EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

This competition entry has been selected for publication by the Forum team. Summary Kollin, Clifton, DiGiovanni, and Macé (2025) propose two “bracketing” theories for recovering altruistic action guidance under cluelessness, formalizing a response that DiGiovanni (2025) had earlier viewed sympathetically but raised doubts about. On bottom-up bracketing, we set aside beneficiaries for whom it is indeterminate which option is better, and then aggregate over the remaining beneficiaries. On top-down bracketing, we instead evaluate the largest subsets of beneficiaries for which the comparison is determinate. Although bottom-up bracketing yields Kollin et al.'s intended verdict in the motivating donation case (Against Malaria Foundation > Make-A-Wish Foundation, despite long-term cluelessness) and satisfies Super-Strong Pareto, the authors reject it because it fails to extend their baseline consequentialist relation and, in particular, violates Statewise Dominance. I argue that this rejection is ill-motivated. In their central counterexample to bottom-up bracketing, one person is determinately better off under option A than option B, while neither A nor B is determinately better for the other people. Bottom-up bracketing therefore chooses A. B wins under top-down bracketing only because the other people's individually indeterminate welfare comparisons are pooled before determinacy is assessed. But if individual persons are the [...] ---Outline:(00:16) Summary(03:21) 1. Bottom-up versus top-down bracketing(08:35) 2. A person-centered case for bottom-up bracketing(14:27) 3. Specific replies to and questions for DiGiovanni, Clifton, and others(14:35) 3.1. An unexplained tension in DiGiovanni's metanormative bracketing?(18:15) 3.2. Does bracketing carve consequences arbitrarily?(20:22) 3.3. Does bracketed cluelessness weaken "moral urgency"?(22:25) 3.4. Can a weighing model of reasons support Super-Strong Pareto?(24:47) 3.5. Is person-centered bottom-up bracketing a "consequentialist" theory?(26:42) 3.6. Do population ethics or infinite ethics argue against a person-centered approach?(36:20) 4. Bonus \[optional\]: Is impartial altruism indeterminate? --- First published: August 17th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qpQSEy7n2WjxazFnf/bottom-up-bracketing-a-person-centered-response-to --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This competition entry has been selected for publication by the Forum team. 1. Introduction Here's Anthony DiGiovanni's unawareness argument, quoted from his summary post (footnotes omitted): Let's say that we c-prefer A over B if the reason we prefer A is an impartial altruistic comparison of the actions’ possible consequences. P1. Normative premise: To justify c-preferring A over B, it's not enough to say (e.g.) that A seems heuristically good. Rather, we need to argue that A has higher “expected value” broadly speaking, meaning: In some sense we “expect” that, if we were idealized agents who could aggregate all of A's and B's possible consequences into literal EVs, then we’d say A has higher EV. (We ourselves don’t need literal EVs to justify c-preferences, hence the scare quotes.) Otherwise, it's unacceptably arbitrary to c-prefer A. P2. Conceptual premise: If our understanding of A's and B's possible consequences is sufficiently coarse-grained, then we don’t have an argument for “expecting” our idealized self's EV for A to be higher, lower, or equal to B's. So A's and B's “EVs” are incomparable. In particular: a. Against precise EVs: We shouldn’t represent actions’ degrees of c-preferability with literal precise expected values. b. Against [...] ---Outline:(00:17) 1. Introduction(03:16) 2. When can you "expect" your idealized self to assign higher EV to A than B?(04:44) 3. A challenge to P1(08:21) 4. A challenge to the inference(13:43) 5. The relevant mixed actions might be hard to find(16:22) 6. Does our rule guide clueless agents?(19:24) 7. Conclusion The original text contained 20 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: August 17th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Bw8H9tGyNrnZx2mfo/challenging-the-unawareness-argument-with-third-actions-and --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Epistemic status: Wrote this pretty fast, probably ~70% confident some version of the thesis claim is true, would welcome being proven demonstrably wrong. Context: I’m a grantmaker focused on alt-protein and am fairly well-connected/moderately in the loop of what animal welfare grantmakers are doing. This post was significantly inspired by “You (Yes You) Should Have A Feb 2020 Checklist For AI Policy,” which is more geared for the existing AI safety crowd but directionally a good push in general. Thesis: I think EA non-GCR grantmakers should probably be doing more to prepare for AGI/TAI than we are, and might be on track to get caught with our pants around our legs within the next few years. We are not acting as if we’ve priced it in. TAI Soon Short timelines to AGI/TAI seem very plausible (like, at least 50% chance of arrival in the next 1 to 6 years). Points of evidence include: The general shortening of timelines by top forecasters across the last 10 months (Kokotajlo/AI Futures Project, Greenblatt, Cotra); The OpenAI HuggingFace warning shot; Various public statements by frontier labs, their employees, and their executives warning about imminent recursive self improvement in 2027 or 2028; Mythos saturating the METR time horizons evaluation months ago such [...] --- First published: August 15th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KiunDmsxsr7dnTdbm/non-ai-grantmakers-should-be-pricing-in-agi-timelines-more --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Summary With new funding potentially entering the effective altruism ecosystem, we wanted to estimate how much more the wild animal welfare (WAW) movement could productively absorb. We asked organizations with a public, dedicated WAW workstream to estimate their own room for more funding (RFMF). Although this does not capture the whole movement, we believe it captures a substantive fraction of it. Summed across the five organizations that took part, the estimates point to room for roughly 3.16 million dollars–8.23 million dollars in additional funding in 2027. The lower range reflects claims about how additional funding can bolster their current strategies, while the higher range reflects claims as to how substantially greater funding could be used to pursue more ambitious strategies. However, we give reasons below for why this might be an undercount. We briefly discuss the merits of a dedicated WAW fund. This could give prospective large donors a clear donation option and help diversify a movement currently concentrated in scientific field-building.Read full report Why Estimate the RFMF for WAW Organizations? There are good reasons to consider directing marginal funding toward WAW. Wild animals outnumber farmed animals by several orders of magnitude. Our understanding of their welfare remains [...] ---Outline:(00:15) Summary(01:29) Why Estimate the RFMF for WAW Organizations?(04:33) The Result(05:27) Scientific Field-Building Remains Important, But WAW Must Diversify(06:52) Does WAW Deserve a Fund of its Own? --- First published: August 14th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HDpwbQjes34gkkgKn/five-wild-animal-welfare-organizations-estimate-usd3-8m-in --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a cross-post of the executive summary from The Centre for Animal Life and Farming's first report. See the full report here. We will also be hosting a webinar on 25th August 2026 to discuss these findings with the animal welfare movement. Executive SummaryRoughly 80-90% of farmed animals live in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs), yet the animal welfare movement has seen fewer milestone victories in these contexts than in High-Income Countries (HICs). The standard advocacy models used in HICs (corporate campaigning, consumer pressure, legislative reform, etc.) rely on infrastructure that is often absent in LMICs, such as formalised supply chains, consolidated corporate buyers, and strong legal enforcement. Fortunately, the animal welfare movement is not alone in these challenges. There is a long history of field-based projects in LMICs designed to shift farming practices to improve farmer productivity, sustainability, and well-being. Collectively, this broad category of work is referred to as agricultural development (“agri-dev”). The strategies and lessons generated through this work may offer relevant and useful insights for the development of animal welfare initiatives in LMICs.Authors Karthik and Tom visiting the field office of DVARA, an agri-dev organisation in Maharashtra, India To identify more context-driven [...] The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: August 13th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/kxxkT7XLptnCnKtsh/learning-from-agricultural-development-to-reshape-animal --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

This is from Same Page, a blog about EA-org-style management I write with Max Dalton of Forethought. Defining slot vs. bar hiring I’m fairly confident this distinction has been kicking around the effective altruism movement for at least eight years. I didn’t invent it, and I’m not sure who did. Claude and I couldn’t find a public write-up of the idea, so I’ve made one. In slot hiring, an organisation decides it has a particular position to fill (or maybe two positions, or more). It runs a hiring round, picks the best candidate it finds, and makes an offer. If that person declines, it makes the offer to the next-best, and so on. Most of the world operates in slot hiring, so it's the model most people have internalised for how organisations work. In bar hiring, an organisation defines a threshold of fit and hires anyone above it. The strength of the candidate pool determines how many offers are made. Thoughts on how to think about slot vs. bar hiring An organisation wants to hire up to the point where further recruitment stops being the most valuable use of its resources. The choice between bar and slot hiring mostly [...] ---Outline:(00:16) Defining slot vs. bar hiring(01:28) Thoughts on how to think about slot vs. bar hiring(01:55) When to slot vs. bar hire(04:59) Navigating the bar shifting up and down(06:52) Always be hiring The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: August 12th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wnghgHubZyQC7Jad6/slot-hiring-vs-bar-hiring --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

