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Buck argues that students should engage with AI safety by trying to actually assess the arguments and the safety proposals. He claims that this is doable and useful. Buck Shlegeris is a researcher at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. Buck works to make the future good for sentient beings; at the moment he believes that working on existential risk from artificial intelligence is my best bet for doing this. This talk was taken from EA Student Summit 2020. Click here to watch the talk with the PowerPoint presentation.

SCI Foundation has been selected by GiveWell as one of its most effective charities every year since 2009. How does SCI reach and improve the lives of the poorest of the poor? What is unique about this organisation’s approach and outsized impact? Senior Monitoring, Evaluation, and Research Advisor Katie Fantaguzzi discusses SCI’s progress toward its vision to eliminate preventable disease. This talk was taken from EA Global Asia and Pacific 2020. Click here to watch the talk with the PowerPoint presentation.

Nikita co-founded Fortify Health, a wheat flour fortification initiative based in India, with Brendan Eappen in 2017. They launched Fortify Health with a seed grant and support from what was to become Charity Entrepreneurship, and have since received two GiveWell incubation grants to scale up wheat flour fortification in Maharashtra and West Bengal, India. Nikita previously worked in communications at Malaria Consortium, and has also been a Research and Outreach Intern at the Centre for Effective Altruism. She graduated from Oxford University with a BA in French and German, and enjoys cooking, language learning, and cycling. This talk was taken from EA Global Student Summit 2020. Click here to watch the talk on the Centre for Effective Altruism YouTube channel.

Are you thinking about how to practically pursue a career with an effective altruism aligned organization but do not come from a traditional background? Tony has lived many lives including as a management consultant, lawyer and now global development practitioner. Tony discusses the role that active experimentation has had in shaping his current world view as an effective altruist. This talk was taken from EA Student Summit 2020. Click here to watch the talk with the PowerPoint presentation.

Catherine shares the Centre for Effective Altruism’s latest thinking about the key role that EA groups play in building our community, suggests possible goals for groups, and outlines the support available to groups if you’re currently organising a group or keen to learn more about how to start one. Catherine Low is a Groups Support Contractor for Center for Effective Altruism. Catherine provides support to effective altruism groups around the world. Before joining CEA, she managed the Students for High-Impact Charity program and taught science, physics, and ethics at the high school level. She is also heavily involved in EA community building across New Zealand and Australia. Catherine holds a PhD in physics from the University of Melbourne. This talk was taken from EA Global Asia and Pacific 2020. Click here to watch the talk with the PowerPoint presentation.

Claire discusses different potential high-impact approaches to one’s time as a student, and the tradeoffs between them, such as pursuing opportunities to gain career capital vs. doing directly impactful research. She focuses on the conditions under which she thinks students should and shouldn’t try to do community building and high-impact projects as students, and some particular project options she thinks are potentially promising for some students, largely from a longtermist perspective. Claire Zabel is a program officer on global catastrophic risks for Open Philanthropy. She leads Open Philanthropy’s grantmaking on effective altruism and does research and makes grants across Open Philanthropy’s efforts to reduce global catastrophic risks. She joined Open Philanthropy in August 2015 as a Research Analyst. Claire has a B.S. and M.S. in Earth Systems from Stanford University, where she conducted research related to the science, ethics, and governance of solar geoengineering. This talk was taken from EA Student Summit 2020. Click here to watch the talk with the PowerPoint presentation.

Kathryn Mecrow-Flynn, the Founder and CEO of WANBAM, discusses the lessons learnt during WANBAM’s first year of operation. She talks about the opportunities for getting involved and the possibilities for similar mentorship schemes in the community. Founded in 2019, WANBAM connects and supports a global network of women, trans people of any gender, and non-binary people interested in effective altruism through mentorship. This talk was taken from EA Global Asia and Pacific 2020. Click here to watch the talk with the PowerPoint presentation.

The fight against global catastrophic risks (GCRs) requires international cooperation, yet it is often challenging to foster genuine collaboration among different countries. Jenny Xiao, a PhD student at Columbia University, reconceptualizes international cooperation decisions as a tradeoff between “dual moral obligations” towards the nation and humanity as a whole. How countries think about this tradeoff shapes their willingness to contribute to collective efforts against GCRs. This talk was taken from EA Global Asia and Pacific 2020. Click here to watch the talk with the PowerPoint presentation.

