Professional groups and EA navigating uncertainty together with open-mindedness and humility Ellie Christian and Clare Harris Ellie Christian is a Newcastle-based medical doctor. She is a masters of public health student at the University of Sydney. She is the Australia coordinator for High Impact Medicine. Clare Harris is a junior medical doctor working as a researcher for Spencer Greenberg at SparkWave.tech. She's head of monitoring and evaluation at High Impact Medicine. She has experience wo...
Jun 22, 2024•27 min
A fire side chat with Marcus Daniell (professional tennis player and Olympic medallist) about founding High Impact Athletes, an organisation helping athletes give effectively. Marcus is the Founder and Executive Director of High Impact Athletes and has pledged 10% of his earnings to effective organisations for life. Marcus is a two-time Olympian and bronze medallist, a Wimbledon and Australian Open Quarterfinalist, and 5-time ATP Titleholder. Grace is the Head of Marketing at Giving What We Can....
Jun 22, 2024•52 min
Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED) is a nonprofit organization with two primary objectives: 1) to identify, pilot, and prepare resilient food alternatives, in the event that a catastrophe damages conventional food supplies 2) to help governments and communities implement these solutions during a global food shock As devastating as catastrophes are, the threat of a global catastrophe is not just the initial destruction, but also the impact it could have on food supplies and distribu...
Jun 22, 2024•42 min
Hear why it’s a mistake not to prioritise giving as part of effective altruism and how effective giving is the key to unlocking the impact that effective altruism seeks to create. You’ll also learn practical ways we can all help increase funding to effective charities and projects. Luke Freeman manages Giving What We Can, a global community dedicated to giving effectively and significantly that’s best known for their over 8,000 members who have pledged to give 10% of their lifetime income to the...
Jun 22, 2024•50 min
The danger of nuclear weapons is growing: what can we do to address this existential risk? Marianne Hanson Building on her keynote remarks, Marianne Hanson, co-founder of the Nobel Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), elaborates on the escalating dangers posed by nuclear weapons and outlines steps that can be taken to mitigate these risks. Marianne Hanson is Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Queensland, Australia, where she tea...
Jun 21, 2024•38 min
Climate 200 helps communities strike at the root of the problem when it comes to action on climate change, and opportunities to get involved in the community independents movement. Alexandria Rantino is the Chief Operating Officer at Climate 200, a crowdfunded organisation that supports the election campaigns of independents committed to science based climate action, restoring integrity to politics, and advancing the respect and safety of women. Alex has pursued climate action throughout her ent...
Jun 21, 2024•42 min
Chetan Kharbanda - Starting a Charity Entrepreneurship charity on-ground. This talk is aimed at sharing key learnings from the journey of going from incubation to launching real-world operations. It outlines how the CE program equipped the charity with tools and funding and the execution required to navigate complex systems and lots of uncertainty. Making good data-driven decisions and flexibility are imperative to starting an impactful charity. Kate Tapping - From a 'shower idea' to a $117,000 ...
Jun 21, 2024•24 min
Ryan is Co-Director of the ML Alignment Theory Scholars Program, a Board Member and Co-Founder of the London Initiative for Safe AI, and a Manifund Regrantor. Previously, he completed a PhD in Physics at the University of Queensland and ran UQ’s Effective Altruism student group for ~3 years. Ryan’s ethics are largely preference utilitarian and cosmopolitan; he is deeply concerned about near-term x-risk and safeguarding the long-term future. James Fodor is a PhD student in the Decision, Risk and ...
Jun 21, 2024•56 min
Hon Dr. Andrew Leigh is the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury Assistant Minister for Employment in the Albanese ministry. Leigh holds a PhD from PhD in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School. Dr Bidda Jones AM leads the Australian Alliance for Animals' strategy for animal welfare and evidence-based research. A zoologist specialising in animal behaviour and welfare, Bidda previously worked for RSPCA Australia as their Chief Science and Strategy Officer, establishing th...
Jun 21, 2024•1 hr 32 min
Jenna Ong is the co-creator of Insights for Impact, a Youtube channel which works on communicating research insights for positive impact in the form of documentary-style, entertaining and explanatory videos. She was also the co-founder of Effective Altruism Canberra. Wellbeing science has seen rapid development in the last few decades thanks to new data. Researchers in this space are primarily interested in how to reduce suffering and live a good life. Meanwhile the core aim of effective altruis...
