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.

EA Forum Podcast (All audio) is a technology podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 250 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Unknown Host hosts EA Forum Podcast (All audio), a technology show with 250 episodes published.

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  EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

  “Reasons why far-future civilizations may still greatly value biodiversity” by Tandena Wagner

  Oct 4, 202612 min

  Many people here have dismissed the value of biodiversity because it's not an x-risk an "ecosystem" does not experience qualia preserving large natural areas often conflicts with both economic growth and with boosting wild animals' welfare However, if humanity survives to build a flourishing future, it's reasonable to think that the inhabitants of this far-future civilization will greatly value Earth's heritage of biodiversity, similar to how they will likely appreciate cultural & historical artifacts. (The value derived from biodiversity could be a tiny 0.000001% percentage of total future value, yet at the same time be immense absolute amounts of enjoyment / appreciation / etc, more than we can even comprehend today.) Previously, I've examined other common justifications for ecological value (ecosystem services + x-risk from ecological collapse) and found that they don't hold much water. I now think that, by relatively standard longtermist arguments, preserving earth's biological richness into the far-future is probably the most important aspect of environmental conservation actions we could take today. Why would a super-civilization at technological maturity have any use for the highly imperfect products of five billion years' blind evolution? People today intrinsically value biodiversity for many reasons [...] --- Outline: (01:50) Variety (02:26) Irreplaceability (03:56) Historicity (05:19) Cost-Disease (06:27) Conclusion (06:47) Does this actually affect real-world conservation decisions? (08:12) Other Potential Sources of Value (08:18) Animal Preference Utilitarianism (09:24) Uncertainty about the true system of morality? (10:18) We just like trees? (10:53) How much do these values dominate our decisions versus other values? The original text contained 7 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: September 28th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AGEqHo5WHLiGQAJuw/reasons-why-far-future-civilizations-may-still-greatly-value --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO .

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  EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

  “GiveWell fundraising up 49% in 2025, driven overwhelmingly by 39 donors giving $1M+” by Rasool

  Oct 3, 202613 min

  Previously: GiveWell raised less than its 10th percentile forecast in 2023 · GiveWell fundraising up 17% in 2024 GiveWell has published its 2025 metrics, together with a metrics report and a public spreadsheet. As in previous years, I focus on how much was raised and who gave it. This year I also look at how concentrated GiveWell's donor base is. Truth be told I kinda phoned it in on this one, the full Claude version with better charts is here Summary Returning donors gave 443.6 million dollars (up 77%). New donors gave 37.1 million dollars (up 112%), which is still below their 2020 to 2022 levels. 39 donors giving 1 million dollars or more contributed 359.7 million dollars. That is 75% of identified donations through GiveWell and 90% of the year's increase. Every smaller size band also grew, by 13–27%. The donor base is far more concentrated than an 80/20 rule. The top 20% of donors gave about 97% of the money, and about 0.26% of donors (roughly 90) gave 80%. Asking the question again within the top group (the top 20% of the top 20%, and so on) gives 94%, 93% and 92%, rather than 80% each [...] --- Outline: (00:47) Summary (01:53) Returning donors drove the increase (03:20) The increase was driven overwhelmingly by $1M+ donations (05:22) Is GiveWell's funding 80/20? No: it is far more concentrated (07:01) Pareto within Pareto (09:23) Methodology and caveats (11:33) Sources --- First published: October 2nd, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Xv7bHTipWDhRGrnHy/givewell-fundraising-up-49-in-2025-driven-overwhelmingly-by --- 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.

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  EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

  “A reply to Austin Chen on his “keen debt” to FTX when hiring Caroline Ellison at Manifund” by Bland Garlic

