Quick takes

EA Awards 1. I feel worried that the ratio of the amount of criticism that one gets for doing EA stuff to the amount of positive feedback one gets is too high 2. Awards are a standard way to counteract this 3. I would like to explore having some sort of awards thingy 4. I currently feel most excited about something like: a small group of people solicit nominations and then choose a short list of people to be voted on by Forum members, and then the winners are presented at a session at EAG BA 5. I would appreciate feedback on: 1. whether people think this is a good idea 2. How to frame this - I want to avoid being seen as speaking on behalf of all EAs 6. Also if anyone wants to volunteer to co-organize with me I would appreciate hearing that

One challenge in AI safety field-building is that otherwise-useful resources – like lists of courses or funders or local groups – generally become outdated over time. We’ve tried to solve this by collecting a bunch of resources together at AISafety.com and dedicating considerable bandwidth to keeping them updated. Until recently, this maintenance has been largely ad hoc, making additions and changes as we learned of them. To ensure nothing slips through the cracks, we’ve now added a schedule for doing thorough sweeps through the entire database for each resource. Below is our current plan: * Courses * Every 3 months: general sweep * Communities * Every 3 months: general sweep * (maybe) Every 6 months: request update from organisers * Projects * Every 3 months: general sweep * Every 6 months: request update from owners of active projects * Jobs * [This is a filtered subset of 80k’s database and updates automatically] * Events & training * Twice weekly: check for new events and programs * Every 2 weeks: add any dates previously unannounced and check for changes to application deadlines * Funders * Every 2 weeks: check for changes to “applications open/closed” status * Every 3 months: general sweep * Landscape map * Every 1 month: check no links are broken * Every 3 months: general sweep * Donation guide * Every 3 months: check no links are broken * Every 6 months: review entire guide * Speak to an Advisor * Every 3 months: general sweep We’re also continuing to make immediate updates whenever we become aware of them. In other words, this is just the minimum you can expect for regular maintenance. If you spot a correction or want to add something new, please get in touch via the form on the relevant resource page. Our goal is to keep AISafety.com’s resources as accurate and up to date as possible.

I’ve been working a few hours per week at the Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund as a Fund Manager since Summer this year. EA’s reputation is at a bit of a low point. I’ve even heard EA described as the ‘boogeyman’ in certain well-meaning circles. So why do I feel inclined to double down on effective altruism rather than move onto other endeavours? Some shower thoughts: * I generally endorse aiming directly for the thing you actually care about. It seems higher integrity, and usually more efficient. I want to do the most good possible, and this goal already has a name and community attached to it; EA. * I find the core, underlying principles very compelling. The Centre for Effective Altruism highlights scope sensitivity, impartiality, recognition of tradeoffs, and the Scout Mindset. I endorse all of these! * Seems to me that EA has a good track record of important insights on otherwise neglected topics. Existential risk, risks of astronomical suffering, AI safety, wild animal suffering; I attribute a lot of success in these nascent fields to the insights of people with a shared commitment to EA principles and goals. * Of course, there’s been a lot of progress on slightly less neglected cause areas too. The mind boggles at the sheer number of human lives saved and the vast amount of animal suffering reduced by organisations funded by Open Philanthropy, for example. * I have personally benefited massively in achieving my own goals. Beyond some of the above insights, I attribute many improvements in my productivity and epistemics to discussions and recommendations that arose out of the pursuit of EA. * In other roles or projects I’m considering, when I think of questions like “who will actually realistically consider acting on this idea I think is great? Giving up their time or money to make this happen?” the most obvious and easiest answer often looks like some subset of the EA community. Obviously there are some echo chamber-y and bias-related reasons tha

