EA UK March 2024
Rebrands, helping individuals and new AI institutes
Charity Entrepreneurship are rebranding to Ambitious Impact (AIM) - given that they now have programs focused on research, grantmaking, for-profit incubation and effective giving as well as the original charity incubation the new name seems like a better fit.
They also have a combined application (April 14th deadline) where you can fill out one form to apply for their charity entrepreneurship, research and for-profit programs at the same time.
Read on for events, jobs and news.
Upcoming Events
If you're interested in hearing about events each week check out our events page.
London
6th March - Global Development Professionals Meetup - brainstorming charity ideas - contact david@effectivealtruism.uk
9th March - AI governance research sprint - SAIL
14th March - AI Governance Talks: UK's Approach to AI Regulation
18th March - Finance for Good
19th March - The politics and philosophy of AI - with Geoffrey Hinton - LSE event
26th March - AI for Good, with speakers from Isomorphic and the BBC
27th March - EA & Tech London March Meetup: Lightning Talks
Late March - Animal Meetup - details will be posted here
7th April - EA London Quarterly Review Coworking Q2 FY24
April - EAGxLondon - Potentially in early April
May/June 2024 - EA Global: London
For social events there is the EA London Social Facebook group and WhatsApp groups
UK
1st March - Matt Clifford on Al and Power - Cambridge
4th March - Dr Walter Veit: The Evolution of Sentience and Its Implications for Altruists - Oxford
15th March - The Global Politics of AI: AI analogies on the international stage - Cambridge
19th March - Existential risk dialogues - Cambridge
Virtual
2nd March - GWWC Online: Doing More Good Together
6th March - What are the effects of disruptive animal rights protest? - Social Change Lab
7th March - Aim for a career that matters - AIM, with Joey Savoie
12th March - Cell Ag UK Student Conference
14th March - Ask GFI: Alt Protein Careers
14th March - Our Top Charity Ideas in Global Health and Development - AIM
1st April - 26th May - Introductory EA Program - Apply by 10th March
1st April - 26th May - In-Depth EA Program - Apply by 10th March
27th May - 14th July - The Precipice Reading Group - Apply by May 5th
Conferences
13th-14th April - EAGxAustin
26-28th April EAGxNordics
18th-19th May - EA for Christians Conference in D.C.
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
Jenny Chapman - Understanding nuance in the “ultra-processed food” debate to build acceptance and trust of plant-based meat
Ben Yeoh interviewing Hannah Ritchie on her new book ‘Not The End of The World’
Announcing the London Initiative for Safe AI
Podcast with Lauren Mee on the career landscape for helping animals
Nikita Patel reflecting on her last 6 and a half years at Fortify Health as she steps down
Maryam Ali Khan - More Welfare, Less Suffering - Can framing shape our understanding of moral concern?
James Özden - My lifelong pledge to give away 10% of my income each year (and where I donated in 2023)
Toby Jolly - "No-one in my org puts money in their pension"...and other stories about the end of the world
Milan Juza - Why you should consider giving more of your money away effectively and why you should talk about it
An interview with Klau Chmielowska, co-founder and co-executive director of Lafiya Nigeria
The Economist looking at how Lawrence Newport helped reduce the danger from Britain’s most violent dog breed
Alex Davidson interviewing Anders Sandberg, discussing whole brain emulation
Latest Jobs
If you want to discuss your career options with someone from EA UK, you can sign up here.
