic patients.
They also have the world’s largest foundation - The Novo Nordisk Foundation, with an endowment of nearly $120 billion (compared to the Gates Foundation with ~$70b). They focus on biomedicine, cardiometabolic diseases, epidemic preparedness, agriculture, climate and the life science ecosystem.
Most recently they are collaborating with NVIDIA and the Danish government to build an AI supercomputer aiming to accelerate breakthroughs in healthcare.
I think it’s useful for people to be aware of the institutions that are having a large impact on the world but may not be in the headlines or highlighted as an ‘EA’ career.
Upcoming Events
If you're interested in hearing about events each week check out our events page.
London
29th March - Fish Welfare Initiative and Impactful Animal Advocacy
30th March - Estimation Game Social
2nd April - When Will We Have Infinite Energy? - Future House
6th April - EA Animals: Vegan Picnic
7th April - EA London Quarterly Review Coworking Q2 FY24
15th April - Routes to Impact in Policy
25th April - ESG/Impact Investing Meetup - contact david@eafinance.org
30th April - Is the risk of nuclear war increasing? - LSE
May/June 2024 - EA Global: London
3rd June - AI, Animals, and Digital Minds Conference and retreat
For social events there is the EA London Social Facebook group and WhatsApp groups
UK
12-14th April - Vegan & Animal Rights Conference - Manchester
16th May - Atkinson Memorial Lecture 2024 - Daron Acemoglu - Oxford
12th June - Parfit Memorial Lecture 2024 - Theron Pummer - Oxford
12-14th June - 14th Oxford Workshop on Global Priorities Research - Apply by 1st April
June/October - EA for Christians Retreat - Interest form (Oxford/Cambridge)
Virtual
2nd April - A Day in the Life of an Alt.Protein Supply Chain Manager - Talist
25th April - Think like a consultant: How to maximise your ROI on charitable impact - One for the World
29th April - 23rd June - Introductory EA Program - Apply by April 7th
29th April - 23rd June - In-Depth EA Program - Apply by April 7th
2nd May - GWWC Online:May
27th May - 14th July - The Precipice Reading Group - Apply by May 5th
Conferences
26-28th April EAGxNordics
31st May - 2nd June - EAG: London
5th-7th July - EAGxUtrecht
13-15th September - EAGxBerlin
1st-3rd November - EAG Boston
Community News
If you wanted to get an overview of EA in the UK and ways to get involved you can sign up for a 1-1 here, there is also a community directory of people happy to chat
John Michael Bridge on the one year anniversary of committing to giving 10%
Hugo Inglis with High Impact Athletes kicking off a collaboration with the Institute of Sport Business
Hugo from HIA Rob Miles on the AGI show with Soroush Pour
James Newport - Behaviours: Making Effective Applications to the Civil Service
Latest Jobs
If you want to discuss your career options with someone from EA UK, you can sign up here.
Global Development
Global Innovation Fund - Senior Managing Director, Impact - 29th March
Center for Global Development - Policy Analyst, Global Education - 2nd April
Malaria Consortium
Research Project Manager - 3rd April
Head of System Implementation - 14th April
Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office - Non-Executive Director (20 days per year) - 8th April
Fortify Health - Summer Internship - 15th April
ODI - Fellowship Scheme - 30th April
The Global Prosperity Institute - Fellowship Programme - 1 or 2 year positions helping grow dynamic small businesses in Tanzania - 30th April
GiveWell (London/Remote)
One For The World - Executive Director
Family Empowerment Media
Gates Foundation - Senior Program Officer, Credit Usage
Animal Welfare
The Insect Institute - Program Coordinator/Program Officer - 1st April
Compassion in World Farming - Corporate Outreach Manager (Food Business) - 4th April
The Humane League - Operations Administrator - 14th April
Biosecurity
The Nuffield Council of Bioethics
Governing Board Member (4/5 days a year)
Chair of the Governing Board (7/8 days a year)
BlueDot Impact - Biosecurity Specialist
Emerging Technology
DeepMind - AI Policy Researcher & Analyst - 2nd April
Department for Science, Innovation & Technology
International AI Policy Team Leader - 7th April
Policy Adviser - Cyber Security of AI - 7th April
AI Safety Institute
Statistical and Evaluation Analyst - 7th April
Research Engineer - Evaluations - 28th August
Senior Research Scientist for Foundational AI Safety 28th August
Research Scientist - Evaluations - 28th August
Control/AI
Policy Manager - 7th April
Senior Policy Analyst - 7th April
The Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence - Assistant Professor in the Policy or Law of AI, Data and Algorithms - Cambridge - 11th April
Epoch - Software Engineer - 13th April
ML Alignment & Theory Scholars - Program Generalist
