EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular‪)‬ EA Forum Team

This is a link post. A brief overview of recent OpenAI departures (Ilya Sutskever, Jan Leike, Daniel Kokotajlo, Leopold Aschenbrenner, Pavel Izmailov, William Saunders, Ryan Lowe Cullen O'Keefe[1]). Will add other relevant media pieces below as I come across them.
Some quotes perhaps worth highlighting:
Even when the team was functioning at full capacity, that “dedicated investment” was home to a tiny fraction of OpenAI's researchers and was promised only 20 percent of its computing power — perhaps the most important resource at an AI company. Now, that computing power may be siphoned off to other OpenAI teams, and it's unclear if there’ll be much focus on avoiding catastrophic risk from future AI models.
-Jan suggesting that compute for safety may have been deprioritised even despite the 20% commitment. (Wired claims that OpenAI confirms that their "superalignment team is no more").
“I joined with substantial hope that OpenAI [...]


The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.
---

First published:

May 17th, 2024


Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ckYw5FZFrejETuyjN/articles-about-recent-openai-departures

---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TL;DR It's time for an absurd challenge. On June 7th around 11:00, I'm going to (try to) break the world record for cycling without hands! 🚴🏻‍♂️ For more than 100km, I am raising money for the The Against Malaria Foundation (100% donated, costs covered by my company and myself) with the help of The Life You Can Save. Pledge your donation per kilometer or fixed amount here (tax deductibility possible in most countries, email me on vin@boas.co). The full story
I'm Vin from Amsterdam, and I'm doing a world record attempt for cycling without hands for charity on the 7th of June. I am donating 100% to The Against Malaria Foundation, with the goal of saving at least one life (5.000 USD). You can participate and push me to go further by joining here.
It's going too far to say that my bike saved my life, but at [...]

---

First published:

May 20th, 2024


Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/cj2Qauvc3tQRyXuBW/i-m-attempting-a-world-record-to-raise-money-for-amf

---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

How well do you know the details of the Giving What We Can Pledge? A surprising number of people we’ve spoken to — including many who know a lot about effective giving — shared some or all of these pledge misconceptions.
Misconception #1: If you sign the pledge, you have to donate at least 10% of your income each year.
The Giving What We Can Pledge is a public commitment to donate at least 10% of your lifetime income to the organisations that can most effectively use it to improve the lives of others. Giving 10% of your income each year is a good rule of thumb for most people, as it helps them stay on track with their lifetime pledge. However, there are certainly cases where it doesn’t make sense to give annually. Provided you continue reporting your income[1] on your personal pledge dashboard, the “Overall Progress” bar [...]
---
Outline:
(00:20) Misconception #1: If you sign the pledge, you have to donate at least 10% of your income each year.
(02:18) Misconception #2: Only the charities on the Giving What We Can Platform count towards your pledge
(03:25) Misconception #3: The pledge is a legal document
(04:43) Misconception #4: There's no good reason to sign the pledge if you’re already donating 10% or more
(09:22) Misconception #5: There's only one pledge
The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
---

First published:

May 15th, 2024


Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Y5QKkt9PFhqvG7CEn/5-things-you-ve-got-wrong-about-the-giving-what-we-can

---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

The Charity Commission for England and Wales has concluded its statutory inquiry into Effective Ventures Foundation UK (EVF UK), which was originally launched in 2023 following the collapse of FTX. The full report on the inquiry can be found here, and the Commission's press release on the inquiry can be found here. The inquiry's scope was to examine:
The extent of any risk to EVF's assets. The extent to which the trustees were complying with their legal obligations to protect the charity's property The governance and administration of the charity by the trustees.[1] We are pleased that “the inquiry found that the trustees took appropriate steps to protect the charity's funds and complied with their legal duties acting diligently and quickly following the collapse of FTX.” The Commission's report notes the full cooperation of EVF's trustees and that they “sought to act in the charity's best interests.”
Although [...]
The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.
---

First published:

May 22nd, 2024


Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gGadLX9Dc7XPqLhZc/the-charity-commission-has-concluded-its-inquiry-into

---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

We’re excited to announce a new volunteer-run organisation, UK Voters For Animals, dedicated to mobilising UK voters to win key legislative changes for farmed animals. Our goal is to recruit and train voters to meet with MPs and prospective MPs to build political support for our key asks. Due to the upcoming general election, we think this is a crucial time to apply pressure on politicians.
If you want to use your political power to win change for farmed animals, sign up to get involved here. Please share with anyone who may be interested – we’re looking to find people in all 650 constituencies around the UK so no small feat!
We think people in the EA community would be a great fit for helping out with this work because they are often thoughtful, pragmatic, and impact-focused. The minimum commitment required is attending a training, and participating in [...]
---

First published:

May 14th, 2024


Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/BmWuycesbhnXhmy5D/announcing-uk-voters-for-animals

---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a quickly-written opinion piece, of what I understand about OpenAI. I first posted it to Facebook, where it had some discussion.

Some arguments that OpenAI is making, simultaneously:
OpenAI will likely reach and own transformative AI (useful for attracting talent to work there). OpenAI cares a lot about safety (good for public PR and government regulations). OpenAI isn’t making anything dangerous and is unlikely to do so in the future (good for public PR and government regulations). OpenAI doesn’t need to spend many resources on safety, and implementing safe AI won’t put it at any competitive disadvantage (important for investors who own most of the company). Transformative AI will be incredibly valuable for all of humanity in the long term (for public PR and developers). People at OpenAI have thought long and hard about what will happen, and it will be fine. We can’t [...] ---

First published:

May 21st, 2024


Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9iLgAbu9KtpLupitk/what-s-going-on-with-openai-s-messaging

---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.