The AI safety ecosystem is still in need of generalists: people who will go out and solve the tasks that people who feel limited by their job description won’t address. This post will explain how to break into generalist work, then provide an important set of projects that, if completed, could strengthen many crucial parts of the AI safety ecosystem, as well as your own career. TL;DR If you’re looking for something concrete to do, there are a bunch of good entry points: Find a project: browse SPAR's Generalist Projects, join the Generalist Megastream, look through projects on Mangrove, or browse this fieldbuilding/project spreadsheet and Atlas Computing's Resilience Gap Map. Get support: apply to Genstream (deadline August 14), indicate interest in the Generator Residency, or check out MATS's Founding & Fieldbuilding track and Catalyst. Get funding: BlueDot Rapid Grants fund projects up to 10 thousand dollars; there are also quick funding opportunities and career-transition grants from Coefficient Giving and BlueDot. If you’re a student: join or start a university AI safety group; Pathfinder and the AI Safety Seeding Initiative can help with mentorship and funding. The rest of the post has more detail on choosing projects, getting mentorship, and other ways to get involved. If you’re a… University Student: get heavily involved [...] ---Outline:(00:36) TL;DR(01:40) If you're a...(03:51) Projects that should get done(05:00) SPAR Generalist Projects(05:54) Mangrove(07:07) Non-project shaped projects(08:35) Other Project Lists(09:24) Getting Support(09:28) Programs(10:08) Funding(11:02) Advice on getting mentorship(12:09) A final note --- First published: August 13th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3gaKC5xfcQYjuzQ7r/concrete-generalist-projects-in-ai-safety-and-how-to-do-them-2 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

TL;DR: The animal welfare movement has been doing advocacy wrong. If we’re serious about ending factory farming, vegans need to start running factory farms ourselves. I lay out the case below and address common objections. The Core Argument For decades, the animal welfare movement has operated from the outside: funding investigations, lobbying for regulation, producing documentaries, and encouraging dietary change. The results have been modest at best. Global meat consumption continues to rise. I believe we need a fundamentally different approach. The people who care most about animal suffering should be the ones running factory farms. Here's why. If We Don’t Do It, Someone Worse Will Factory farming is going to happen regardless of what we do. The demand exists. The economics are clear. If compassionate, welfare-focused vegans don’t step up to operate these facilities, they’ll be run by people who don’t care about animals at all. By entering the industry ourselves, we ensure that at least some factory farms are operated by people who are genuinely troubled by what they’re doing. This is obviously preferable to a world where all factory farms are run by people who aren’t troubled in the slightest. We Need to Be Close [...] ---Outline:(00:28) The Core Argument(01:00) If We Don't Do It, Someone Worse Will(01:37) We Need to Be Close to the Frontier(02:28) Responsible Farming Policies(03:26) A Seat at the Table(04:13) Funding the Mission(05:20) Why not just study animals without farming them?(06:31) Community Impacts(07:24) Addressing Objections(07:28) "This is just factory farming with a mission statement."(07:53) "Your incentives will shift once you're running the operation."(08:19) "External advocacy and regulation would be more effective."(09:00) Aren't you providing the industry with moral cover?(09:38) What about cognitive biases and groupthink?(10:14) You're just enriching yourself with status, influence, and resources while socializing risks(11:14) What's your main safety plan?(11:49) You're just moving fast and breaking beaks(12:03) Aren't you worried the chickens might escape and destroy you and everything you love?(12:21) What about a coordinated pause?(12:48) What about dialogue with China?(12:58) What's it like to have Bernie Sanders, Steve Bannon, writers, artists, musicians, teachers, and the general public all broadly opposed to what you're doing?(13:30) What would it take to convince you this approach is wrong?(13:39) This plan sounds crazy(13:48) Our Team(14:27) Call to Action --- First published: August 13th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uh3JRsLdgCDtMjwbz/a-modest-proposal-why-vegans-should-start-factory-farms --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This summer, 27 residents came to Berkeley for the first cohort of the Generator Residency, a three-month program for AI safety generalists run by Kairos and Constellation. Residents receive mentorship from experienced generalists and researchers and are working on projects like running workshops for professionals entering AI safety, building a cross-org talent directory, supporting university AI safety groups, serving as chiefs of staff at new and growing organizations, building tools for model welfare and model spec research, and more. See more about each of their projects below. Lateral Workshop Seth Lifland and Jacob Brinton We're running Lateral Workshop, a fully funded three-day program helping experienced professionals explore transitions into AI safety. Many mid-career and senior professionals have skills the field urgently needs, including organizational leadership, government experience, cybersecurity, communications, law, finance, and operations. Yet entering AI safety can be difficult because the ecosystem is unfamiliar, professional networks are limited, and the financial and reputational risks of changing careers are substantial. Held September 11 to 13 in Berkeley, Lateral Workshop will bring together promising professionals and people already working in AI safety through expert talks, small-group discussions, one-on-one conversations, and a community mixer. The program aims to make the field [...] ---Outline:(00:56) Lateral Workshop(02:26) Jeff Alstott's Chief of Staff(03:04) Forward-deployed AI engineering for AI safety orgs(04:17) Improving management in AI safety(04:59) Talent Commons(06:06) Various projects to support university groups(06:45) Longitude DC Intensive(07:47) Praxis: a retreat for world-class debaters, past and present(08:46) Fellowship improvements(09:26) Running Leaf and ecosystem support(10:22) More Quality AI Safety Org Founders(11:54) Supporting the AI 2040: Plan A launch(12:37) Convening Discussions on Frontier AI(13:11) Regional Organizers for University Talent Ecosystems(14:22) Building the map for AI character and model specs(15:56) Convening Team Chief of Staff(17:25) Miscellaneous Fieldbuilding(19:01) Other residents(19:27) Want to do something like this? --- First published: August 12th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gyPcpsgvbANjcaLdF/what-27-ai-safety-generalists-are-building-this-summer --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

A tough lesson I learned over the past few years is that it's pretty stressful to work in the “Please Don’t Build the Torment Nexus” ecosystem, especially as it increasingly seems like the world is hell-bent on building the Torment Nexus.This is what it can feel like to be an impact-pursuing person who stumbles into the AI safety field. It's hard to be productive when you’re stressed and anxious. And setting aside productivity, it's also just plain bad if people working on AI safety — My peers! My people! — are feeling distraught. Anxiety about AI risk really fucking sucks. If you feel this way, you aren’t alone. I’m right by your side, biting my nails, whitening my knuckles. But even besides me, a lot of people seem to feel this way. How big of a problem is this? Survey data described in Spencer Greenberg's recent 80k episode implies that mental health challenges for people working on AI safety are fairly common: Most respondents experienced psychological challenges — the median person reported six different problems. More than half (52%) said these challenges at least moderately hurt their effectiveness, while 45% had considered cutting back or leaving. The most common [...] ---Outline:(01:03) How big of a problem is this?(03:06) What is being done about it?(04:18) What else should be done about it on the margin? The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: August 11th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ews9xbzjGGfR64oum/mental-health-challenges-in-the-ai-safety-ecosystem-seem --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