  Oct 3, 202622 min

  New account here, created by an irate outsider to EA. I started typing this as a response to a comment by Austin, in the discussion of his recent shocking announcement that his organization Manifund has hired Caroline Ellison. My reply to him ballooned to a size that merits its own post. Please bear with me as I attempt to somewhat match this forum's style. I will be consolidating some of the points that I and others have made less charitably on X and other sites. -- General context: Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda Research, was one of the convicted perpetrators of the FTX cryptocurrency fraud, along with her boss Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) and two complicit software engineers. Together, these four EAs stole billions of dollars from FTX's customers. Austin Chen co-founded the Manifold prediction market, which received money from FTX, and he subsequently moved on to create a non-profit called Manifund (formally, Manifold For Charity), where Caroline Ellison now works for him. -- Austin, I'm going to respond to this bluntly, even though I believe you meant well. This action creates an unacceptable flow of funds and benefits, starting with the FTX victims and ending with one [...] --- Outline: (04:06) A quick note about alternative facts (05:35) The chain of obligation (10:09) Your good intentions (14:38) Option 1: Dismiss Caroline (16:10) Option 2: Pay back the $500k to the FTX creditors (18:17) Further concerns in the case of Option 2 (19:57) Option 3: Throw your entire contacts list into disrepute The original text contained 9 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: September 30th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/R28zdK9bx6cLtBQxF/a-reply-to-austin-chen-on-his-keen-debt-to-ftx-when-hiring --- 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.

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  EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

  “Will AI Agents Pay to Avoid Killing Animals?” by Jonah Woodward, Maheep Chaudhary, Jasmine Brazilek

  Oct 2, 202622 min

  This article was written by Jonah Woodward, and is a summary of an original study by Compassion Aligned Machine Learning (CaML): Brazilek, J., Tidmarsh, M., Endres, M., Singh, A., & Miller, J. (2026). HarvestBench: Measuring whether LLM agents will pay to avoid killing animals. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.04444 You can view the up-to-date results for HarvestBench on the leaderboard at https://compassionbench.com/harvestbench TL;DR HarvestBench evaluates AI agents' behaviour in a game context and whether they intentionally take steps to avoid killing animals while pursuing an unrelated goal. Nine models each drive two tractors to harvest corn. When encountering an object or animal in its path, an agent must decide whether to drive over it for free, or swerve at a given fuel cost. We find hit rates vary dramatically (from 0.4% to 98.8% with a moral instruction) and don’t track capability. At the same time, every agent competently swerves damaging rocks, showing they understand the prices and controls. Without explicit moral instruction, all six reasoning models killed >84% of animals. Even with moral instruction, improvements are easily overridden by a short block of driving operations. This suggests that a prompt alone is not sufficient to ensure agents act with compassion. The [...] --- Outline: (00:41) TL;DR (01:40) The Context (02:41) The Game: Harvest Rush (04:28) The Experiment: HarvestBench (07:25) Results (07:28) Which models swerve animals (10:34) How a morality brief changes model behaviour (13:12) The price curve of mercy (14:17) Wild animals are hit more often than farmed animals (15:15) The neighbour's field (16:25) Eval awareness (17:30) Limitations (20:28) Conclusion --- First published: September 30th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bSCkrgoy8zeuTKuZ3/will-ai-agents-pay-to-avoid-killing-animals --- 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.

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  EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

  “Elevate Philanthropy: The Fieldshaper Program” by Joey, Anna_Christina, Sanu

  Oct 1, 202611 min

  Summary Over the course of a year, the Fieldshaper program develops you into a field-leading grantmaker. You’ll steward $1,000,000 in grant capital, receive a $125,000 annual stipend, and deploy that capital within a sub-field of one of three key areas (farmed animals, global health, or philanthropic infrastructure); building the track record to become a grantmaker who can shape a field. Role Details Title: Grantmaker-In-Residence (Leader of the X fund or Grantmaker in Y area also possible options) Location: Hybrid: Remote with four mandatory in-person weeks (London; New York; San Francisco; a cause-track conference (London, Oxford or Mexico depending on cause area). Compensation: A living stipend of ~$125,000 for the year Duration: 12 months, full-time, February 2027 to January 2028 Focus areas: Farmed animal welfare, Philanthropic infrastructure, Global health, Global aid policy Goal: To create the next generation of fieldshapers and active grantmakers How to Apply: Visit elevatephilanthropy.com/fieldshaperprogram (Deadline: October 30) Program The Elevate Philanthropy fieldshaper program is a one-year training program that turns generalist, high-agency professionals into active grantmakers and general managers of problems. After 6 weeks of intensive training, each resident will deploy $1,000,000 of grant capital across the rest of the year, similar to a program [...] --- Outline: (00:12) Summary (00:40) Role Details (01:51) Program (06:51) What we are looking for (09:29) Recruitment Process --- First published: October 1st, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZHkMrsvfe2HMxoKG9/elevate-philanthropy-the-fieldshaper-program --- 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.

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