I took the 10% Pledge earlier this year, but was contemplating it a lot for a while before. After taking the pledge, I noticed a couple of insights that I think would have probably made me pledge earlier. I think these insights most directly apply to people who were in a similar situation as I was[1]-  but they might be useful for others as well: * You don’t have to donate 10% right away. Today (!) I learned that "while studying or unemployed, it is within the spirit of the Pledge to give 1% of spending money instead of the income-based pledge amount" and the 10% kicks in once you start earning a stable income. When I first learned about the pledge, I was still at uni and thought I should wait until I had a full-time job and some comfortable savings. However, even if I were already full-time employed at the time and wouldn’t donate at all for the next 4 years, I’d only have to donate ~11%[2] for the rest of my career to compensate for the lack of donations over my lifetime. As someone having a ~median income in a high-income country, I believe that 11% is very doable. In fact (hot take!) I believe that 15-20% should be the norm for people in my situation.  * 10% is not as much as you might think. I think for me, there was a strong anchoring effect here - in my city, most people I know donate something like 30-50€ a month, so 10% (100+ €/month at the time I learned about the pledge) felt like a huge step. Instead of pledging, I decided to just donate what I could “easily miss”. This included instances in which I surprisingly saved money, birthday and Christmas gifts and occasionally deliberate decisions to not purchase “luxuries”. Tracking all of these was a bit tedious, but it showed me how I could easily donate more than 10%, by reframing my donations around what I could genuinely “easily” give away, instead of seeing it in relation to what other people give. * Nowadays I'd recommend people to take the trial pledge, but doing so at 10% for say 6-12 months. My

From: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2025/01/08/anthropic-60-billion-valuation-will-make-all-seven-cofounders-billionaires/ I don't know if any of the seven co-founders practice effective giving, but if they do, this is welcoming news!

In honor of Pledge Highlight Week, here’s a list of some resources we recommend for people who are considering taking a pledge.   Articles/FAQ related to pledging Why pledge (even if you already donate) 5 things you’ve got wrong about the Giving What We Can Pledge Can money buy happiness? A review of the data (newly updated!) Pledge FAQ   Videos featuring @Luke Freeman 🔸 : Why make a public giving pledge?  How change happens  How much to donate to charity: Finding a good standard for giving   Pledgers sharing their experience Case studies page “People who give effectively” video playlist Giving What We Can blog   Introductory videos about effective giving & the ideas behind the pledge The story behind the 10% Pledge (featuring Toby Ord and released last month!) You’re richer than you realise (Grace interviews people on the streets of London!)   And of course, our “How Rich Am I” calculator tool where you can see where your income puts you on a global scale. 

I'm going to be leaving 80,000 Hours and joining Charity Entrepreneurship's incubator programme this summer! The summer 2023 incubator round is focused on biosecurity and scalable global health charities and I'm really excited to see what's the best fit for me and hopefully launch a new charity. The ideas that the research team have written up look really exciting and I'm trepidatious about the challenge of being a founder but psyched for getting started. Watch this space! <3 I've been at 80,000 Hours for the last 3 years. I'm very proud of the 800+ advising calls I did and feel very privileged I got to talk to so many people and try and help them along their careers! I've learned so much during my time at 80k. And the team at 80k has been wonderful to work with - so thoughtful, committed to working out what is the right thing to do, kind, and fun - I'll for sure be sad to leave them. There are a few main reasons why I'm leaving now: 1. New career challenge - I want to try out something that stretches my skills beyond what I've done before. I think I could be a good fit for being a founder and running something big and complicated and valuable that wouldn't exist without me - I'd like to give it a try sooner rather than later. 2. Post-EA crises stepping away from EA community building a bit - Events over the last few months in EA made me re-evaluate how valuable I think the EA community and EA community building are as well as re-evaluate my personal relationship with EA. I haven't gone to the last few EAGs and switched my work away from doing advising calls for the last few months, while processing all this. I have been somewhat sad that there hasn't been more discussion and changes by now though I have been glad to see more EA leaders share things more recently (e.g. this from Ben Todd). I do still believe there are some really important ideas that EA prioritises but I'm more circumspect about some of the things I think we're not doing as well as we could (

Part of this long but highly interesting blog series stood out to me What the heck happened here? Why such a big difference? Was it: 1. His spending was not high at the time the podcast happened. 2. It was high, but 80k/EA didn't know about it. 3. It was high, and 80k/EA did know, but it was introduced like this anyway. Does anyone have a sense or a link to if this was talked about elsewhere?