Nvidia - Senior Silicon Security Architect
Atla - Alignment Research Engineer
Evals Research Scientist
Research Engineer
Research Lead
China Talk - China + AI Analyst
BlueDot Impact - AI Safety Specialist (Technical)
Schmidt Futures - Program Scientist, AI2050
Anthropic
Research Engineer, Alignment Science
Risk Management, Compliance
Research Engineer, Model Evaluations
OpenAI - Backend Engineer, Evals & Understanding
Meta EA
Centre for Effective Altruism - Project Manager - 8th April
Open Philanthropy - Finance Operations Coordinator - 7th April
Charity Entrepreneurship - Director of Outreach
80,000 Hours - Expressions of interest
Other
The Nuffield Foundation - Chief Executive Officer - 8th April
Ambitious Impact - Combined Application - combined application - charity entrepreneurship, research and for-profit programs - 14th April
Social Change Lab - Research and Communications Officer - 21st April
Longview Philanthropy - HR Director
Novo Nordisk (London/UK office)
Epidemiologist
Head of Department - Real World Science
Data Scientists
Finance Partner
Fellowships & Programs
Cambridge ERA:AI 2024 Summer Fellowship - 5th April
UN Youth for Biosecurity Fellowship - 5th April
AIM - Founding to Give - 14th April
The EU Tech Policy Fellowship - 21st April
Newspeak House - Introduction to Political Technology
Latest Research and Updates
Top Posts
Open Philanthropy - Our Progress in 2023 and Plans for 2024
Ben Williamson & Sarah Eustis-Guthrie - Maternal Health Initiative is Shutting Down
Richard Y Chappell - EA "Worldviews" Need Rethinking
GWWC asking Londoners how rich they think they were compared to the rest of the world
Meta
Sarah Weiler - Critique of the notion that impact follows a power-law distribution
Nuño Sempere - Unflattering aspects of Effective Altruism
Teddy Schleifer - Dustin Moskovitz, EA, his meeting with Joe Biden, plans for the 2024 election, and his beef with Marc Andreessen over AI
Videos on the world’s most pressing problems, by 80,000 Hours
The Wytham Abbey Project is closing
A spreadsheet breakdown of Open Philanthropy grants to date
Effective Giving
Charity Navigator rethinking the focus on overheads
Effective Long-term Sadaqah (Islamic Charity)
Kevin Starr - Trust-based philanthropy shouldn’t mean blind faith
TLYCS have updated their charity evaluation framework and cause funds
Careers
James Newport - Civil Service Career Strategy: Rise or Specialise
EA Consulting Network - Navigating Value Drift as a High-Income Professional
Joris P - Personal fit is different from the thing that you already like
Michel - I’m glad I joined an experienced, 20+ person organisation
Jess Smith - Writing about my job: Operations Specialist
Grants
Open Philanthropy added 46 grants for $94m to their database
$45.8m - Global Health & Development
$20m - International Rescue Committee – Treatment of Malnutrition (2021)
$4m - Kyoto University - Reproductive Biology Research
$21.9m - Global Catastrophic Risks Capacity Building
$10m - Effective Altruism Funds
$3.1m - Global Priorities Institute
$20m - Animal Welfare
$13.2m - Anima International
$4.4m - Potential Risks from Advanced AI
$2.9m - Massachusetts Institute of Technology — AI Trends and Impacts Research
$1.1m - Innovation Policy
$870k - Land Use Reform
Global Development
For more in depth updates I also write the Global Development & EA newsletter.
US Congress agrees to fund global anti-HIV program PEPFAR
GiveWell - What we fund, #1: We fund many opportunities outside our top charities
Sophie Gulliver and Tom Drake - The $1 Trillion Paradox: Why Reforming Research Publishing Should Be a Global Priority
Max Roser - Why is improving agricultural productivity crucial to ending global hunger and protecting the world’s wildlife?
The World Happiness Report was released
UNICEF have released the latest data on under-five child mortality - The annual number of under-five deaths has fallen to 4.9 million in 2022. The report reveals that more children are surviving today than ever before, with the global under-5 mortality rate declining by 51 per cent since 2000.
Visualisation of under-five deaths by country 2022, figures rounded to nearest 10,000
Animal Welfare
For more comprehensive animal news I recommend Impactful Animal Advocacy.
How I Learned to Love Shrimp podcast with Jayasimha Nuggehalli
Ask Me Anything with Animal Charity Evaluators
Virginie Simoneau-Gilbert & Jonathan Birch - The dangers of AI farming
Tälist have relaunched AltProtein.Jobs to help people find career opportunities
Peter Singer has released a documentary presenting the life and legacy of the animal rights activist Henry Spira
Julia Wise - Stories from the origins of the animal welfare movement
Global Catastrophic Risks
Vasco Grilo - Supervolcanoes tail risk has been exaggerated?