Jun 21, 2024•26 min
The richest countries in the world are about one hundred times wealthier per person than the poorest countries. How did such immense differences arise, and why do they continue to exist? This talk summarises various proposed solutions to this paradox of economic development, including theories emphasising culture, geography, dependency, and institutions. Drawing upon comparative historical analysis, formal models, and statistical evidence, the talk argues that the quality of political and econom...
Jun 21, 2024•26 min
Victoria Baranov is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Melbourne. In her research, Victoria couples RCTs and longitudinal data in her research that looks into how psychological factors may perpetuate poverty traps. Her team conducted an RCT in rural Pakistan, providing psychotherapy to depressed mothers in the treatment group, while simultaneously collecting bio-samples and baseline data. She compared life outcomes at 7 years postpartum, with significant positive effects. W...
Jun 21, 2024•56 min
Climate change is one of the biggest problems we have to face. This talk discusses some of the more effective and neglected methods of addressing climate change, and unpacks what Australia can do to make a difference in climate on a global scale. Jack Rafferty is the Manager of Climate Giving for Giving Green Australia. Prior to joining Giving Green, Jack was the Co-founder and Director of Lead Exposure Elimination Project, a policy focused international NGO that is working to end childhood lead...
Jun 21, 2024•41 min
This talk introduces the audience to the philosophical and scientific study of animal consciousness. It explains why understanding animal consciousness is inseparable to the project of animal welfare, and why the current ‘valence-based’ and ‘preference-based’ approach to animal welfare are inadequate. It ends by urging effective altruists concerned about animal welfare to care about fundamental, theoretical research on animal consciousness. Jack Hawke is currently undertaking a research Masters ...
Jun 21, 2024•25 min
Chelsea and Krystal give a talk on pursuing EA-aligned policy careers in Australia. They go through what's important to consider in your fit for policy work, what EA-aligned policy work looks like day-to-day and across different types of organisations, the current landscape of EA policy organisations, and different routes to impact. Chelsea Liang is a Health Security Policy Researcher at Good Ancestors Policy, a charity that seeks to engage all levels of government and civil society on the bigge...
Jun 21, 2024•39 min
Cellular Agriculture has the potential to create a more ethical, accessible and sustainable food system. However, this potential won't be realised unless the sector can overcome a number of significant and pressing challenges, such as accessing regulatory approval, scaling manufacture and gaining social acceptance. Cellular Agriculture Australia focuses exclusively on the non-competitive challenges and opportunities facing the sector in Australia. Ren Springlea: Why you should pursue a career in...
Jun 21, 2024•52 min
Alternative proteins hold the potential to move humanity beyond animal agriculture. If successful, this would have substantial benefits, in animal suffering, climate change, public health, food security and more. Yet after the initial wave of excitement in recent plant-based products such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, it’s clear there are significant technical and non-technical challenges to overcome. This 1 hour session is geared towards students and professionals who are interested to l...
Jun 21, 2024•25 min
We all agree that suffering matters, but how much does it matter compared to other issues we could devote resources to? In this talk, Jonathan Leighton will discuss the relationship between happiness and suffering, including how it is understood by many rationalists and members of the EA community, and argue for an alternative ethical framework that prioritises the inherent urgency of extreme suffering, while still explicitly acknowledging the important role of our intuitions. Jonathan Leighton ...
Jun 21, 2024•29 min
In this session, Loic presents the concept of emerging innovations in international development (a.k.a Best Bets) and goes over the 14 that IPA has identified in a recent flagship report. As Chief Research & Policy Officer for Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), Loic's work is about championing research and evidence that is connected with real-world decision-makers to improve the lives of people living in poverty. In practice, Loic oversees IPA's various sector programs, IPA's Policy team,...
Jun 21, 2024•52 min
The richest countries in the world are about one hundred times wealthier per person than the poorest countries. How did such immense differences arise, and why do they continue to exist? This talk summarises various proposed solutions to this paradox of economic development, including theories emphasising culture, geography, dependency, and institutions. Drawing upon comparative historical analysis, formal models, and statistical evidence, the talk argues that the quality of political and econom...
