[Linkpost] “Scaling Our Pilot Early-Warning System” by Jeff Kaufman 🔸
This is a link post. Summary: The NAO will increase our sequencing significantly over the next
few months, funded by a $3M grant from Open
Philanthropy. This will allow us to scale
our early-warning system to where we could flag many engineered pathogens early
enough to mitigate their worst impacts, and also generate large amounts of data
to develop, tune, and evaluate our detection systems.
One of the biological threats the NAO is most concerned with is a
'stealth'
pathogen, such as a virus with the profile of a faster-spreading HIV. This
could cause a devastating pandemic, and early detection would be critical to
mitigate the worst impacts. If such a pathogen were to spread, however, we
wouldn't be able to monitor it with traditional approaches because we wouldn't
know what to look for. Instead, we have invested in metagenomic sequencing for
pathogen-agnostic detection. This doesn't require deciding what [...] ---
First published:
April 2nd, 2025
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AJ8bd2sz8tF7cxJff/scaling-our-pilot-early-warning-system
Linkpost URL:https://naobservatory.org/blog/scaling-our-early-warning-system/
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5:34
“Why you can justify almost anything using historical social movements” by JamesÖz 🔸
[Cross-posted from my Substack here] If you spend time with people trying to change the world, you’ll come to an interesting conundrum: Various advocacy groups reference previous successful social movements as to why their chosen strategy is the most important one. Yet, these groups often follow wildly different strategies from each other to achieve social change. So, which one of them is right? The answer is all of them and none of them. This is because many people use research and historical movements to justify their pre-existing beliefs about how social change happens. Simply, you can find a case study to fit most plausible theories of how social change happens. For example, the groups might say: Repeated nonviolent disruption is the key to social change, citing the Freedom Riders from the civil rights Movement or Act Up! from the gay rights movement. Technological progress is what drives improvements [...] The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration. ---
First published:
April 24th, 2025
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/kACcdhLDdWb9ZPG9L/why-you-can-justify-almost-anything-using-historical-social
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9:11
“AI for Animals 2025 Bay Area Retrospective” by Constance Li, AI for Animals
Our Mission: To build a multidisciplinary field around using technology—especially AI—to improve the lives of nonhumans now and in the future. Overview Background This hybrid conference had nearly 550 participants and took place March 1-2, 2025 at UC Berkeley. It was organized by AI for Animals for $74k by volunteer core organizers Constance Li, Sankalpa Ghose, and Santeri Tani. This conference has evolved since 2023: The 1st conference mainly consisted of philosophers and was a single track lecture/panel. The 2nd conference put all lectures on one day and followed it with 2 days of interactive unconference sessions happening in parallel and a week of in-person co-working. This 3rd conference had a week of related satellite events, free shared accommodations for 50+ attendees, 2 days of parallel lectures/panels/unconferences, 80 unique sessions, of which 32 are available on Youtube, Swapcard to enable 1:1 connections, and a Slack community to continue conversations year [...] ---Outline:(00:32) Overview(00:35) Background(02:27) Outcomes(03:51) The Event(s)(04:19) Speaking Sessions(04:23) en-US-AvaMultilingualNeural__ Conference presentation scenes with speakers and audience in auditorium setting. The image shows a collage of different presentation scenes at what appears to be an academic or professional conference. The main image shows an auditorium with attendees watching a video presentation on a large screen. Other smaller images show speakers on stage in different settings - some seated in orange chairs for a panel discussion, others at podiums. Theres a logo visible for what appears to be a research institute in one of the frames. The setting appears academic/professional in nature, with proper presentation equipment, stage lighting, and organized seating arrangements typical of a conference or symposium event.(05:10) Featured Talks(10:13) Lightning Talks(11:55) Interactive Sessions(12:19) Unconferences(13:22) Meetups(13:36) Mapping Workshops(13:44) Office Hours(13:59) Topic Distribution(14:18) Satellite Events(14:41) en-US-AvaMultilingualNeural__ Events schedule showing AI and animal-focused activities from Feb 26-Mar 2.(14:52) en-US-AvaMultilingualNeural__ People gathered at social events, networking and dining in various settings.(15:02) Behind the Scenes(15:10) Personnel(16:04) Handbooks(16:24) Finances(19:21) Outreach(21:17) Event Reflection(24:12) Get Involved---
First published:
April 5th, 2025
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KWpyRXzHn6JMyZiBn/ai-for-animals-2025-bay-area-retrospective
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26:20
“ALLFED emergency appeal: Help us raise $800,000 to avoid cutting half of programs” by Denkenberger🔸, JuanGarcia, Laura Cook
SUMMARY: ALLFED is launching an emergency appeal on the EA Forum due to a serious funding shortfall. Without new support, ALLFED will be forced to cut half our budget in the coming months, drastically reducing our capacity to help build global food system resilience for catastrophic scenarios like nuclear winter, a severe pandemic, or infrastructure breakdown. ALLFED is seeking $800,000 over the course of 2025 to sustain its team, continue policy-relevant research, and move forward with pilot projects that could save lives in a catastrophe. As funding priorities shift toward AI safety, we believe resilient food solutions remain a highly cost-effective way to protect the future. If you’re able to support or share this appeal, please visit allfed.info/donate. FULL ARTICLE: I (David Denkenberger) am writing alongside two of my team-mates, as ALLFED's co-founder, to ask for your support. This is the first time in Alliance [...] ---Outline:(02:40) The case for ALLFED's work, and why we think maintaining full current capacity is valuable(04:14) How this connects to AI and other risks(05:39) What we're asking for---
First published:
April 16th, 2025
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/K7hPmcaf2xEZ6F4kR/allfed-emergency-appeal-help-us-raise-usd800-000-to-avoid-1
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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7:19
“Cost-effectiveness of Anima International Poland” by saulius
Summary In this article, I estimate the cost-effectiveness of five Anima International programs in Poland: improving cage-free and broiler welfare, blocking new factory farms, banning fur farming, and encouraging retailers to sell more plant-based protein. I estimate that together, these programs help roughly 136 animals—or 32 years of farmed animal life—per dollar spent. Animal years affected per dollar spent was within an order of magnitude for all five evaluated interventions. I also tried to estimate how much suffering each program alleviates. Using SADs (Suffering-Adjusted Days)—a metric developed by Ambitious Impact (AIM) that accounts for species differences and pain intensity—Anima's programs appear highly cost-effective, even compared to charities recommended by Animal Charity Evaluators. However, I also ran a small informal survey to understand how people intuitively weigh different categories of pain defined by the Welfare Footprint Institute. The results suggested that SADs may heavily underweight brief but intense suffering. Based [...] ---Outline:(02:16) Background(02:46) Results(05:57) Explanations of the programs(08:59) Why these estimates are very uncertain(13:48) Animal welfare metric(16:42) Comparison to SADs(19:42) Comparison to other charities(19:47) Comparisons of SADs estimates(20:54) Comparisons of cage-free estimates(24:26) For how many years do reforms have an impact?(25:21) Cage-free(29:45) Broilers(31:18) Stop the farms(32:57) Fur farmsThe original text contained 8 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. ---
First published:
April 10th, 2025
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sLYSa7MyuDKxreN5h/cost-effectiveness-of-anima-international-poland-1
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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South Africa