Global Development
Department of CS, Oxford - RA in Computational Statistics and ML - to work at the intersection of ML and global health - 8th March
The Center for Global Development - Senior Fellow - Migration - 16th March
GiveWell
One For The World - Executive Director
LEEP - Program Manager
Animal Welfare
Animal Equality - Campaigns Officer
Compassion in World Farming International - Direct Marketing Fundraising Officer - 8th March
Crustacean Compassion - Campaign Coordinator - 13th March
Anima International
Global Campaign Manager - 17th March
Global Growth Manager - 17th March
Global Catastrophic Risks
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations
Executive Director Vaccine Research and Development - 3rd March
Head of Epidemiology and Preparedness - 10th March
Ministry of Defence - Defence Nuclear Security Opportunities - 4th March
Open Philanthropy - Summer Internships - Global Catastrophic Risks - 4th March
The Centre for Long-Term Resilience
Biosecurity Policy Adviser - 8th March
Temporary Operations Contractor - 10th March
Operations Associate - 10th March
BlueDot Impact - Biosecurity Specialist
Emerging Technology
AI Safety Institute - Head of Protocols Team - 3rd March
Existential Risk Alliance - 15th March
AI Safety Technical Lead
AI Governance Research Manager
Operations
GovAI
Operations Associate - 6th March
Research Management Associate - 10th March
Policy Team Project Manager - 17th March
Research Scholar (Special Projects) - 17th March
Research Scholar (US Policy) - 17th March
Research Scholar (Technical Research) - 17th March
Research Scholar (General) - 17th March
ARIA - Technical Specialist - AI / Generalist - 18th March
Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative - Postdoctoral Researcher - 22nd March
Nuffield College, Oxford - Research Engineer, Talking to Machines Project - 31st March
The Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence - Assistant Professor in the Policy or Law of AI, Data and Algorithms - Cambridge - 11th April
Nvidia - Senior Silicon Security Architect
Atla - Alignment Research Engineer
University of York - Research Associate - AI Safety Assurance
Evals Research Scientist
Research Engineer
Research Lead
China Talk - China + AI Analyst
BlueDot Impact - AI Safety Specialist (Technical)
The Center on Long-term Risk - Director of Operations
Schmidt Futures - Program Scientist, AI2050
Anthropic
Research Engineer, Alignment Science
Risk Management, Compliance
Research Engineer, Model Evaluations
DeepMind - Responsibility Product Manager
Inflection - Member of Technical Staff, Safety
OpenAI - Backend Engineer, Evals & Understanding
Meta EA
Giving What We Can - Researcher - 2nd March
80,000 Hours - 24th March
People Operations Specialists
Business Operations Specialists
Centre for Effective Altruism
Head of Communications - 22nd March
Recruiting Specialist - 3rd April
Charity Entrepreneurship - Director of Outreach
EA Funds - Operations Associate
Other
The International Institute for Strategic Studies - Research Associate, China Programme -1st March
Ambitious Impact - Combined Application
Our World in Data - Junior Data Scientist - 17th March
Deep Science Ventures
Commercial Associate, Climate
Founder In Residence, Atmospheric Methane Removal
Founder in Residence, Preventing Methane Emissions from Natural Sources
Say No To Disinfo - Disinformation Research Volunteer
Fellowships & Programs
AI Governance Course - Run by BlueDot Impact - 12th March
EA and Judaism Intro Fellowship - 17th March
The Center on Long-Term Risk - Summer Research Fellows - 7th March
High Impact Professionals - Impact Accelerator Program - 3rd March
Latest Research and Updates
Top Posts
Nick Laing - Can we help individual people cost-effectively? Our trial with three sick kids
Dustin Moskovitz - The Long Journey to Doing Good Better
Lewis Bollard - This is why we can’t have nice laws
There is a new animal advocacy forum
Head of TED Chris Anderson signs new “Wealth Pledge” to give 2.5% of wealth to high-impact charities each year
Garrison - Sam Altman’s Chip Ambitions Undercut OpenAI’s Safety Strategy
International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science has been launched by NTI
Meta
80,000 Hours - Our new series on building skills
Kelsey Piper - Can effective altruism stay effective?
Alexandra Bos - Deciding What Project/Org to Start: A Guide to Prioritisation Research
EA Forum with threads on people looking to be hired and organisations hiring
EA in Arabic has been launched
Jessica Wen - An Analysis of Engineering Jobs on the 80,000 Hours Job Board
Rockwell - Meta EA Regional Organizations (MEAROs): An Introduction
How we started our own EA charity (and why we decided to wrap up)
Meta Charity Funders: Launching the 2nd round
Announcing the EA Forum Draft Amnesty Week (March 11th-17th)
Effective Giving
GWWC - Comparing charities: How big is the difference?
Seeking applicants and funders for the Mental Health Funding Circle - March 31st
Effective Giving Belgium has been set up - Effectief Geven
Introducing the Effektiv Spenden "Defending Democracy" fund
Marcus Abramovitch - My Donations 2023
Organisation Updates
Announcing Niel Bowerman as the next CEO of 80,000 Hours
Upcoming changes to the EV US and EV UK leadership teams
EA infrastructure projects ongoing in 2024
New Open Philanthropy Grantmaking Program: Forecasting
Grants
Open Philanthropy have made 46 grants recently for $74m
$22.7m - Global Health & Development
$9.2m - Evidence Action - Iron and Folic Acid Supplementation in India
$3.6m - International Vaccine Institute - Strep A Vaccine Global Consortium
$2.2m - University of Bonn - Influenza Drug Development
$17.3m - Global Catastrophic Risks Capacity Building
$11m - Centre for Effective Altruism
$2.3m - Effective Ventures Foundation USA
$1.5m - BlueDot Impact
$16m - Potential Risks from Advanced AI
$10.5m - RAND Corporation - Emerging Technology Initiatives
$1.2m - SERI MATS 4.0
$840k - Owain Evans Research Group - AI Evaluations Research
$12m - Farm Animal Welfare
$5.3m - The Good Food Institute
$1.9m - FAI Farms - Tilapia and Shrimp Welfare Reforms
$890k - HSI - Farm Animal Welfare in Southeast Asia
$4m - Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness
$2.3m - Exscientia - Agonists for Interferon Lambda
$1m - Eradivir - Influenza Antiviral Drug
$2.1m - Land Use Reform
$2m - Open New York
ACX Grants - $1.3m on 33 grants
$100k - Kurtis Lockhart, to help build a campus for the African School of Economics in Fumba, Zanzibar
$100k - 1DaySooner
$100k - Robert Yaman, for Innovate Animal Ag
Global Development
For more in depth updates I also write the Global Development & EA newsletter.