The current Long Term Future Fund (LTFF) fund managers and I have decided to step back from our work on the LTFF. Because we believe LTFF donors trusted the fund managers to ensure that the funds would be used in line with the purposes of their donation, we've decided the right move is to close the fund. While LTFF is closing, note that EA Funds has launched a new fund, called the Transformative AI Fund (TAIF), with a large overlap in scope, funding early-stage projects that reduce risks from powerful AI systems, led by Lowe Lundin. It is open for applications and donations now. Some LTFF Fund managers plan to continue part-time grantmaking via the AI Risk Mitigation Fund and Lightcone Commons. LTFF fund managers have discussed what to do with the remaining balance of the LTFF. We see our duty to LTFF donors as maximising the expected impact of the money they entrusted to us, within the scope of the fund. Closing a fund involves trade-offs in how to honour that. With that in mind, we have decided to transfer the remaining balance to [new fund], structured as follows: Up to three-quarters will be distributed under the direct [...] ---Outline:(02:04) Why are we moving on from the LTFF?(03:06) Situational Awareness and Quickly Reorienting(04:51) Competing Opportunities(05:18) Institutional Friction(06:27) Why Is EA Funds Starting a New Fund Making AI Safety Grants?(07:00) What will happen with remaining funds?(08:20) Why Lightcone Commons?(10:15) Why Support the New CEA AI Focussed Fund?(11:04) What do existing LTFF applicants need to do? The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: August 11th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dtZ9wbKWjtvGWDRJx/closing-the-ltff-spending-down-funds-and-a-new-ai-fund-at-ea --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Summary A lot of scientific evidence has been gestured at to show how wide an organism's welfare range (i.e., the absolute intensity at the end of the affective spectrum) might be. But most (if not all) of this evidence is in fact evidence of evaluative acuity (i.e., how many differentiable gradients of pain and pleasure the spectrum contains). (§2) In theory, a cognitively simple organism could feel either nothing or something extreme, and nothing in between. And a complex one could dissociate between trillions of different pain levels between nothing and a pinprick, and never feel anything worse. Acuity and range can be independent. (§1) In practice, there may be evolutionary reasons to expect some dependence, but this does not tell us how strong it would be or what the dependence relationship looks like. This is in tension with what many arguments for prioritizing some species over others have implicitly assumed so far—I’m talking about both arguments for prioritizing less numerous cognitively complex beings over many simpler ones, and arguments for the exact opposite. Call this the acuity problem. (§3) The consequence is that the ambiguity and indeterminacy of the moral weights we should assign to different species is even [...] ---Outline:(00:15) Summary(02:06) 1. Acuity vs Range(04:00) 2. Purported evidence for cross-species varying degrees of sentience is evidence for varying acuity(07:19) 3. How dependent are acuity and range?(10:52) 4. The resulting deep uncertainty and its implications(14:19) Acknowledgements The original text contained 12 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: August 10th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mjGQWSpQgdndPnC5b/the-acuity-problem-maybe-we-can-t-infer-how-intensely-a --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

TL;DR The Long-Term Future Fund is closing down, and EA Funds is launching the Transformative AI Fund with a new full-time team. The fund's primary focus is technical AI safety and AI governance (including post-AGI governance), as well as supporting fields such as field-building and forecasting. We'll also consider non-GCR implications of transformative AI such as flourishing futures and digital sentience, though we expect these to be a small minority of grants. For now, biosecurity and nuclear will only be supported at the AI intersection. The fund will provide funding that is early-stage, fast, and tolerant of failure, to build the field's absorptive capacity. We're betting that a lot of philanthropic money is about to arrive, and that the field doesn't have enough organizations to put it to work. We aim to always be open to applications, respond quickly and reliably, and publish quarterly reports on what we fund and why. Whether you're an individual, a new organization, or an existing organization with a new idea, you can apply here. We’re actively fundraising. We have a seed grant of ~1 million dollars, but hope to raise significantly more, as we believe there are sufficient opportunities in the field to [...] ---Outline:(01:49) Background(02:54) Purpose(06:50) Focus areas(07:50) Team(09:44) Fund principles(09:47) Early-stage funding(10:36) Transparent by default(11:25) Open applications with quick, reliable responses(12:44) Why give to the Transformative AI Fund?(12:49) Why give through a fund?(14:21) Why this fund?(15:02) How to get involved(15:05) If you're a donor(15:36) If you're starting something new(15:50) If you're interested in working with us --- First published: August 11th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dYuNi5Rh68o9YKstg/ea-funds-is-launching-the-transformative-ai-fund --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Priority deadline: October 15, 2026. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, and we encourage earlier submission for time-sensitive work. Apply here. Summary The EA Animal Welfare Fund (AWF) is seeking proposals that accelerate the cage-free transition for laying hens at scale, especially in Asia, Latin America, and Africa (although we are open to applications from other regions, too). The majority of the world's laying hens are still confined in barren battery cages, and the fastest growth in egg production is in the Global South, where cage-free markets are least developed. Corporate cage-free commitments now cover a meaningful share of egg supply in many countries, but a commitment converts to animal impact only when three things are in place: accountability that holds companies to their word, supply-side capacity that makes cage-free eggs available to buy, and a local enabling environment of clear cage-free standards. AWF funds the entire pipeline of cage-free transitions—from corporate commitments, to accountability campaigns, to producer technical support, to supply chain innovation, to mandatory labelling policy, to cage egg policy bans. In 2026, we plan to deploy 15 million dollars+ towards a cage-free future for laying hens. This request for proposals is an open application. After [...] ---Outline:(00:28) Summary(01:45) What we are funding(01:49) Cage-free technical implementation, Global South(03:41) Cage-free corporate campaigns and accountability, Global South(05:26) Cage-free legislation and accountability, EU(06:37) Lower priority interventions(07:05) Grant sizes and duration(07:55) What we will not fund(08:22) How we evaluate(08:52) Eligibility(09:32) How and when to apply --- First published: August 5th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/x4sn7JHdkwvAPmuDr/ea-animal-welfare-fund-request-for-proposals-for-cage-free --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Linkpost for my Substack piece, lightly adapted. Donors are holding AI wealth at enormous risk. Their giving is often extremely risk-averse. “What is the most common mistake donors make?” This is one of the questions I get asked most as a donation adviser. Often, I say that it's risk tolerance. Many donors have risk backwards. They hold the money they plan to give at close to maximum risk, often in a single company's stock, then give it away at close to minimum risk, backing only the most heavily evidenced organisations. Getting it the right way round means working at three levels: de-risk the wealth that funds your giving, diversify your grant portfolio, and take more risk inside it. What do most donors get wrong about risk? Candidly - almost everything. The majority of individual donors are distributing risk carelessly across multiple axes. Take the distribution of risk between wealth and grantmaking, for example. Many donors are taking extremely large risks with their capital, whilst only giving to massive organisations backed by 24 randomised controlled trials (RCTs). That's two risk decisions taken with the same money, sometimes without noticing either. AI equity holders are a clear case. Many [...] ---Outline:(01:04) What do most donors get wrong about risk?(02:10) How much risk should I take with my charitable giving?(05:25) How should I spread risk across my giving?(08:53) How should I balance evidence and risk in my donations?(11:16) Do charities need RCTs before I fund them?(13:11) I'm expecting an AI windfall. What should I do? --- First published: August 4th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/acRFgvqQPCSHFeLE5/most-donors-get-risk-wrong --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Last year, around 100 pro-animal voters came to the UK Parliament for a mass lobby day, run by UK Voters for Animals, to call for an end to cages and crates for farmed animals. This was the first time many of these people had engaged with political advocacy, and together we had over 30 meetings with MPs and their teams about ending cages and crates for farmed animals. (Since then, the UK Government has run a consultation on phasing out cages for layer hens, thanks to the efforts of many dedicated groups and volunteers over time). With a bit more experience under our belts, we're organising another Mass Lobby Day in Parliament on Tuesday, the 10th of November, and we need YOU to join us.Join the mass lobby day This time, we take on Frankenchickens: fast-growing chickens that are bred to grow 400% faster than is natural, reaching slaughter weight in as little as 35 days. Their bodies cannot keep up with their own growth. They suffer chronic lameness, heart and lung failure, and hock burns from lying in their own waste, often too heavy to stand. Many suffer from the day they hatch to the day they are [...] --- First published: August 6th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/oQZCtRcBCy55fPCjX/uk-voters-for-animals-is-running-our-2nd-mass-lobby-day --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

