Upcoming Virtual Events
- 30th November - International Effective Giving Day with talks from Michael Kremer, Johannes Ackva, Leah Edgerton and Neil Buddy Shah
- 30th November - Working as an AI Strategist with Miles Brundage from OpenAI and The Future of Humanity Institute
- 2nd December - Career Profile - Daniela Amodei from OpenAI
- 6th December - Giving What We Can meetup
- December - Giving What We Can pledge drive for 2020
Meta
- The 2020 Effective Altruism Survey just opened. If you’re interested in EA, it’s useful to fill out to get a sense of how the community is changing over time
- There is a new network for people working in healthcare and interested in effective altruism
- A new career advising organisation has been set up to cover areas neglected by 80,000 Hours and Animal Advocacy Careers
- 80,000 Hours have released an updated career guide
- Thoughts on the benefits and drawbacks of the EA Donor Lottery
- Rethink Priorities with their 2020 overview and plans for 2021
- EA Organisation updates for October
- A post looking at what EA Brazil has been up to
- A post introducing Ayuda Efectiva, an organisation that makes effective giving easily accessible for donors in Spain
- Giving Tuesday will be on December the 1st, find out how to get your donation doubled here
- Kuhan writing about an alternative to running a charity fundraiser on your birthday
- 80,000 Hours podcast with Benjamin Todd on what the effective altruism community most needs
- EA Oxford are running an in depth fellowship, find out more here
- Post on the EA forum asking where people are donating this year and why
- Open Philanthropy staff have written up their suggestions for individual donors here
Grants
- Open Phil have made 17 grants recently with a total value of $15,869,000
- $10,6375,000 - Scientific research
- $6,500,000 - COVID-19 Vaccine Development
- $3,175,000 - Malaria Prevention Research
- $4,280,000 - Farm animal welfare
- $3,600,000 - Open Wing Alliance
- $630,000 - Criminal justice reform
- $308,000 - Potential risks from advanced AI
- $275,000 - Global health & development
- $10,6375,000 - Scientific research
- Animal Charity Evaluators funded 23 projects with a total value of $289,745
Global Development
- GiveWell with their giving recommendations for 2020
- Founders Pledge with an overview of how individual donors fit into the larger development landscape
- Happier Lives Institute with research on the effect of cash transfers on subjective well-being and mental health
- The Gates Foundation on why they invest in innovation
- An article looking at research gaps in global health
- Reflections from seven years of research in J-PAL’s Post-Primary Education Initiative
- An article looking at why large NGOs don't tend to scale up external solutions
- Our World in Data with a post looking at how pandemics allow us to understand why our ancestors lived in poverty
Animal Welfare
- Animal Charity Evaluators with their giving recommendations for 2020
- Animal Advocacy Careers with a new job board
- Jason Schukraft with research looking into the intensity of valenced experience across species
- Lewis Bollard with a talk on doing the most good for animals post-COVID-19
- Faunalytics looking at animal welfare in academia
Existential & Catastrophic Risks
- The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk with a report on promoting epistemic security in a technologically-advanced world
- Toby Ord writing in the Economist on future risks
- The Global Catastrophic Risks Institute with an overview of their work in 2020 and plans for 2021
- ALLFED with a review of their work in 2020
- A post looking at risks from autonomous weapons
- The New Yorker covering Toby Ord on existential risks
Environment
- Giving Green has been re-launched, a new initiative incubated at IDinsight that aims to guide donations towards evidence-backed climate change projects
- A look into how Jeff Bezos is using his $10,000,000,000 Earth Fund
- A paper critiquing EA and it's perceived support of offsetting and geoengineering
Long Term Future
- A review of the Future of Humanity Institute's summer research fellowship 2020
- A response to the Will MacAskill post; "Are we living at the most influential time in history?"
- Tobias Baumann looking at the intersection of animal advocacy and longtermism
Emerging Technology
- EA Global talk from Chongli Qin on ensuring safety and consistency in the age of machine learning
- UK Research and Innovation has invested £33,000,000 launching six new research projects to tackle challenges to the development of trustworthy autonomous systems
Other Links
- Lynette Bye with a post on being being productive with chronic health conditions
- A post on the forum asking "What quotes do you find most inspire you to use your resources to help others?"
- New research suggesting that behavioural nudges fail more often than reported
- Happier Lives Institute with a report into the problem area of pain
- There is a new organisation funding 15-17 years olds anywhere in the world who are interested in improving the world
- The Organisation for the Prevention of Intense Suffering with a policy paper on legalising access to psilocybin for the treatment of cluster headaches
- Effective altruism from an anarchist perspective
- Aaron Gertler donating $10,000 after getting to the final two in a Magic: The Gathering tournament
- CSER with a comic version of their Bioengineering Horizon Scan 2020 journal article
- Sophia Cheng, Allan Saldanha and Matthew Allcock in 'The i' newspaper discussing why they have taken the Giving What We Can pledge
- Nicole Ross on being in a cycle of desperation, inadequacy and burn out
Good News
- There has been a large decline in the number of people with lymphatic filariasis, a neglected tropical disease. From ~200 million people in 2000 to ~50 million people in 2018
- Cambodia is closer to eradicating Malaria with a 70% reduction in cases this year compared to last year
- The Global Terrorism Index reports that deaths from terrorism have reached a five year low
- The UAE government has updated its legal system, with progressive changes to personal and civil laws