Max Roser - The global fight against polio - how far have we come?
Podcast with Kartik Akileswaran and Jonathan Mazumdar on Growth Teams and structural transformation
Unacknowledged problems with anti-malaria bed nets are causing a rise in malaria
Jason Wendle - Betting on Migration for Impact
Open Philanthropy - Social science research we'd like to see on global health and wellbeing
Karthik Tadepalli - Labor markets in LMICs
From salt intake reduction to labor migration: Announcing top ideas for the AIM 2024 CE Incubation Program
Dylan Scott - From Gaza to Sudan, conflict is driving a rise in hunger worldwide
Animal Welfare
For more comprehensive animal news I recommend Impactful Animal Advocacy.
Short agony or long ache: comparing sources of suffering that differ in duration and intensity
6 new projects selected for research grants from Wild Animal Initiative
Social Change Lab - What are the short and long-term effects of disruptive animal rights protest?
Moritz Stumpe & Aashish Khimasia - Charity Evaluation: Animal Advocacy Careers
Animal Charity Evaluators - Movement Grant applications are now open
Animal Think Tank have launched a new newsletter
Zuzana Sperlova & Moritz Stumpe - Exploring Corporate Campaigns Against Silk Retailers
Norway's fish farms are using more vegetarian feed for their salmon
Animal Advocacy in Africa
Aashish Khimasia - Slowing down factory farming in Sub Saharan Africa
Animal Advocacy Africa’s 2023 Review and Plans for 2024
Farmed animal funding towards Africa is growing but remains highly neglected
Alternative Proteins
Podcast with Simon Newstead on developing alternatives to animal protein
UK government invests £12m in fermentation hub for alternative proteins
Biosecurity
GCBR Organisation Updates - my recommendation for updates on biosecurity
Jesse Smith - Lies, Damned Lies, and Manometer Readings - Interventions in indoor air quality are the next frontier in pandemic prevention - but are they up to the task?
OpenAI - Building an early warning system for LLM-aided biological threat creation
80,000 Hours - Anonymous answers - What are the biggest misconceptions about biosecurity and pandemic risk?
Devex - There are barely any therapeutics, vaccines, and diagnostics in the clinical pipeline for diseases with pandemic potential
Nuclear Safety
ALLFED - Seaweed as a Resilient Food Solution After a Nuclear War
Clearer Thinking podcast - The alternate histories and possible futures of nuclear weapons with Carl Robichaud
80,000 Hours - Why you might not want to work on nuclear disarmament (and what to work on instead)
Vasco Grillo - Nuclear war tail risk has been exaggerated?
Environment
Nat Bullard annual presentation on the state of decarbonisation told with climate, capital markets, technology and sector data
How is satellite data changing the way we track greenhouse gas emissions?
Hannah Ritchie - Global energy demand could be lower in 2050, despite the world getting richer
Rachel Glennerster & Seema Jayachandran - Rich Countries Should Increase Their Spending on Green Projects in Poor Countries
How India electrified 45% of its railway network in five years
World’s first major green steel project gets $5B in funding
AI Safety
For more regular updates I recommend the AI Safety Newsletter.
Seb Krier with a seven-part series focused on questions of responsibility, accountability, and control in a pre-AGI world
Kelsey Piper - Should we make our most powerful AI models open source to all?
The Institute for Law & AI has been launched
Vael Gates - Offering AI safety support calls for ML professionals
Nora Belrose - Counting arguments provide no evidence for AI doom
Seth Lazar - Can philosophy help us get a grip on generative agents?
David Thorstad - Against the singularity hypothesis (Part 3: Further doubts)
Gabriel Weil - Tort Law Can Play an Important Role in Mitigating AI Risk
AI Governance
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Mike Johnson and Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries launched a bipartisan Task Force on AI
Key executive leadership announced for the U.S. AI Safety Institute
AI Safety Institute: third progress report
GovAI - Computing Power and the Governance of AI
Japan launches AI safety institute
AISN covering investments in compute and military AI
A new proposed AI bill in California which requires frontier AI developers to adopt safety and security protocols
Christian Ruhl & Stephen Clare - Great Power Competition and Transformative Technologies
James Newport - Interested in a high-impact role in AI safety? The UK Government could be the place for you!