Jun 21, 2024•26 min
Simon Goldstein is a research fellow at the Center for AI Safety, and an associate professor of philosophy at Australian Catholic University. His research focuses on AI safety and AI wellbeing. He is especially interested in new types of AI systems that enrich LLMs with agential scaffolding, to create AI systems that have the semblance of a folk psychology. Simon argues that some AI systems today have wellbeing, so that it could be morally wrong to frustrate their goals. He surveys the main phil...
Jun 21, 2024•28 min
Monitoring and evaluation 101: How to do it practically and purposefully for your project Sophie Gulliver As EA organisations, we are always aiming to do the most good we can with the resources we have. We know that a key part of doing this is to monitor and evaluate the impact of our work, but monitoring and evaluation can appear complex, daunting, and demanding. It can be hard to know what to do, when to do it, and how to manage this within tight resource constraints. In this talk, Sophie prov...
Jun 21, 2024•54 min
This talk explores the different biorisks, and compares them across different axes. It then suggests different theories of change within different areas of biorisk, and points to some of the complexities and nuances of work within the biosecurity field. Finally, it explores some common areas of biosecurity work within EA, and suggests other promising areas for exploration. Akhil is a clinical doctor who also works in global health and biosecurity. He worked as a lead researcher for Charity Entre...
Jun 21, 2024•49 min
A large-scale nuclear exchange would kill billions and with geopolitical instability the risks are rising to cold war levels. Amidst this, a new arms race to gain a strategic advantage through the integration of advanced deep learning into nuclear systems is underway. Beatrice Fihn and Alice Saltini explore the heightened risks of nuclear war, the risks of AI integration in nuclear command, control and communications (NC3) and how we can prevent calamity. Beatrice Fihn is an expert on internatio...
Jun 21, 2024•52 min
Want to know why aid orgs aren't bigger fans of GiveWell and GiveDirectly type interventions? Having run the Department for International Development (DFID) ($20b/yr budget), Rory shares what the priorities of aid orgs like and what he would like them to be. Rory speaks to how we connect the pipes between EA ideas/evidence and bureaucrats. Rory Stewart was an MP (Member of Parliament) in the British Government between 2010 and 2019. He's a senior advisor for GiveDirectly and the host of the Rest...
Jun 21, 2024•1 hr 16 min
Exploring the power of synergy in animal advocacy, this talk delves into how investigations, legal actions, legislative efforts, and corporate outreach can be intertwined for maximal impact on farmed animal welfare. Join Mahi as he uncovers optimal ways to combine these approaches. Mahi became an angry vegan and ineffective altruist in 2005. He's made some progress since then: Starting with convincing universities to opt for cage-free eggs as a student, he's now the CEO of the Albert Schweitzer ...
Jun 21, 2024•44 min
In this talk, Mary shares an overview of recent work by the DeepMind Frontier Safety team. Mary discusses 1) Evaluating frontier models for dangerous capabilities, and 2) GDM's Frontier Safety Framework. Mary is a research scientist on the Safety & Alignment team at Google DeepMind, where she works on dangerous capability evaluations and responsible scaling. She was the lead author and project co-lead of DeepMind's recent paper on "Evaluating frontier models for dangerous capabilities". Watc...
Jun 21, 2024•30 min
Poverty is a scaled problem and requires solutions at scale. As programs scale, however, complexities arise which may not have been considered in the original pilot evaluation. In this talk, Neela focuses on one of those scaling complexities: policy take up and program implementation. What can we systematically understand about these factors? Neela draws not only on the research but also her experience – in the private and social impact sectors to outline what we know, and what we should try and...
Jun 21, 2024•36 min
In this session, Cecil and Roberto will discuss the importance of including the Global South in global AI governance and regulation efforts, recognizing that these regions must actively participate in shaping AI protocols to manage risks effectively. Cecil Abungu is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge, and a Research Affiliate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (University of Cambridge). Roberto Tinoco is a Colombian lawyer with experience in the Government Sector and Multi...
Jun 21, 2024•50 min
The talk discusses importance, tractability and neglectedness from a market shaping economics perspective, including why socially valuable innovations may be inadequately incentivized by commercial markets. Siddhartha discusses the application of pull mechanisms which reward outputs and outcomes, such as Advance Market Commitments, to pressing global challenges such as climate change and pandemic preparedness. Finally, Siddhartha discusses the analytical issues and other challenges the MSA team ...
Jun 21, 2024•54 min