In this episode, Peter and Wanyi have a brief conversation about the direction of EA, movement building strategies, and how to feel about people who do not donate money. Peter Singer has written, co-authored, edited or co-edited more than 40 books, including Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, The Life You Can Save, and The Most Good You Can Do. His writings have inspired both the animal rights movement and effective altruism, and he is the founder of the charity The Life You Can Save. This talk was taken from EA Global Asia and Pacific 2020. Click here to watch the talk on the Effective Altruism YouTube channel.

Zach talks about why, when, and how to use “Back Of The Envelope Calculations” (BOTECs) to inform altruistic decision-making and walks through an example to demonstrate key concepts. Zachary Robinson is a research fellow at open philanthropy. Open Philanthropy is an organization whose mission is to give as effectively as they can and share their … Continue reading Using “Back of the Envelope Calculations” (BOTECs) to prioritize interventions | Zachary Robinson

Aditya examines ways to expand animal advocacy in India; especially concern and research about wild animal suffering which has great potential for reducing aggregate suffering. Given the historically positive attitude of the Indian cultural and legal systems towards non-human animals, strategic outreach to advocates, academics and policy-makers by organizations like Animal Ethics could potentially influence … Continue reading Expansion of animal advocacy and concern for wild animal suffering in India | Aditya SK

Overcoming confirmation bias in our thinking requires decoupling: evaluating the strength of new evidence independently from our prior views. David explains how to implement some easy cognitive techniques that have been shown to help us successfully decouple; and how even informal decoupling approximates Bayesian reasoning. David Manley is an associate professor of philosophy at the … Continue reading Decoupling: a technique for reducing bias | David Manley

Michelle and Oscar discuss the wide variety of research areas relevant to wild animal welfare, the career and educational pathways to conducting such research, and how you can support the movement along the way. Michelle Graham is the Executive Director of Wild Animal Initiative. Her projects have included work on prioritizing and categorizing different interventions. … Continue reading Outlook on the emerging field of wild animal welfare research | Michelle Graham and Oscar Horta

In a world now painfully aware of pandemics, with ever-increasing access to autonomous biological agents, how can we help channel society’s response to COVID-19 to minimize the risk of deliberate misuse? Using the challenge of securing DNA synthesis as an example, Kevin outlines the key norms and incentives governing biotechnology, lays out potential strategies for … Continue reading Mitigating catastrophic biorisks | Kevin Esvelt

Bianca Le is the founder and director of Cellular Agriculture Australia. CAA is a nonprofit organization with the mission of improving human health and building resilient food systems in Australia. They do this by promoting and accelerating the development of healthy and sustainable animal proteins through research and development in cellular agriculture. Cellular agriculture is … Continue reading Cellular agriculture: futureproofing our food systems for humans, animals and our planet | Bianca Le

Olivia discusses GiveWell’s current work and forward priorities, including new areas of GiveWell’s research, as well as sharing some updates on some of GiveWell’s projects in Asia. GiveWell is a nonprofit dedicated to finding outstanding giving opportunities and publishing the full details of their analysis to help donors decide where to give. Unlike charity evaluators … Continue reading GiveWell’s current progress and priorities | Olivia Larsen

In this episode, Dr Sell talks about her history with Olympic swimming, how she came to work on biosecurity, and what she is working on now during the pandemic. Dr. Sell is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering … Continue reading Biosecurity Career Story | Dr Tara Kirk Sell

Jaime discusses NTI’s new report, “Preventing Global Catastrophic Biological Risks”. In February 2020, during the Munich Security Conference, NTI convened senior leaders from around the world for a scenario-based tabletop exercise designed to identify gaps in global capabilities to prevent and respond to high-consequence biological events. The report summarizes the exercise and provides recommendations from … Continue reading Reducing global catastrophic biological risks | Jaime Yassif

Luisa Rodriguez discusses approaches to global priorities research, focusing on answering important empirical questions. She uses her recent work on civilizational collapse and recovery as a case study. Luisa Rodriguez is research fellow at the Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research. Previously, she researched nuclear war at Rethink Priorities and as a visiting researcher at … Continue reading Doing empirical global priorities research: the question of civilizational collapse and recovery| Luisa Rodriguez

Principles of effective altruism counsel paying close attention to the evidence, to find the most cost-effective opportunities to do good. But evidence covers only the more immediate effects of any intervention, and it’s highly likely the vast majority of the value is thereby omitted from the calculation. Hilary discusses the range of possible responses to … Continue reading Evidence, cluelessness and the long term | Hilary Greaves