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PODCAST

EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

Audio narrations from the Effective Altruism Forum, including curated posts, posts with 30 karma, and other great writing. If you"d like fewer episodes, subscribe to the "EA Forum (Curated & Popular)" podcast instead.

technology philosophy

All Episodes

3:11

“You Should Get a Reusable Mask” by Jeff Kaufman 🔸

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/10/08

A pandemic that's substantially worse than COVID-19 is a seriouspossibility. If one happens, having a good mask could save your life. A high quality reusable mask is only $30 to $60, and I think it's well worth it to buy one for yourself. Worth it enough that I think you should order one now if you don't have one already. But if you're not convinced, let's do some rough estimation. COVID-19 killed about 0.2% of people (20M of 8B). The 1918 flu killed more like 2.5% (50M of 2B)

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6:40

“Request for Proposals: Meta Charity Funders - Fall...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/10/07

Summary We’re launching the fifth round of Meta Charity Funders — a selective funding opportunity for promising meta charities, i.e. organisations that support or mobilise others to have a large positive impact. Last round (Spring 2025), MCF awarded ~$550k to 10 charities, including effective giving initiatives and specialised community- and capacity-building groups. Apply for funding by October 31st 23:59 GMT or join the circle as a funder (more information below)! We expect all applicants to

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5:38

“Free-Wheeling, Personality-Driven EA Conversations”...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/10/07

Chana Messinger (80k's head of video, formerly of CEA's Community Health team) and I (Matt Reardon, formerly of 80k) have been recording Expected Volume (Apple, Spotify),[1] a podcast of unscripted conversations between us and and some great guests from across the community, including: Andy Masley Phil Trammell Conor Barnes Daniel Filan Alex Lawsen Trevor Levin Julia Wise Topics vary widely, but we often touch on EA history, community dynamics, politics, and religion, with some personal

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9:47

“Aspiring AI Safety Researchers: Consider ‘Atypical...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/10/06

Housekeeping notes: This was hastily written; there might be some bad phrasing here and there – Forgive me! This advice may not apply to everyone. It was inspired a lot by my personal experience moving away from research and into “other” roles in AI safety, starting around September 2024. I’ve previously written a little bit about why I’ve enjoyed fieldbuilding and why I’ve found it valuable in the bottom of this other post as well) _____ TLDR: Non-research roles in AI safety don't appear to get

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52:02

“Utilitarians Should Accept that Some Suffering...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/10/06

Note to competition judges: feedback extremely welcome! Preface Relationship to "The Case for Strong Longtermism" This post engages with themes central to Greaves and MacAskill's "The Case for Strong Longtermism" in Essays on Longtermism, offering not a refutation but an important reframing of how we should think about far-future moral priorities. While Greaves and MacAskill compellingly argue that far-future effects dominate the moral importance of our actions today, my argument suggests that the

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0:58

“A new Netflix series just dropped on wild animal...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/10/06

Nightmares of Nature offers a shocking and novel twist on the classic wildlife doc, turning it into a horror movie seen from the point of view of the individual animals. Nature is full of wonder, but it's also full of bone-chilling monsters. Will our animal heroes survive this wildlife horror story or meet a grizzly end? The first episode follows a pregnant mouse who has to navigate a scary world of predators in order to find a safe place to give birth… The Netflix trailer is here, and the full

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54:08

“Taking ethics seriously, and enjoying the process”...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/10/05

Here's a talk I gave at an EA university group organizers’ retreat recently, which I've been strongly encouraged to share on the forum. I'd like to make it clear I don't recommend or endorse everything discussed in this talk (one example in particular which hopefully will be self-evident), but do think serious shifts in how we engage with ethics and EA would be quite beneficial for the world. Part 1: Taking ethics seriously To set context for this talk, I want to go through an Our World in Data

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8:52

“Omelas Is Perfectly Misread” by Tobias Häberli

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/10/05

The Standard Reading If you've heard of Le Guin's ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’, you probably know the basic idea. It's a go-to story for discussions of utilitarianism and its downsides. A paper calls it “the infamous objection brought up by Ursula Le Guin”. It shows up in university ‘Criticism of Utilitarianism' syllabi and is used for classroom material alongside the Trolley Problem. The story is often also more broadly read as a parable about global inequality, the comfortable rich

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5:12

[Linkpost] “Introducing the Mox Guest Program” by...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/10/03

This is a link post. TL;DR: Mox, a community space and incubator in San Francisco, is offering 2x/month complimentary access to members of AI safety orgs, and other causes we admire. Current partners of the Mox Guest Program include: ARC MIRI Elicit GovAI FAR AI Seldon Labs Tarbell Fellowship Redwood Research Lightcone Infrastructure and a few other private partners. What we’re offering We’re looking to partner with aligned orgs, to make it easy for their staff to drop by when they’re in SF. This

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17:53

[Linkpost] “The Four Pillars: A Hypothesis for...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/10/03