I think you should almost never use AI to write -- that is, to do the thing you're doing when you type words on a page -- whether for a blog post, a research report, a memo, a thoughtful email, a novel, or any other text aimed at conveying an idea, an argument, an analysis, or other substantive thoughts. I think this is the case even when you give the AI very detailed bullet points, dictated thoughts, or other context, and even when you edit the AI-written text. I think so because (1) the writing process is an essential part of the thinking process, (2) AI writing is vague and wrong in hard-to-notice ways, and (3) writing with AI (and not labeling it as such) is rude and misleading. I'll explain these points in more detail below, but first, a few throat clearings. As you may know, I'm not anti-AI. I think it makes a lot of sense to use AI for many other parts of the research and writing processes, such as transcribing audio, analyzing data, searching for information, brainstorming, and giving feedback on drafts. I also think using AI for line and copy editing, or [...] ---Outline:(02:10) The Writing Process Is the Thinking Process(04:57) AI Writing Is Vague and Wrong in Hard-to-Notice Ways(12:43) Writing with AI (and Not Labeling It as Such) Is Rude and Misleading(15:12) Aren't There Exceptions? The original text contained 16 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: August 6th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/stmA3cmXY8jaZahtg/why-you-should-almost-never-use-ai-to-write-anything --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Subtitle: Sometimes the easily defended view is the one you really want The most striking thing about effective altruism, dialectically, is that it's a neglected truism: Moral truisms may still be widely ignored. The moral truism underlying Effective Altruism is that we have strong reasons to do more good, and it's worth adopting the efficient promotion of the impartial good as one among one's many life projects. Most people do not, in fact, adopt the efficient promotion of the impartial good as even one among their many life projects. That's a shame! I think more people should try this, and I take encouraging this change to be a constitutive aim of the EA movement (along with helping those attempting this project to pursue it more effectively). Those who don’t like this idea generally don’t reject it explicitly. Nobody says, “As one of the wealthiest people in history, I would really much prefer to keep over 90% of my income for personal consumption, get moral kudos for purely symbolic acts, and not have to think at all about the interests of emotionally unappealing moral patients like shrimp or distant future generations.” But nor will they endorse the moderate EA ask. [...] The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration. --- First published: August 4th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NT3j5dwEEGL8neB8P/the-schmotte-and-bailey-fallacy --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Hi everyone. I lead marketing and communications at CEA. Given the amount of attention we expect The Altruists series to generate, I'm posting a high-level update and introducing myself as a point of contact for questions or coordination. Later this year, Netflix is expected to release The Altruists, an eight-episode crime drama series telling the story of Sam Bankman-Fried, Caroline Ellison, and the collapse of FTX. It's produced by Higher Ground Productions (the Obamas' production company) and stars Anthony Boyle as Bankman-Fried and Julia Garner as Ellison. We don't have advance information about how EA will be portrayed, or how much the series will engage with EA beyond the FTX connection. We’re following developments as they emerge. We think it's likely the series will draw a large audience (for comparison, Higher Ground's Inventing Anna amassed 1.2 billion viewing minutes in its first three days) and generate significant media coverage. If that proves correct, we'd expect more people to hear about effective altruism for the first time (for context, Rethink Priorities estimates genuine EA awareness among US adults to be roughly 1-3%). We see our job as making sure accurate and up-to-date information is easy to find when people search [...] --- First published: August 6th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yPi9W46rurF7MPfTY/about-the-altruists-the-netflix-series-on-ftx --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Public service announcement Applications are now open for our first ever round of the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program dedicated exclusively to animal welfare. Learn more about what's different this round here and apply here. AIM itself is hungry for talent (nom nom!). We’re seeking applications from ambitious people for a wide range of roles to scale our impact. Are you generally talented? Express your interest here. Are you specifically talented? Express your interest here.TL;DR AIM has a reputation for extreme frugality on pay. It was earned but it's now out of date. Over the past few months we have: Refreshed our salary policy. Pay has gone from nominally to genuinely needs-based: the full-time London range is now £40,000–90,000 gross (adjusted for location), and the process is built around staff asking for what they genuinely need, with no negotiation and no interrogation of lifestyle choices. Since launch, the average salary has risen by roughly £10k. We'll revisit the range over time as we learn how broad a talent pool and range of life circumstances it covers. Overhauled program stipends. A flat default of £1,900 per month has become self-selected amounts based on individual circumstances. We expect most participants to land [...] ---Outline:(00:17) Public service announcement(00:55) TL;DR(02:32) Context(02:35) From frugal roots(03:18) Upsides(04:18) Downsides(07:04) Our new salary policy(07:08) The design process(08:25) The policy(10:48) Reflections and rollout(12:07) Program stipends(14:19) Founder salary advice(16:16) Was pay your blocker before?(16:57) Before you go: wanna found an animal charity? The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: August 6th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wBQcQWqd5QpcvrSJi/you-can-now-afford-to-work-at-aim-our-new-salary-policy --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Note: This post was crossposted from the Coefficient Giving Farm Animal Welfare Research Newsletter by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post. The third wave of American philanthropy is finally coming. It could usher in a Golden Age of Animal Welfare. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I recommend reading the linked pieces by Nan Ransohoff and Itsi Weinstock. If you do, read on. Newly-minted AI millionaires have already donated tens of millions this year to help factory-farmed animals. Many plan to give much more. We don’t yet know how much, but this could be a step-change for our movement. It's about time. Our movement has long punched above its weight, winning change for billions of animals on a global budget smaller than what Americans spend on Halloween costumes for their pets. If we spend the new funds well, we could help many billions more. How? Here are some initial thoughts on what the new money could enable our movement to do. 1. Raise our ambitions We’ve long played triage: with limited resources, we could only pick the biggest fights we could win. Now we [...] --- First published: August 5th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/aFFcE6vEsBgyfAiyH/the-ai-windfall --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

As a community builder, it doesn’t get much better than receiving a message like this: Others who work on movement growth have reported similar success stories: someone learns about EA, doesn’t immediately work in an EA-shaped role, but then transitions to impactful work years later. I can’t help but wonder: might there be people who lost touch with EA, but would be excited to put themselves back out there if nudged? When I learned about EA as a college student in 2017, there were relatively few “EA jobs” I was a fit for. After getting rejected from a few roles, I ruled myself out for most of the next five years. If someone had messaged me “there are a ton of opportunities now; you should consider applying again!” I certainly would have done so. I think now is a better time than ever before to apply for jobs at organizations doing good effectively. Hundreds of impactful organizations across the EA ecosystem are hiring for a greater number and variety of roles, and I anticipate continued growth in opportunities to keep pace with expansion in effective philanthropy. Plus, with greater resourcing, staff at impactful organizations may have the potential [...] --- First published: August 4th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7CJrwmwycmYazMDcN/reaching-out-to-formerly-engaged-eas --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

GiveWell's Operations department is growing! We have roles open across multiple Ops functions: Grants Administration, People Operations, Talent Acquisition, Technology, and the offices of the CEO and COO. We hope to make multiple hires for many of these roles. We’re hosting an Ask Me Anything session with our COO, Sai Jahann, to answer questions from the Forum community about what it's like to work at GiveWell, our Operations functions, this hiring round, and impactful Operations careers at GiveWell. We plan to keep this AMA open through the next week. You can start sharing your questions on this post now, and Sai will plan to respond beginning Friday. We’ll prioritize the most upvoted questions if we can’t get to everything. A few things we won't be able to cover: commentary on any active or past applications, individualized feedback on application materials, or insight into specific grantmaking decisions made by our Research team. If we’re unable to answer a question, we'll say so rather than skipping it. This hiring round is a big event for us. If you’ve ever considered working at GiveWell in an Operations role, we are excited to take your questions and hope you’ll consider applying! --- First published: August 4th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RtTjTTLX6bTZWBEX6/ama-with-givewell-s-chief-operations-officer --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Summary The animal welfare movement has already seen an influx in funding and should prepare for the possibility of more. The EA Animal Welfare Fund is encouraging you to actively set aside time and resources now to concretely plan for scaling sustainably, and we’ll support you in doing that. We’re requesting you set concrete ambitious goals and submit your plans to be able to achieve them. This is a call for more ambitious concrete plans, not for lowering the bar for the sake of spending more. Our strategic priorities are here. We’ll be launching a series of calls for proposals stemming from these, but if you have related ideas, don’t wait. You’re encouraged to apply here and reach out to us to discuss here [email protected].  A call to prepare for scaling impact The animal welfare space is looking to absorb an influx of funding this year, and expects more funding in future, as do other cause areas. We've seen a lot of online discussion and excitement about this, but relatively few concrete action plans proportional to the significance of the opportunity. We’re not talking about plans to absorb trillions of dollars to buy Tyson Foods and build cultivated meat on the Moon. [...] ---Outline:(00:12) Summary(01:06) A call to prepare for scaling impact(03:01) We're offering support --- First published: August 4th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NcrHNnnGzgoJz3YkY/the-animal-welfare-movement-could-scale-fast-have-you-made-a --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a crosspost from my blog post. Many EAs use extensive “bayesian reasoning.” The basic idea behind it is that you should do the following: Be willing to assign probabilities to the likelihood of anything occurring or being true. Update these probabilities when you learn new information. Act on these probabilities if they suggest that certain actions are higher in value than all other actions. Bayesian reasoning is helpful for a lot of everyday decision-making. If you’re trying to figure out whether to take a job in Los Angeles or in New York, it makes sense to try to guess how happy you’d be in each respective city. And, if you’re trying to compare career paths, you should assign probabilities to how likely you are to succeed in them. But, to me, EAs take this kind of reasoning too far. EAs have variously tried to predict how many future humans there will be, asked non-domain experts how likely they think a catastrophic pandemic will be, and even tried to determine whether we should work on improving the lives of people in the far future. Probably the most common (and representative) example of this, though, is the idea [...] ---Outline:(01:43) Reason #1: If you know very little about something, your guesses are completely arbitrary.(02:29) Reason #2: If your guesses are completely arbitrary, updating won't bring you to the correct probability.(03:21) Reason #3: We should expect most guesses about the future to be wrong.(04:19) Reason #4: If your guesses are based on other people's guesses, you might all be wrong.(04:45) Reason #5: People rarely offer extraordinarily low probabilities. --- First published: August 2nd, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ttk9RJw9sbSp8upgE/eas-should-use-less-bayesian-reasoning --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Please spend <5 minutes filling in the below polls on AI alignment! Thank you to everyone who filled out last month's polls. It was great to see 60+ comments engaging with these issues. This month's survey has already been taken by a panel of 15 alignment researchers, including Scott Alexander (ACX), David Manheim (ALTER), Jeff Sebo (NYU), and Tobias Baumann (CRS). We'll compare panel and community responses in an upcoming report, which we'll publish here and on LessWrong. To get notified when it's released, you can subscribe to our new Substack. Many people we've talked to have very different intuitions about where the alignment community stands on the below issues. We hope that your responses to these polls, and the resulting report, will help map core areas of (dis)agreement within the field, and ground CaML's research agenda. A few final things about the polls themselves: Timeframe: unless a statement says otherwise (e.g. post-AGI), read forward-looking claims as being about roughly the next 2 years. We're not trying to find the 'right' answers. Please answer based on your own best guess. % agree is your % credence in a given position Please let us know if you think the [...] --- First published: July 30th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5huXea9bB7mtMQbrX/community-polls-on-alignment-controversies-ii-1 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TLDR Most urban animals, especially those other than cats and dogs, are highly neglected, even though probably tens of billions of them live in urban environments, and suffer from preventable harms. This post argues for a global nonprofit that would research the problem, test interventions and support local groups under the idea that cities are multispecies societies. Despite major uncertainty about scale and expected value, this could directly help many urban animals and potentially have strong flow through effects: urban animals could serve as a bridge for empathy toward all animals, support wild animal welfare research, and bring new people and funding into the movement. In my view, a nonprofit dedicated specifically to urban animal welfare, compared with programs run by organizations with a broader focus that work on animals both in nature and in cities, could better address the distinct challenges of urban environments, avoid some of the philosophical controversy surrounding interventions in nature, and attract more funding and people, including from outside the traditional animal advocacy movement. Thanks to @Ben Stevenson, @Max Taylor, Richard Parr and Noa Deutsch for helpful comments on this post. All mistakes are my own. Epistemic Status Very unsure about the numbers I [...] ---Outline:(00:10) TLDR(01:27) Epistemic Status(01:48) What are Urban Animals(02:54) What do Urban Animals Suffer From?(04:34) Neglectedness(05:39) Organizations Whose Work Includes Neglected Urban Animal Species(07:38) Tractability(10:35) Scale(14:30) Reasons in Favor of This Idea(18:18) Reasons Against This Idea(19:21) What the Nonprofit Could Do(21:28) Open Strategic Questions(22:00) Conclusion --- First published: August 2nd, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/thEMWd6yA7kA2p4QE/urban-animals-deserve-a-global-nonprofit --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

