EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

EA Forum Team

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.

  1. 1d ago

    [Linkpost] “The Quest To Find The Next Big Communicators In AI Safety” by Akshyae Singh

    This is a link post. In September 2025, I'd become increasingly convinced that a fieldbuilding program for content creators could solve a long-standing bottleneck of expanding reach and trust beyond the AI safety and EA bubble. I had graduated from UCLA a few months earlier when I came across the AI-2027 report which had a significant impact on me. I rejected my six-figure tech consulting offer, left my place in LA, and moved to the first place I could find in the Bay Area to contribute to AI Safety. Contrary to my expectations, only a small subset of people were working towards what seemed to be far more important than building yet another AI B2B SaaS. I wanted to change this. The power of a good external-facing comms effort is underrated. AI in Context, If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies, Rob Miles is the first interaction with AI Safety for many, including mine. It has the power to empower mainstream audiences to act by creating trust and relatability, and meeting them where they’re at- social media. Moreover, I felt that I had the right background to do this- my experience as an activist, ex-founder building products for clients Google & [...] --- Outline: (02:29) The Fellowship (06:24) Other Features of the program (with pics!) (09:39) What we learnt (11:01) Looking Ahead (12:15) How to Get Involved (13:34) How to Get Involved (13:44) Early bird Applications are OPEN! APPLY (13:57) Join the Team (14:20) Partner with us (14:39) Consider Donating --- First published: June 11th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6i4HmdjGWhX7nzwt3/the-quest-to-find-the-next-big-communicators-in-ai-safety Linkpost URL:https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ALBdBRas7G3kdbPSq/the-quest-to-find-the-next-big-communicators-in-ai-safety --- 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.

    15 min

  2. 2d ago

    [Linkpost] “Scale Scale Scale, Govt. Govt. Govt: 3 concerns” by NickLaing

    This is a link post. I was recently at “Skoll”, the biggest NGO/social entrepreneurship conference. From one conversation to the next, two topics popped up over and over……. and over 1. Scale, Scale, Scale 2. Scale through Government, Government, Government We at OneDay Health grapple with these questions: how then Shall we scale? And shall we through Government? Right now we operate 88 one-nurse health centers which save lives in remote rural healthcare black holes. Our one nurse in one room model can get good primary care to people cheap and fast. But to get good healthcare to everyone, we’ll need to do more than “grow”, but “scale”. If we continue to launch more health centers every year through donor money, we’ll do plenty of good but can only grow our impact in a linear-ish way. From 100 to 150 to 200 health centers. Each year we’ll have to increase our donations and budget to increase our impact. Even if we succeed we’ll never reach tens of millions of people. So what is this “scale” business and how could we get there? Kevin Starr has outlined two key principles of scale. 1. “Scale is about exponential [...] --- Outline: (02:14) Three Concerns about Scale through Government (02:55) Not the only way (05:21) Should governments pay for the best interventions? (05:57) Morally Dodgy (07:10) Its really hard (08:39) Poor Taxpayers not Excess Western Money now pay for the impact --- First published: June 10th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wakWGb5qgiyvZyQQe/scale-scale-scale-govt-govt-govt-3-concerns Linkpost URL:https://substack.com/home/post/p-201440232 --- 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.

    10 min

  3. 2d ago

    “Building Ideas-First EA” by Mjreard

    TLDR: Sarah Bluhm and I are funding and mentoring ideas-first (as opposed to, e.g., careers-first) EA community builders. If you’re at one of these universities or know someone who is, we want to talk to you, especially this subset: University of Toronto University of Michigan UCLA USC NYU Columbia Claremont Colleges (Claremont McKenna, Scripps, Harvey Mudd, Pomona, Pitzer) Stanford Harvard MIT Cornell Georgetown Northwestern **Contact us here or at contact@nest-ea.org** The Network for EA Support & Training (NEST) We (Matt Reardon and Sarah Bluhm) founded NEST, whose mission is to build vibrant in-person EA communities by teaching organizers the craft of communicating EA ideas with courage and authenticity. I (Matt) am a former lawyer and 80k advisor who blogs, tweets, and podcasts about EA. Sarah worked on CEA's university groups team and has a background in bioengineering. NEST's philosophy is that EA communities should be platforms for individuals to form their own views on the central questions of Effective Altruism: what are the most important issues in the world, why those issues, and what should I do about them? This contrasts with approaches to community building that act as recruiting funnels for specific organizations or fields. We think [...] --- Outline: (00:56) The Network for EA Support & Training (NEST) (02:19) University groups (03:44) What we provide (05:46) The next step --- First published: June 11th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8pSppMFeQAeg4Pn8E/building-ideas-first-ea-1 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    7 min

  4. 2d ago

    [Linkpost] “Are top existential risk estimates 50,000 times too high? An optimizer’s curse model and analysis” by titotal

    This is a link post. Thanks to Arepo, David Thorstadt, Zeshen, and Michael st Jules for looking over this article. Disclaimer: I am not a subject matter expert and this is not a rigorous scientific article. This post is entirely human-written. Introduction In a previous article, I wrote a general introduction to the optimizer's curse, the phenomenon where a combination of random errors and ranking of causes results in the overestimation of top causes and a biasing of results towards uncertain causes. In that article, I mainly focussed on areas such as global health charities, where estimates or errors can be derived from the results of reasonably strong empirical evidence such as randomised control trials. In this post, I want to explore how the optimizer's curse might affect tasks that are in the domain of extreme uncertainty. Specifically, I will try and model how the curse could manifest in the ranking of estimates of existential risk, a subject where empirical evidence is thin and experts disagree by orders of magnitude. A standard way of ranking existential threats is to take a bunch of threats that have been raised as potentially deadly to humanity, and then for each one of them [...] --- Outline: (08:09) Part 1: Building a model (25:19) Part 2: Interrogating the model (40:15) Part 3: Objections (57:26) Summary and Conclusion: --- First published: June 11th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mEJKkkjQydM68EQTP/are-top-existential-risk-estimates-50-000-times-too-high-an Linkpost URL:https://titotal.substack.com/p/are-top-existential-risk-estimates --- 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.