Connor Axiotes - OpenAI's Politics
Unesco have launched the Global AI Ethics and Governance Observatory
AI Communication
Azeem Azhar - Existential risks’ existential problem
Garrison - My cover story in Jacobin on AI capitalism and the x-risk debates
Harry Law - The marginal risk of AI
Clearer Thinking podcast with Geoffrey Irving on how can AIs know what we want if *we* don't even know?
Matthew Barnet - I'm curious why there hasn't been more work exploring a pro-AI or pro-AI-acceleration position from an EA perspective
Samuel Hammond - Effective Accelerationism and the future of humanity
Nathan Benaich - The State of The State of AI Report
Improving Institutions
Michael Story on making useful forecasts
The Observatory - Can the EU Maintain Consensus on the Green Deal, and other institution updates
Mark Lutter - The Increasing importance of coordination
The University of Bern has launched a program, backed by 250,000 Swiss francs, to pay reviewers to root out mistakes in papers, starting with psychology
Experimentation is more popular than you might think with the public (with clear majorities over implement/don’t implement specific policies)
Progress, Innovation & Metascience
Accelerator For Innovation & Research Funding Experimentation is a new collaboration aiming to boost institutional capacity for experiments with funding
An overview of the Research on Research Institute consortium annual meeting
Stuart Buck - Why Are We Screwing Over Researchers Who Make Innovative Discoveries? - the University of Pennsylvania has made $1.2 billion in royalties from patents on Katalin Karikó’s work after forcing her out
Stuart Buck - The Value of Stability in Scientific Funding, and Why We Need Better Data
Matt Clancy - Boosting innovation by teaching people to be tech entrepreneurs?
Jessica Wen & Hugh Irving - How Engineers can Contribute to Progress Studies
Jason Crawford - Making every researcher seek grants is a broken model
The Center for Open Science and NASA are hosting an online conference in March to showcase the outcomes and ongoing work
Longtermism
Future of Life Institute - Open letter calling on world leaders to show long-view leadership on existential threats
Devex - Time is short to come up with a worthwhile outcome "pact" for UN Summit of The Future
The Case for Animal-Inclusive Longtermism
Christianity and Longtermism workshop in DC on May 17
Other Causes
Dan Williams - Should we trust misinformation experts to decide what counts as misinformation?
80,000 Hours - Hugo Mercier on why gullibility and misinformation are overrated
Vitalik Buterin - The promise and challenges of crypto + AI applications
Alexander Loewi - Critical Failures in the World Happiness Report's Model of National Satisfaction
Chi - Complexity of value but not disvalue implies more focus on s-risk. Moral uncertainty and preference utilitarianism also do
Lupus trigger discovered
80,000 Hours - Randy Nesse on why evolution left us so vulnerable to depression and anxiety
A new study has discovered a single human antibody that protects against venom from numerous dangerous snakes
Vox - How the US is preparing to fight a war in space
The Economist - Where democracy is most at risk
Hear This Idea with Eric Schwitzgebel discussing digital consciousness
Spikes in air pollution may increase suicide risk
80,000 Hours - Emily Oster on what the evidence actually says about pregnancy and parenting
Small startup takes the AI weather prediction crown
Nate Pelz - A Mental Model for Good Cybersecurity
Jason Hausenloy & Duncan McClements - Too few people donate their organs, dead or alive. How can we make it easier to donate, but avoid the abuses that some fear from cash payments?
Natália Coelho Mendonça - The promise of SGLT2 inhibitors (reducing diabetes, heart disease and kidney disease)
Stories & EA Around the World
Michelle Hutchinson - On being an EA for decades
Frances Lorenz - How the idea of "doing good better" makes me feel
Maggie Casas on driving change through digital marketing
Julia Wise - Raising children on the eve of AI
Caitlin Borke - Looking for: songs or art that inspire EA values
EA Brazil with a meetup at EAGxLatAM
Barbara Kayondo kicking off EA MUBS second introductory fellowship
EA MUBS fellowship participants
Other Links
80,000 Hours - After Hours podcast - Bean Counting with Chana Messinger
Dylan Matthews - Why would anyone be against lifesaving malaria bed nets?
Toby Tremlett - Tragic Beliefs
Julia Wise - Things to check about a job or internship
A Special Issue on EA in the Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy
Good News
13 cases of guinea worm reported in 2023 – Lowest level since the eradication campaign began
WHO - Great Progress Made in Eliminating Trans Fat - From 6% protected 5 years ago to 46% of the world's population today - expecting to save 183,000 lives every year
Guyana reports decline in filaria, leprosy and TB cases
Cambodia on track to eradicate malaria by 2025