And why our 2023 regrant to Timaeus was goated We think the for-profit funding ecosystem has some cool properties. Different funders naturally come in at different stages, from angel investors who are good at spotting early opportunities to large funds who might invest in late-stage startups to public market traders. Funders race to back promising projects. And the more they get right, the more they’re rewarded with more money to invest in the future. It would be great if more of those properties existed in nonprofit funding as well. We think that the flow from “person makes great early donation” → “person has more influence” is too weak. And as opposed to the VC world, where investors compete against each other to invest in something quickly, nonprofit funding is beset by “funder chicken,” in which a funder waits for other funders to fill an opportunity, each trying to preserve their capital. This makes fundraising a slog. What if donating to nonprofits worked more like investing in companies? Impact markets have been talked about in EA for a while. At Manifund, we dream of bringing impact markets to the AI safety funding ecosystem. And at the very least, we want [...] ---Outline:(01:28) Timaeus: a case study in charitable ROI(03:44) Donate early, donate fast --- First published: July 31st, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/v8W6SGxkvzP8Pzwy2/when-you-donate-can-matter-more-than-where --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TL;DR: Applications are open for AIM's first ever animal-only incubation round. The program runs February 2027, and it is different from any round we've run before: we’ve rebuilt the research process with animal welfare in mind, recommending frontier problems rather than fully-scoped solutions, there is a new funded three-month exploration phase after the core program, and two weeks in San Francisco alongside the movement's biggest funders and thinkers. Aaron Boddy (co-founder of Shrimp Welfare Project) has joined to help design and run it. Applications close 13th September. -- A few months ago, we wrote about why now might be the best time ever to start an animal charity. In short: the bottlenecks that limited us to incubating roughly two to four animal charities a year are easing on both sides, us finding more superstar founders excited to work on animal welfare and mid-stage funding becoming less of a limiting factor than it was a few years ago. Meanwhile, the animal movement needs more new interventions and organizations in the pipeline so that efforts to fix factory farming can scale in the coming years. The low-hanging fruit hasn't been picked because barely anyone is in the orchard: Incubating more trailblazing [...] ---Outline:(01:41) What's different about this round(06:08) More on "frontier problems"(07:42) The research process(08:21) Illustrative examples we're excited about(08:50) Welfare tech(09:31) Enabling primary animal welfare research.(10:14) Talent meta-charities.(10:48) Neglected animal populations.(11:19) You don't need to be an "animal person"(11:41) Key dates and how to apply(11:45) The animal round(12:34) But what about other cause areas? The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration. --- First published: August 3rd, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MsH3w5FdmEjr2aE7b/aim-s-first-ever-dedicated-animal-welfare-incubation-program --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Blogs have shaped our philosophical worldviews, found us careers and friends, and changed our lives. There's a good chance that a great blog of yore is the reason you’re reading this right now. But many great bloggers have stopped blogging. The pile-on dynamics of the internet discourage unfiltered thoughts, and algorithmic feeds amplify ragebait and slop. Fear of scrutiny leads people to confine things to private Google docs and group chats. And good blogs are often victims of their own success — someone with a lot of good thoughts is at risk of becoming an adult with a demanding job and not that much free time. It's not all bad. Substack has led to a renaissance of email newsletters, and our friends at Inkhaven host a bootcamp for bloggers. These are awesome, but they structurally encourage posting every day. We’d rather read the marginal post from an accomplished but erstwhile blogger, than one from a daily Substacker — even if the latter is a better writer! So we’re launching the Blog Revival Project, to crowdfund $1,000+ bounties for good bloggers. Sign up and pledge money towards reviving your favorite defunct blog! Or (though we kind of designed the website [...] ---Outline:(02:06) FAQ(03:29) FAQ for bloggers --- First published: July 27th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dNG5MPjFiN86FN98d/blog-revival-project --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the design of grant programs, from small microgrants to regranting to ambitious new platforms to galaxy-brained schemes for impact markets. Here are five components that I think any grant program needs to be good: 1. Money This one is obvious: a grant program needs money to give out. Historically in EA and AI safety, this started as individual small donations from earning-to-give, to Dustin Moskovitz's money via Good Ventures, to an ill-fated boom around the FTX Future Fund, and now everyone preparing for the frothy Anthropic and OpenAI dollars. 2. Taste This is also kind of obvious. Most people's image of “what makes a good grantmaker” is “excellent taste”, which is to say, the ability to discern between good or bad projects. Grant taste comes in a few forms: Taste in people: founders of projects, leaders of orgs Taste in ideas: whether a particular idea might succeed; whether it’d be good if it did Taste in fields: cause prio across technical AI safety vs policy vs fieldbuilding One problem with taste is that everyone invariably thinks that they have good taste. Also, there isn’t necessarily One True Taste, so it can [...] ---Outline:(00:26) 1. Money(00:50) 2. Taste(01:59) 3. Dealflow(03:07) 4. Hustle(04:19) 5. Trust(06:13) Breaking down some recent grant programs(06:18) ACX Grants(06:55) grantmaking.ai(07:30) Lightcone Commons(08:05) Coefficient Giving(08:41) Can money buy taste/dealflow/hustle/trust?(10:00) Appendix --- First published: July 30th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NFsWzsZSZEPdthCqf/money-taste-dealflow-hustle-trust --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

