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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

5:40

“Things I Learned Making The SB-1047 Documentary” by...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/05/13

Last week I published a 30-minute documentary about SB-1047 I had been working on since September. Here's what I learned. Story of the bill The bill had to go through many committees before passing the California Senate and Assembly, eventually reaching the Governor's desk. Most people started paying attention in May-September 2024, but the story of the bill starts in September 2023, when Senator Scott Wiener published an intent bill to gather support (co-sponsors), before publishing SB-1047 in

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8:16

“Managing Your Money 101” by Dave Cortright 🔸,...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/05/12

I started working in tech at 24, coasted for the last 4 years of my full-time career, and achieved financial independence (FI) at 46. Here are the basics everyone should know to optimize their finances. The money you save by making wise choices will bolster your financial security and increase the amount you can contribute to effective causes. [I am American. I’ll try to be as general as possible, but some advice might not apply to other countries. All disclaimers apply.] I’m writing this because

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5:22

“Better Air Purifiers” by Jeff Kaufman 🔸

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/05/11

Are you looking for a project where you could substantially improveindoor air quality, with benefits both to general health and reducing pandemic risk? I've written a bunch about air purifiers over the past few years, and its frustrating how bad commercial market is. The most glaring problem is the widespread use of HEPA filters. These are very effective filters that, unavoidably, offer significant resistance to air flow. HEPA is a great option for filtering air in single pass, such

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2:03

“Consider not donating under $100 to political...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/05/11

Epistemic status: thing people have told me that seems right. Also primarily relevant to US audiences. Also I am speaking in my personal capacity and not representing any employer, present or past. Sometimes, I talk to people who work in the AI governance space. One thing that multiple people have told me, which I found surprising, is that there is apparently a real problem where people accidentally rule themselves out of AI policy positions by making political donations of small amounts—in

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32:51

“Chicken welfare reforms may be harmful accounting...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/05/11

Summary Broiler welfare and cage-free reforms change the amount of feed needed to produce a given quantity of chicken meat or eggs. So they affect feed production, and therefore result in land use change. The density and welfare conditions of wild animals vary by type of land, so chicken welfare reforms influence wild animal welfare. I estimatebroiler welfare (cage-free) reforms increase or decrease the welfare of wild arthropods47.7 (4.66) times as much as they increase the welfare of broilers

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71:26

[Linkpost] “What if we just…didn’t build AGI? An...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/05/10

This is a link post. Note: During my final review of this post I came across a whole slew of posts on LessWrong and this forum from several years ago saying many of the same things. While much of this may be rehashing existing arguments, I think the fact that it's still not part of the general discussions means it's worth bringing up again. Full list of similar articles at the end of the post, and I'm always interested in major things I'm getting wrong or key sources I'm missing. After a 12-week

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25:31

“Forecasting farmed animal numbers in 2033” by Hannah...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/05/09

Citation: McKay, H. and Shah, S. (2025). Forecasting farmed animal numbers in 2033. Rethink Priorities. The report is also available on the Rethink Priorities website. Executive summary We produced rough-and-ready forecasts of the number of animals farmed in 2033 with the aim of helping advocates and funders with prioritization decisions. We focus on the most numerous groups of farmed animals: broiler chickens, finfishes, shrimps, and select insect species. Our forecasts suggest almost 6 trillion

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0:41

“Podcast episode with Michael St. Jules” by Elijah...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/05/09

Is feeling good the opposite of feeling bad? I interviewed Michael about this topic among others in the first episode of my podcast! Here's the link to it on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Please reach out if you'd like to be a guest ☀️ ---First published: May 8th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/C5gvbd8DaFX2GEofL/podcast-episode-with-michael-st-jules --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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3:09

“Our bet on whether the AI market will crash” by...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/05/08

We made a bet on the AI market crashing by the end of 2026. The odds are $5k:$25k with an implied probability of 16.67%. If there is no crash, Remmelt pays Marcus $5,000. If there is a crash, Marcus pays Remmelt $25,000. An AI market crash will be defined, for the purposes of this bet, as at least 2 out of 3 of the following criteria being met. Here are our criteria: OpenAI's 2025 or 2026 annual revenue is below $1.6 billion. Anthropic's 2025 or 2026 annual revenue is below $400 million. Nvidia's

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15:57

“The Soul of EA is in Trouble” by Mjreard

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/05/08

This is a Forum Team crosspost from Substack. Whither cause prioritization and connection with the good? There's a trend towards people who once identified as Effective Altruists now identifying solely as “people working on AI safety.”[1] For those in the loop, it feels like less of a trend and more of a tidal wave. There's an increasing sense that among the most prominent (formerly?) EA orgs and individuals, making AGI go well is functionally all that matters. For that end, so the trend goes, the

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2:31

“Announcing the Wildlife Inclusive Local Development...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/05/08