    1h 2m

  5. 2d ago

    “Incumbents Might Be Replaced During AI Takeoff, Including in Animal Agriculture” by Hazo

    I used an LLM to help draft this post and it likely contains >10% AI-generated text, but I’ve edited/rewritten it extensively and endorse it. TL;DR It's unclear how much the intelligence explosion will directly affect agriculture, because it's one of the least cognitive-labor-intensive industries. But the industrial explosion that may follow could make even animal agriculture susceptible to disruptive innovation (possibly the only time in history that's true). This suggests that during AI-takeoff current incumbents could be replaced by AI-native startups. Given this, advocates should weigh influencing current companies less, take AI-native ag startups (and disrupting the industry themselves) seriously, and treat "AI-pilled" alternative protein as a distinct strategy. Disruptive Innovation We're possibly at the early stages of an intelligence explosion, which many believe will radically change the economy. How exactly the transition will work is less clear. There are two broad possibilities: one is that current companies (e.g. Tyson in the context of animal agriculture) will navigate the AI-transition, adopt new technologies, become AI-native in the relevant ways, and continue to dominate their respective industries in the future. The other is that a separate AI-native startup will directly compete against incumbents via disruption innovation. Disruptive innovation, as [...] --- Outline: (00:21) TL;DR (01:01) Disruptive Innovation (05:12) AI-pilled agriculture (09:15) Practical Ramifications --- First published: June 9th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/25JqQX8bBgG3gZY9n/incumbents-might-be-replaced-during-ai-takeoff-including-in --- 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.

    13 min

  6. 3d ago

    “A New Course” by Center for Reducing Suffering

    Suffering-focused ethics (SFE) is a family of moral views that gives special priority to reducing suffering. As you might know, we at the Center for Reducing Suffering find SFE deeply compelling—it is, after all, the backbone of our work. Part of our mission is to research and build a field around SFE. Unfortunately, SFE remains highly neglected in both academia and broader moral discourse. We are hoping to fill this gap. Discussions of ethics often focus on a range of concerns and moral traditions. The questions raised are both interesting and deeply important. Yet comparatively little attention is devoted to examining the moral significance of suffering itself and asking whether it deserves some kind of special priority. The lack of attention given to SFE and its core claims means that it remains underexamined, limiting our understanding of it. It also allows misconceptions to fester, distorting its meaning. For instance, people may equate SFE with negative utilitarianism, assume it is necessarily pessimistic or nihilistic, or believe it must have absurd implications. We believe that SFE is too important to be neglected in this way. We think these ideas deserve serious examination, open discussion, and careful reflection. Our new Intro to [...] --- First published: June 6th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Gn9RBsTs3kCieAcHb/a-new-course --- 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.

    4 min

  7. 3d ago

    “Critique: There are not enough “realistic” topics in EA” by jackchang110

    Statement: I'm far from an EA or AI expert, these are all opinions from an 19 years old EA laypeople (which may be biased or owefully wrong). Welcome to give me any critique in the comments(rather than just downvoting me). I think compared to the abstract philosophical problems(which of course are useful), there are far not enough discussions on the EA Forum of some relaistic topics, for example: 1.Compare earn to give vs direct work This is one of the most important topic(war) in EA, but very few try to calculate it. And a lot of people can't explain the reason well why they hold the opinion"Even for an avergae people, doing direct work is better than earn to give 50 thousand dollars-100 thousand dollars a year". Some people thinks that there are some PR 90+ talented people that are unfunded. In this case, unless you're better than these people, you should do earn to give 50 thousand dollars-100 thousand dollars, I'm not saying this claim is right, but if this holds true, this would dramtically change people strategy on career planning. Yet, very few posts compare EtG vs direct work. 2.The limitations of nationality and the importance of [...] --- First published: June 10th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HiyNc8qiGEa4E9Kq7/critique-there-are-not-enough-realistic-topics-in-ea --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    4 min

  8. 4d ago

    “Experience of a ‘generalist’ transitioning into AI safety in 2026” by Emily Marais

    I'm a freelance web designer and developer who has been concerned about AI and prioritising a transition into AI safety since late 2025. This post is a summary of my experience so far, as a possibly useful addition to the conversation around the need for generalists in AI safety. My hope is that this post can highlight some of the pain points experienced as a 'generalist' trying to work in this field. A brief summary of why I'm in this transition at all: In late 2025, I was concerned about how AI was changing my field (web design and development). I guess that the algorithm picked up on this, and recommended me AI in Context's video about AI 2027. I was immediately gripped by the existential risks mentioned. I did some more reading around AI safety, found myself in the EA funnel, and signed up for the Intro to EA course. By the end of it, I was sure that I wanted to focus on AI safety, due to the possibility of lock-in scenarios and extreme power concentration, among other concerns. My first action was to start volunteering with AI safety orgs - I reached out to AISafety.com and [...] --- First published: June 9th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/enecQaYfieyzn9ou9/experience-of-a-generalist-transitioning-into-ai-safety-in --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    5 min
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About

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.

Information

  • Creator
    EA Forum Team
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    250
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 All rights reserved
  • Show Website
    EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

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