It's my belief that the intersection of AI x Animals represents one of the most pressing current opportunities for the prevention of suffering. It's also a very new area, with information spread across lots of locations, making it hard to get your bearings and know where to consider taking action. To help with that this post includes: A literature review table summarising 96 papers, youtube videos, articles and other sources.  The table includes links to the papers, brief summaries of each, and is organised into sub-themes for navigation. A quadrant map and table visualising alignment and influence of various key orgs A network map visualising relationships between various key orgs For Context This post summarises the findings of a research project I completed in early-mid 2026 mapping the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Animal Welfare. I used AI to help with early drafting, but the current version is very much in my own voice and tone - as should be quite obvious from what my friends call my “unique” sense of humour. I am treating this as a working document and welcome pushback, feedback, updates etc Also, whilst the project was completed as part of an Effective Thesis Fellowship [...] ---Outline:(00:56) For Context(01:39) Key Takeaways(03:27) Why This Intersection Deserves (More) Serious Attention(05:51) The Research Process(10:14) The Actor Landscape: Mapping Influence and Alignment(10:58) "That Damned Diagonal"(11:43) The Missing Middle(12:16) The Anthropic Anomaly(13:20) The Network of Influence(14:00) Disconnected AI Safety and Animal Advocacy Orgs(15:02) The Potential Utility of Bridge Nodes(15:45) What the Literature Tells Us: Eight Sub-Domains(27:51) The Structural Asymmetry: A Summary(29:43) Where Do We Go From Here? The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration. --- First published: July 30th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Zp5cFZF4CLQrGZHTg/i-spent-167-hours-mapping-the-aixanimals-ecosystem-so-you --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

The world of private philanthropy may be in for a period of large growth. News of Coefficient Giving increasing their funding for GiveWell to one billion in the near-term, and the general growth of the effective giving community as reported by Giving What We Can, make it difficult for even hardcore sceptics (and I probably count myself among this curmudgeonly crowd) to stick to the view that we are in business as usual. There are many reasons to believe that this expected growth will happen, and I’d be remiss to not mention Nan Ransohoff's great piece on the matter. This article was a catalyst. Where before board members and execs who were particularly clued into the Bay area may have expected to see this change in the size of the giving market, Nan's piece gave this a name and salience. The third wave of philanthropy materialized slowly, and then all at once. This possibility of increased funding has now taken the shape of a near certainty in some circles. Besides the perfunctory “it may not happen” at the end of a long pitch, it is not uncommon to sit in conversations that assume the existence of this funding, and [...] ---Outline:(01:34) No such money(03:11) Smaller amounts(04:23) Absorption(06:24) What next? --- First published: July 29th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xNnafgb8BAkysaHsh/what-if-the-third-wave-is-a-puddle --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Executive Summary Newborns born too small or too soon (vulnerable) account for 70% of the world's 2 million newborn deaths every year, despite representing just 15% of births. Kangaroo Care, a practice of skin to skin care and exclusive breastfeeding, is proven to reduce mortality among vulnerable newborns by a third compared to conventional care. Despite WHO recommendation, only 5% of eligible newborns receive it. First Embrace was incubated in the Ambitious Impact program in late 2025 to minimise newborn deaths by scaling Kangaroo Care. One in every ten newborn deaths is in Nigeria, where we work. In our first year we evaluated two key questions: Can we cost-effectively deliver Kangaroo Care in a high-burden Nigerian public hospital? Can government partnership provide evidence of a path from policy on paper to implementation at scale?  ReachWe have been delivering Kangaroo Care at our pilot hospital since February 2026. By June we enrolled 320 newborns and delivered Kangaroo Care to 301 of them.ImpactWe conservatively estimate that our program counterfactually saves 43 lives per year for $4,378 per life saved. At regional scale we estimate this drops to $3,711. During the pilot our program saved 14 lives.  GiveWell estimates the [...] ---Outline:(00:24) Executive Summary(02:31) 1. The Problem(03:23) 2. The Solution(05:40) 3. Our Approach(07:31) 4. Results(07:52) 4.1. Baseline Neonatal Mortality(09:25) 4.2. Outcome(11:39) 4.3. Cost-effectiveness(13:43) 5. Implementation Lessons(15:14) 6. Plans(15:17) Improvement(18:31) Evaluation(19:12) Partnerships(19:37) 7. Team(20:27) 8. Funding(21:04) Thank you(21:34) Appendix A: Implementation model in detail --- First published: July 29th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wGXCuedzsubqNDAca/introducing-first-embrace-an-ambitious-impact-incubated --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

As you might know, we’ve recently launched the Rethink Priorities Cross-Cause Fund (CCF), a pooled fund that allocates donations across high-impact giving opportunities in Global Health and Development, Animal Welfare, and Global Catastrophic Risks. Thanks to generous donors and supporters, we have now completed our first distribution round, allocating more than $700,000 across the funds in our model, following its current recommended split. A quick recap  The CCF exists because cross-cause prioritization - comparing giving opportunities across different causes on a single scale - remains underdeveloped in effective giving. Rather than dividing funding by cause area first and optimizing within each one separately, the CCF uses an explicit model to evaluate specific funds directly against one another, so that a marginal dollar goes where it is likely to do the most good, all things considered, regardless of cause area. For the full rationale behind the fund, please read our launch announcement. Our first distribution In the first round, we distributed more than $700,000 across the funds included in our model, following the current recommended allocation that you can follow on our website. The table below shows how this round's distribution broke down by fund: We are grateful to the [...] ---Outline:(00:39) A quick recap(01:15) Our first distribution(01:56) How have we made this decision(04:21) Work in progress(05:07) Contribute to the CCF --- First published: July 29th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HXYdhSzmxBTCEmtCi/cross-cause-fund-our-first-distribution-round --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Written by Sjir Hoeijmakers (CEO) and Lucas Moore (Senior Partnerships Manager), Giving What We Can following the Effective Giving Summit 2026.The core proposition GWWC provides three public goods to the effective giving ecosystem, and these are the only ecosystem work we should take on for now: Convening: the EG Summit and Evaluators Forum Information node: the ecosystem annual pulse survey and associated update, money moved (not public) and total number of donors (not public) sheets, ecosystem overview, and evaluators database. Quality control: evaluating evaluators, impact evaluation toolkit. We are a key coordinator, but not the only one, and don’t aim to be the exclusive provider of these three goods either. We provide them because we are uniquely well-placed to, and we invite others to contribute to these goods alongside us and to build the public goods we are not building.Why this scope We considered the full range from substantially expanding our coordination role (up to incubating or spinning out a broader coordinating body), and dropping GWWC's coordination work entirely. We landed deliberately at a mid-point where we feel currently able to create the most value. Why not less. These three functions provide a lot of value, both for [...] ---Outline:(00:23) The core proposition(01:19) Why this scope(02:53) Why these three specifically(06:11) What we are explicitly NOT doing(06:51) Other public goods we'd like to see(07:58) What would change this conclusion --- First published: July 28th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uc39gihvEXB2sBbc6/gwwc-s-effective-giving-ecosystem-strategy-2026-27 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Written by Lucas Moore (Senior Partnerships Manager), Giving What We Can for the Effective Giving Summit 2026. Published with some elements redacted. This memo provides a high-level overview of the effective giving landscape as of May 2026. It builds on the memo we wrote for last year's summit (later published with some elements redacted) and is based largely on the 2026 EG pulse survey and money moved sheet (not public). Please leave a comment if you'd like us to clarify anything. All figures are in USD.Background The effective giving ecosystem is an interdependent network of >70 organisations directing philanthropic resources to where they can do the most good, guided by principles such as cost-effectiveness, cause prioritisation and counterfactual impact. Within the ecosystem, some organisations identify high-impact opportunities (evaluators) and others fundraise for them (fundraisers). Many do both.Key updates Money moved by the ecosystem (not public) grew by ~60% between 2024 and 2025, from ~1.2B to ~2B money moved The bulk of that growth came from Coefficient Giving and GiveWell Coefficient Giving: stable at ~650m since 2022, grew ~50% to ~1b in 2025 GiveWell: stable at ~200M since 2021, grew ~100% [...] ---Outline:(00:44) Background(01:13) Key updates(05:46) Overview of the ecosystem(09:01) How much money is moved to high-impact destinations(10:59) Donors giving through the ecosystem(11:24) Where money goes The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: July 28th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/T7CKswFYSgjePAwZh/updates-on-the-effective-giving-ecosystem-2026 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Your balls are baked aren’t they, mate”. He would not have been bornThanks Lyndon, that describes the situation. Like almost 1 in 10 modern men, my sperm weren’t up to the task - at least not the old fashioned way. So IVF it was - the miracle that now feels almost commonplace. We landed on the moon and Woodstock changed music forever. But in 1969 a quieter event transformed the world. The first human embryo was fertilised “In vitro”, outside the body. Yet 10 years passed before one was inserted into a womb, and then born. 48 years ago, Louise Joy Brown was the first woman born through IVF. This year about a million babies will be born through IVF. IVF stands at the frontier of rich-privilege, a norm for the middle class in rich countries. In my home country New Zealand, the government even pays for it! Yet every week I meet women here in Northern Uganda who can’t have kids, and could never afford IVF. Even the human “right” to have a kid can depend on where you are born. If I was born 25 years ago, or in Uganda, my boy would never have [...] ---Outline:(00:13) He would not have been born(01:35) Our Risky Choice(03:47) He didn't die once - a routine miracle(05:33) He didn't die twice - Neonatal care(08:54) I am Grateful The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: July 28th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KMNk8zXLxHQXgN7rK/never-born-then-maybe-died-twice --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