Haydn Belfield - What Oppenheimer gets right and wrong about the threat of nuclear weapons
80,000 Hours - Christian Ruhl on why we’re entering a new nuclear age - and how to reduce the risks
Rumtin Sepasspour & Courtney Tee - To prevent global catastrophe, governments must first admit there’s a problem
Biosecurity
GCBR Organisation Updates - my recommendation for updates on biosecurity
GCBR updates from 1Day Sooner, Blueprint Biosecurity, CLTR, CSR, Effective Giving, IFP, CHS, SecureBio and UNIDIR
CLTR - How the UK Government should address the misuse risk from AI-enabled biological tools
Tim Hwang - Progress Deferred: Lessons From mRNA Vaccine Development
The Pathogens Project - A Framework for Tomorrow's Pathogen Research
Nature - Could AI-designed proteins be weaponised? Scientists lay out safety guidelines
Environment
Giving Green's 2023 impact report - influenced ~$11.2m, up from $3m in 2022
The CO2 Emissions in 2023 report finds an increase of 1.1% in emissions
Vaclav Smil - Halfway Between Kyoto and 2050: Zero Carbon Is a Highly Unlikely Outcome
US electrical grid planners have doubled their forecast for how much more power will be needed in the next five years
Our World in Data - More people care about climate change than you think
AI Safety
For more regular updates I recommend the AI Safety Newsletter.
Dylan Matthews - Why can’t anyone agree on how dangerous AI will be?
Alex Turner - Many arguments for AI x-risk are wrong
FLI Podcast - Katja Grace on the Largest Survey of AI Researchers
The risks of expanding the definition of ‘AI safety’
Eric Drexler [with a new substack] - How to harness powerful AI
Chi - AI things that are perhaps as important as human-controlled AI
Zershaaneh Qureshi - Timelines to Transformative AI: an investigation
Adam Gleave - More people getting into AI safety should do a PhD
Hear This Idea podcast - Joe Carlsmith on Scheming AI
AI Governance
GovAI - Goals for the Second AI Safety Summit
Bill Anderson-Samways - Responsible Scaling: Comparing Government Guidance and Company Policy
Time - US Must Move ‘Decisively’ to Avert ‘Extinction-Level’ Threat From AI, Government-Commissioned Report Says
AI in China
China Talk - Matt Clifford: AI Policy + China Competition
AI Safety in China - Foreign Minister on global AI governance, state-backed think tank on AI x bio and high-level government attention to AI
FAR AI - Leading global AI scientists met in Beijing for the second International Dialogue on AI Safety
AI & Growth
NBER - Scenarios for the Transition to AGI [outputs and wages]
Dylan Matthews - How AI could explode the economy
Progress, Innovation & Metascience
Vital City magazine on the prospects for evidence-based policymaking, with articles from Jennifer Doleac, Alex Tabarrok and John Arnold
Innovation Growth Lab - Unpicking the productivity puzzle – What have we learnt from the UK’s Business Basics Programme?
Stuart Buck - When funding agencies ask for high-impact research, that can be the very thing that prevents high-impact research
Google launched a global competition to find real-world use cases for quantum computing with a $5m prize
Biotech
Beyond Steel Tanks - How can Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly scale production of their weight loss drugs
José Luis Ricón - Making Cells Young
80,000 Hours with Laura Deming on the science that could keep us healthy in our 80s and beyond
Longtermism
Nick Bostrom’s new book, “Deep Utopia”, has been released
The William Temple Foundation Podcast with episodes including Richard Fisher on deep time and Cecil Abungu on longtermism and african perspectives
Will Aldred - Long Reflection Reading List
Christianity and Longtermism workshop in DC on May 17
Summary: Longtermism, Aggregation, and Catastrophic Risk (Emma J. Curran)
Forecasting
Molly Hickman - How Not To Predict The Future
Podcast: Is Forecasting a Promising EA Cause Area?
Open Nuclear Network held a workshop aimed at forecasting the developments in North Korea's nuclear programmes
Approaching Human-Level Forecasting with Language Models
Other Causes
Arden Koehler - Particularly neglected causes you could work on
Rhodri Davies - Philanthropy and the Quest for Eternal Life
Statista - Worldwide Decline of Freedom Outweighs Improvements
Podcast with Jeff Sebo - Should we widen our moral circles to include animals, insects, and AIs?
Stories & EA Around the World
Graham Nelson - Sitting down with the Hankook-ilbo this week to discuss AMF Korea and our hopes to enlist the generosity of the Korean people
Lotte G - There and back again: reflections from leaving EA (and returning)
Joris P - Ways in which I’m not living up to my EA values
Bella - Killing the moths
Other Links
James Özden - How can activists understand if their tactics are working?
Wired interview with Elie Hassenfeld on GiveWell
Lizka - Focusing on bad criticism is dangerous to your epistemics
Jamie B - How Educational Courses Help Build Fields: Lessons from AI Safety Fundamentals
Michelle Hutchinson - Friendship as a sacred value
Peter Singer has started a Substack - Bold Reasoning
Good News
The Atlantic - The cystic-fibrosis breakthrough - In the 2000s patients could expect to survive to 35. Today, with new treatments, they can expect to survive to 82.5
Maharashtra sees 11% drop in child mortality in 4 years
The maternal mortality ratio in Nepal has declined from 536 per 100,000 live births in 1996 to 151 by 2021