This is a link post. Biological risks are more severe than has been widely appreciated. Recent discussions of mirror bacteria highlight an extreme scenario: a single organism that could infect and kill humans, plants, and animals, exhibits environmental persistence in soil or dust, and might be capable of spreading worldwide within several months. In the worst-case scenario, this could pose an existential risk to humanity, especially if the responses/countermeasures were inadequate.Less severe

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6:39

“The day Elon Musk’s AI became a Nazi (and what it...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/10/02

If you just want a link to the video, watch it here!Watch nowWhat's AI in Context? (Skip if you already know) AI in Context is 80,000 Hours’ new(ish) Youtube channel, hosted by Aric Floyd. We’re trying to do high production storytelling that also informs people about transformative AI and its risks (but there's a lot of paths our future strategy could take). We talk about our launch more here.The MechaHitler video Probably the EA Forum disproportionately knows what MechaHitler is, but not everyone

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36:30

“Andrew Snyder-Beattie on the low-tech plan to patch...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/10/02

By Robert WiblinWatch on YoutubeListen on SpotifyRead the transcript Episode summary If we can get their cost down to $10, this becomes one of the most cost-effective ways of preventing respiratory transmission. The shelf life is 20 years. That means basically 50 cents per person per year of protection. … If you’re a government it makes a lot of sense to just stockpile enough to cover your entire population. Right now we spend about $10 billion a year on missile defence. Stockpiling one of these for

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7:17

“Diversify Your Moral Risk Portfolio” by Bentham’s...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/10/02

Crosspost of my blog. Lots of people have two conflicting desires: Do the most good. Make sure you do some good. These are in conflict. Sometimes the thing that does the most good in expectation has a low chance of doing any good. If you give a lot of money to shrimp, for example, there's about a 50% chance you’re wasting your money if it turns out that shrimp aren’t conscious. Similarly, if you take Pascal's wager, and give money to groups that effectively promote the religion you think is most

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1:45

“Open Letter to stop the EU’s ban on fake meat...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/10/01

Context: The EU is currently considering introducing a ban on companies in Europe from using terms like ‘meat’, ‘steak’, ‘burger’, ‘sausage’, et cetera in plant based food labels. The proposal would also restrict the use of meat related terms for future cultivated meat products yet to enter the market. Similar measures had previously been debated in 2020, but these were ultimately voted against due to widespread negative attention in the international press. There is a possibility that the ban

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9:06

“Maximising EAG value as a student” by Sam Robinson 🔸

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/09/30

0. Key Info TL;DR: Most students get <20% of the potential value of EAG due to poor/ insufficient preparation. Students should ideally spend 15-20 hours (4-6 absolute minimum) identifying career uncertainties, creating concrete options, setting SMART goals, then booking and prepping 15+ meetings around those goals. Epistemic status: This guidance is based on what has worked well for me in my ~5 EAG attendances as a student. I have 80% that ~80% students will benefit from following all the steps,

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8:59

“What SB 53, California’s new AI law, does” by tlevin

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/09/30

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 53 on September 29. I think it's a pretty great step, though I certainly hope future legislation builds on it. I wrote up my understanding of what the text actually does; I welcome any corrections (and certainly further analysis for what this all means for AI safety)! Very short summary The law requires major AI companies to: Publish a frontier AI frameworkdescribing how the developer “approaches” assessing and mitigating catastrophic risks, defined as

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5:14

“Metaculus is Hiring a Head of Consulting Services”...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/09/29

Metaculus is looking for an experienced leader from the consulting world to grow our consulting practice, helping organizations use forecasting to make better decisions on critical global challenges. Find the full job description and applyhere. Start Date:As soon as possible, but with significant flexibility for the right candidate. Location: Global/remote (must be available during core team collaboration hours of 8 AM to 12 PM Pacific time). Compensation:$200-250k USD base salary plus additional

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13:31

“15 Easy, Low-Effort Ways to Support Your EA Group”...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/09/29

Even with a busy schedule, there are easy micro-volunteering actions you can take to support your local, national, or regional EA group as well as other EA organizations engaged in outreach and community building. These small steps can fit “whenever, wherever” — and even brief acts of support can add up to meaningful impact. Below are 15 concrete suggestions, each with a short explanation of why it matters to your group's mission. Invite a Friend to an Event or the Community Why it matters: Many

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13:31

“15 Easy, Low-Effort Ways to Support Your EA Group”...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/09/29

Even with a busy schedule, there are easy micro-volunteering actions you can take to support your local, national, or regional EA group as well as other EA organizations engaged in outreach and community building. These small steps can fit “whenever, wherever” — and even brief acts of support can add up to meaningful impact. Below are 15 concrete suggestions, each with a short explanation of why it matters to your group's mission. Invite a Friend to an Event or the Community Why it matters: Many

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7:25

“Brain Farming: The Case for a Global Ban” by Novel...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/09/29

Background In my previous post, I discussed Cortical Labs, an Australian biocomputing startup. After achieving early success combining human neurons with silicon chips, Cortical Labs launched a commercial product strategy: selling biocomputers that contain living human neurons and offering “Wetware-as-a-Service” cloud access to their computing infrastructure. The company envisions broad commercialization of their products, across applications in AI systems, robotics, and military technology.[1]

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2,044 results

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