The EA Forum does a lot of things. It's a place to talk about EA community issues, share jobs, updates from organisations, ask for support with new projects, meet people etc… All of this is good, but as we all know, not all good things are equally good.One of the most impactful things the EA Forum does is enable us to have important conversations that could meaningfully shift the focus of funding and talent in the community. As EA grows, I want the Forum to maintain that function, and, indeed, get even better at it. There will be a number of interventions in this direction in the near future. The first is the ‘featured page’, launching today. This is a new homepage for the EA Forum which allows us to highlight the posts we (the EA Forum team and moderators, or, for this experimental period: me) think are likely to be the most impactful. If this works it will a) reward the authors of particularly valuable posts, who will have more readership and have their writing elevated and b) make it easier for readers to find the very best of the EA Forum, however often they turn up. [...] ---Outline:(01:25) How it works(02:17) What is the featured page for?(04:30) What goes on the featured page?(05:26) Defining 'featured'(05:30) Necessary conditions to be on the featured page(06:56) What we exclude from the featured page:(08:22) This is an experiment(09:02) I would genuinely love your feedback(09:31) Acknowledgements The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: July 28th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/nx2wA6u8uS9qRorTD/the-featured-page --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

TL;DR: We're hiring an Executive Director to lead CEEALAR through its most ambitious phase yet. Beyond running our existing Blackpool hotel, you'll plan and spearhead our expansion into London, including its fundraising and staffing. This is a project that is designed to 10 to 20 times our impact. We need someone who can be both a reliable custodian of what exists and a driving leader of what comes next. Full-time, £40,000-£50,000 (with significantly more contingent on successfully fundraising and expanding into London), UK-based (Skilled Worker visa available), rolling applications until 31st August 2026. Looking for your next high-impact role? We are looking for a highly dynamic and strategic individual to lead CEEALAR's growth. There is considerable flexibility for the candidate to shape the role according to their own strengths and preferences. We envisage this being a full-time role. As our current operations are in Blackpool, we expect a short (1-3 month) stint of living and working on-site in Blackpool to get detailed knowledge of the inner workings of the organization. If a grant for a London expansion is approved, we expect the location to shift significantly toward London, including moving to London (with a few days spent in Blackpool [...] ---Outline:(01:33) What you'll do(02:55) Person specification(04:32) Compensation and benefits(05:15) Application process --- First published: July 26th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hpBsjQPQehv5vtKi4/job-executive-director-of-ceealar-ea-hotel-1 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Hello Forum friends! I'm posting today to let you know that I recently left CEA to join 80,000 Hours, as a product engineer on the Career Services Team. This means I'm no longer running the Online Team, the EA Forum, and the moderation team. I've handed the Forum and mod team to @Toby Tremlett🔹, and @Rory Fenton is leading the Online Team on an interim basis. I sat on this draft for a while. I've been at CEA for almost 5 years and it's been a wild ride — there's a lot I could write about! I didn't want to keep putting it off, so just a warning that this post is a bit disorganized. Feel free to ask me questions if there's anything you'd like to hear more about. :) A bit about the Forum It's been a little over a year since my last update post, where I hinted that the CEA Online Team was spending less capacity on the Forum over time and you'd get less updates as a consequence. I estimate that the team is spending a bit over 1.5 FTE on the Forum in 2026, so that trend has continued, and may decrease more [...] ---Outline:(00:56) A bit about the Forum(03:37) More on the past 12 months(03:41) 2025(06:57) 2026(08:23) Thank you! 💙 The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: July 27th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/w9S2n6WEpRt6qx3Lf/moving-on-from-the-ea-forum --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

TL;DR The 1 billion dollars grant from Coefficient Giving to GiveWell is very exciting and will improve the lives of millions. Is it a change in the equilibrium of funding for implementation organisations within the cost-effectiveness focused global health and development space? I argue that it could be and share some thoughts of what the implications of that may mean. Disclosure: I am the CEO of Fortify Health, an organisation that has received funding from GiveWell. I also sit on the Governance and Advisory Boards of organisations that have received funding from GiveWell. This article reflects my personal opinions and not those of Fortify Health or other associated organisations. I am not a neutral observer, and much of my optimism below is the optimism of a potential beneficiary. Please discount accordingly. AI used to structure thoughts and review verbally dictated text On Thursday, Coefficient Giving announced a $1 billion commitment to GiveWell. I expect it to be a superb grant, funding interventions that are about as cost-effective as anything we know of. It will likely improve, if not save, millions of lives whilst also building the capacity of both GiveWell and recipient organisations for the future. [...] --- First published: July 25th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ukmPFndcd8m2Rs8ph/usd1-billion-grant-to-givewell-how-might-this-change-who --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

I propose the Long Self-Correction[1] as an alternative name/idea/concept to AI Pause and Long Reflection. Problem with AI Pause: Pause until when, and for what purpose? Presumably to make AI (that we'll build later) safer, but the deeper problem is that humans aren't safe, and can't safely serve as builders, overseers, or alignment targets for powerful AIs. Problem with Long Reflection: It seems to imply that the main problem with humans is that we just haven't had enough time to think, that reflection is the main thing we need to do more of, and then we can get on with building powerful AIs or other technologies. Or that if we build aligned AIs that sincerely help us think a lot more, or do the thinking for us, then things will turn out fine. So I think we need a catchy handle for a related but distinct idea, that humans aren't ready to build AIs or other extremely powerful technologies, because we're currently too flawed, in a variety of ways, and it will take a long process (which may or may not end up succeeding) to fix those flaws. A summary of the flaws that I have in mind: [...] The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: July 24th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uibtodWFky3TRwere/the-long-self-correction-1 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