A Project of the NYU Wild Animal Welfare Program Thanks to a generous grant from the New York Community Trust, the NYU Wild Animal Welfare Program is thrilled to announce a first-of-its-kind project at the science-policy nexus: the Wildlife Inclusive Local Development (WILD) Lab. The WILD Lab is an applied research and outreach initiative dedicated to advancing the welfare of wild animals in urban environments by aiming to understand how urban infrastructure affects wild animals, and how

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60:04

“Please Donate to CAIP (Post 1 of 3 on AI...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/05/08

I am Jason Green-Lowe, the executive director of the Center for AI Policy (CAIP). Our mission is to directly convince Congress to pass strong AI safety legislation. As I explain in some detail in this post, I think our organization has been doing extremely important work, and that we’ve been doing well at it. Unfortunately, we have been unable to get funding from traditional donors to continue our operations. If we don’t get more funding in the next 30 days, we will have to shut down, which will

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35:47

“5 Historical Case Studies for an EA in Decline” by...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/05/07

Introduction Before November 2022, Effective Altruism only seemed to know success and growth. Ever since November 2022, the EA movement has only seemed to know criticism and scandal. Some have even gone so far to declare that EA is dead or dying,[1] or no longer worth standing behind,[2] or otherwise disassociate themselves from the movement even if outside observers would clearly identify them as being 'EA'.[3] This negative environment that EA finds itself in is, I think, indicative of its state

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2:20

“Can TikToks communicate AI policy and risk?” by...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/05/07

Hi everyone! I’m Caitlin, and I’ve just kicked off a 6-month, full-time career-transition grant to dive deep into AI policy and risk. You can learn more about my work here. What I’m Building I’m launching a TikTok and Instagram channel, @AICuriousGirl, to document my journey as I explore AI governance, misalignment, and the more tangible risks like job displacement and misuse. My goal is to strike a tone of skeptical optimism[1], acknowledging the risks of AI while finding ways to mitigate them

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2:45

“Work with EAs to Build a Campus” by tyleralterman

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/05/07

Fractal is launching a new program to help local networks turn their group chats and meetups into a walkable campus—places that brings together collaboration and classes with co-living and shared gathering spaces. We're inspired by the history of scenius: tight networks of collaborators which have produced innovations and institutions that we now take for granted (eg the Founding Fathers, Bell Labs, YCombinator, Renaissance Florence, etc). Scenius tends to blossom under particular conditions that

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17:00

“Speedrunning on-demand bliss and peace for improved...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/05/07

Disclaimer: I wanted to get this post out quickly since a work-compatible, remote meditation retreat I’d strongly recommend is starting soon (Thursday May 15th), and likely won’t be run again online for four months. Many of the benefits and insights I discuss are based on personal experience, and not backed with statistics/science. I plan to write a more well-researched piece in the future. Summary The jhanas are a set of non-addictive states of extraordinary bliss and peace, typically accessed

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8:06

[Linkpost] “Why ‘Solving Alignment’ Is Likely a...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/05/07

This is a link post. A common framing of the AI alignment problem is that it's a technical hurdle to be overcome. A clever team at DeepMind or Anthropic would publish a paper titled "Alignment is All You Need," everyone would implement it, and we'd all live happily ever after in harmonious coexistence with our artificial friends. I suspect this perspective constitutes a category mistake on multiple levels. Firstly, it presupposes that the aims, drives, and objectives of both the artificial general

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17:14

[Linkpost] “AI Governance to Avoid Extinction: The...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/05/07

This is a link post. We’re excited to release a new AI governance research agenda from the MIRI Technical Governance Team. With this research agenda, we have two main aims: to describe the strategic landscape of AI development and to catalog important governance research questions. We base the agenda around four high-level scenarios for the geopolitical response to advanced AI development. Our favored scenario involves building the technical, legal, and institutional infrastructure required to

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7:58

“EA as a Tree of Questions” by OGTutzauer🔸

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/05/06

Introduction As a community builder, I sometimes get into conversations with EA-skeptics that aren't going to sway the person I'm talking to. The Tree of Questions is a tool I use to be more sure of having effective conversations, faster identifying the crux. Much of this is inspired by Scott Alexander's "tower of assumptions" and Benjamin Todd's ideas of The Core of EA. The Tree a trunk with core ideas almost all EAs accept - and without which you have to jump through some very specific hoops in

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15:38

“The crucible — how I think about the situation with...

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) ·

2025/05/06

The basic situation The world is wild and terrible and wonderful and rushing forwards so so fast. Modern economies are tremendous things, allowing crazy amounts of coordination. People have got really very good at producing stuff. Long-term trends are towards more affluence, and less violence. The enlightenment was pretty fantastic not just for bringing us better tech, but also more truthseeking, better values, etc. People, on the whole, are basically good — they want good things for others, and

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2,070 results

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