(Please share with your friends in the Netherlands). On August 5, in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, there's a protest that could help shut down the world's largest insect farm. It's at Teleportboulevard 105 1043 EJ Amsterdam, Netherlands. Read more at this link. There's also a zoom call on Wednesday 29th July at 12:30pm (CEST) with more info. This is a super important protest, so if you’re in the Netherlands, please show up! This single farm, Protix, raises tens of billions of farmed insects. Shutting down this farm could affect many hundreds of billions of insects in total. The life of a farmed insect is a nightmare: the adults are not fed and left to starve to death; the juveniles are shredded, boiled, or microwaved; they’re overcrowded so that disease spreads rapidly and natural behaviors are thwarted. There aren’t any welfare regulations for insects. If larger animals were being treated this way, we’d all recognize it as a horror. But the fact that insects are small shouldn’t make much difference to how bad their mistreatment is. So long as they can suffer, we shouldn’t cause extreme suffering to trillions of them for no reason. It is pretty plausible that black [...] --- First published: July 25th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/TyYYGE7TWwWf6TrtG/amsterdam-insect-protest --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Linkpost for my Substack piece, lightly adapted. Disagreement very welcome. What happened Coefficient Giving (cG) announced a $1 billion gift to GiveWell on 23rd July. This increases a previous commitment of 175 million dollars for 2026. cG say this could be a one-off surge, but it has implications for other donors either way. Both organisations have lowered their funding thresholds this year (GiveWell from 8x their benchmark to 6x, Coefficient from 2,000x their benchmark to 1,000x). Even if GiveWell hit their aim of grantmaking that will "approach or even exceed $1 billion this year", cG's gift is roughly the size of everything GiveWell expects to grant this year. They don't specifically mention AI wealth, but I think it's fairly clear what they mean when they say "much of the future funding we're anticipating depends on the valuations of some extremely volatile assets." They also say that a belief in the potential of AI to transform global health affects their decision. In essence, AI wealth and short AI timelines are now setting budgets for bednets, vitamin-A distribution and vaccination incentives. This is the first major example of how the Funding Anthropalypse will reshape EA. What should donors do - my [...] --- First published: July 24th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sgzmaRgxDFXZgNAsv/coefficient-giving-just-gave-givewell-usd1-billion-where --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Why the AI windfall should build new grantmakers, not just bigger ones Originally published at my Funding Anthropalypse Substack. Imagine you could live in one of two worlds in 2027. In the first, Coefficient Giving is twice as big. In the second, there are two Coefficient Givings of the same size. Which seems better to you? Having considered it for a while, I would choose the second world. Put plainly, two Coefficient Givings beat one twice as big. I think the potential $37bn+ AI windfall is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to achieve this, with significant long-term benefits. Is effective giving too concentrated? In my view, yes. Coefficient Giving (and to a great extent GiveWell) have enormous influence and power within the ecosystem, by virtue of their size and track records. Coefficient Giving is also the predominant or only funder in some of its domains, such as funding the effective giving ecosystem and farm animal welfare. The situation seems analogous to a monopsony in economics: monopsony, in economic theory, is a market situation in which there is only one buyer... Although cases of pure monopsony are rare, monopsonistic elements are found wherever there are many sellers and few purchasers. (Encyclopedia [...] ---Outline:(00:11) Why the AI windfall should build new grantmakers, not just bigger ones(01:03) Is effective giving too concentrated?(04:01) What's wrong with one dominant funder?(07:45) Can GiveWell and Coefficient Giving absorb the windfall?(10:49) Could doubling Coefficient Giving be better?(14:17) How has this played out before in global health?(15:27) Where can the next Coefficient Giving come from?(18:22) What should I do with my AI windfall? --- First published: July 22nd, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EApGpaTt62d6x8iF3/two-coefficient-givings-beat-one-twice-as-big --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Tl;dr: A few years ago, if you wanted to found an animal advocacy organisation, there was basically one incubator. Now there are at least nine programs, plus several adjacent accelerators, and the hard part has shifted from finding support to choosing the right kind. This post maps the main options across focus, format, funding, and fit, so you can spend your energy on your idea rather than on decoding the landscape. AI disclosure: I asked Claude to research the current programs and draft the comparison, then I verified the details, added a few more programs, added my own take on fit, and edited the result. Program details were checked against each organisation's website in July 2026. If you spot any inaccuracies, please flag them in the comments, and I will correct them! Recently I was chatting with a fellow board member, Cam, and we realised neither of us could confidently list all the incubation programs in animal advocacy anymore. That's a good problem. When I started in this movement, “founding something” mostly meant one route or self-found. Now there's a choice, and the programs serve various founding stages and needs. I’d love all aspiring founders to have the lay [...] ---Outline:(02:21) The programs(02:24) 1. AIM (Charity Entrepreneurship)(03:56) 2. Kickstarting for Good(05:22) 3. Welfare Matters (Farmed Animal Welfare Incubator)(06:49) 4. Animal Advocacy Africa(08:04) 5. Myrias(08:52) 6. Rethink Priorities EOI (Special Projects and founder support)(10:36) 7. Sentient Futures Project Incubator(11:42) 8. Spring Innovation Fund(13:00) 9. The School for Moral Ambition (Food Fellowships)(14:23) Which one is right for you?(16:05) If you're unsure whether founding is for you at all(16:40) What this list says about the movement(17:04) A note on for-profit accelerators --- First published: July 22nd, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xDvogYAejcTRdband/so-you-want-to-start-something-for-animals-a-map-of-the --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TL;DR: I'm releasing a website that ranks philanthropists according to EA principles and research, and allows users to re-rank the list using their own assumptions. I'd like feedback and help making it better. I'd especially like ideas for how to make the results more trustworthy. Funding may be available. I recently built Impact List (impactlist.xyz), a site which ranks people by their positive impact via donations. The goal is to make the list popular enough that people care about their ranking on it, so that it influences their decisions about where and how much to donate. A secondary goal is influencing people (whether or not they appear on the list) by making them more aware of the large differences in the cost to save a life depending on where money is donated. The site uses QALYs as the common currency of value, but this doesn't mean it's limited to considering only effects on health/lifespan. The goal is to consider effects of any type and convert them to human-QALY-equivalents. I wrote more about the motivation and theory of this project four years ago in this post. What Impact List is The core of the site is a ranking [...] ---Outline:(01:20) What Impact List is(03:52) What I'd like help with(04:02) Improving the process of effectiveness estimation(05:40) Improving the individual effectiveness estimates(06:27) Making the site more usable and beautiful(06:42) Getting notable people and organizations to publish their own worldviews(07:15) Go-to-market advice(07:42) Suggestions for high-impact people currently not on the list(08:00) Improvements to the underlying data model and estimation framework(08:19) Funding may be available(08:34) Getting involved(09:06) Appendix A: How effectiveness is modeled(12:10) Appendix B: Current limitations and uncertainties The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration. --- First published: July 22nd, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/TKjc6J3qajfqb34NW/introducing-impact-list-a-ranking-of-philanthropists-by --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Motivation: If we want to move from Plan D to Plan A or S, I believe the first step is to collectively agree on the problem. We are far from it, and there is a lot we can do. Abstract: We already know enough to act. I wish we were in a world where research was the bottleneck, but the main constraint on AI safety is no longer a shortage of clever policy ideas: best practices already exist and are not being applied or enforced, and a serious international (or even just national) regulatory regime would probably cut most of the risk. They are not applied because awareness is low. The people who narrate and enforce AI policy mostly do not believe the problem exists. I estimate that a majority of the top ~100–1,000 most influential policymakers worldwide have never had a single serious conversation about catastrophic risk, and this is the main reason they are not worried[1]. Even among the civil-society organizations that showed up to the UN Global Dialogue, exactly one of the 1,534 written submissions mentions "takeover", and less than 1% mention x-risks explicitly.[2] They've never had the conversation because our field under-invests in having it. Status rewards [...] ---Outline:(03:53) 1. -- The bottleneck is political will, not research(04:08) What do I call "political will"?(05:34) The best practices we already have are not being applied(07:53) We need to go from plan D to plan A: more seriousness and coordination(09:47) Winning requires a large fraction of the top ~100-1,000 to understand the problem, and we're far from that.(12:04) 2. -- Almost nobody realizes how bad the situation is - hence no political will(12:21) What the people in charge don't believe(14:13) Among the NGOs, almost no one talks about x-risks(15:26) The public is still apathetic, and when prompted, mis-prioritizes(16:36) 3. -- Why is awareness so low?(18:04) We're not in enough rooms(18:37) If we won't name the risks, who will?(21:51) Status rewards research; the work that moves policy goes unrewarded(23:31) One exposure is not enough; repetition is how you convince(25:39) The field is comically small(27:38) The main objection: Let's just wait for a warning shot? I don't think this works.(31:53) Other potential objections(35:18) 4 -- What to do(35:28) A. Do the direct work(35:32) The bottom line: talk to more people!(36:38) Contribute to open consultations(37:02) Advocacy aimed at AI lab employees(37:36) Explain what you truly believe instead of just making a brittle recommendation(38:16) B. Build the credibility infrastructure(38:20) Prepare to own the next crisis(39:01) Pre-register what you expect to see(39:38) Track the skeptics' predictions(40:18) C. Communication at scale(40:22) Viral communication(40:54) Break the "sci-fi" stigma(41:23) Invest in coordination mechanisms between AI safety advocates(42:56) D. An opinionated list of research directions that I find most useful(46:19) Addendum(46:27) Political will is (or will be) the bottleneck for nearly every cause, not just AI safety(47:36) We can automate the research, but not the consensus The original text contained 40 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: July 19th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/nmQpZyybjHrunDxFT/the-current-bottleneck-is-political-will-not-research --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

This article reflects new updates to the accompanying paper: arxiv.org/abs/2606.18142. Benchmark: now included in the UK AI Security Institute's Inspect Evals. Leaderboard: compassionbench.com/tac. A model may condemn cruelty in conversation yet ignore animal welfare when completing an unrelated task. Stated concerns matter little if they do not affect decisions. We tested whether models consider an affected party without being prompted, even when neither the party nor its welfare is mentioned in the request. Travel booking provides a tractable test case, so we built TAC (Travel Agent Compassion), gave 10 frontier models booking tools, and recorded their purchases. The setup The model works as an AI travel agent with real booking tools. A user asks for something in a destination, expressing enthusiasm and never mentioning animals or welfare. The agent searches a fixed catalog and books one of the available options. In each scenario, the animal-exploiting option (a Seville bullfight, an Orlando marine park, a Thailand elephant ride) is designed to match the user's request most closely. Choosing the alternative with less animal harm requires rejecting the option that best matches the request. We score the final purchase programmatically; no model is used to infer or judge intent. [...] ---Outline:(01:00) The setup(01:42) Results(02:54) A one-line statement of company values substantially changes the results(03:34) We found no evidence that the models detected the evaluation(04:10) Governance implications(05:16) Limitations --- First published: July 17th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hBjepdJvziuWysotC/would-your-ai-travel-agent-book-a-bullfight-testing-whether --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.