EAG Talks

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...

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...

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,...

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 int...

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 analysi...

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 b...

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 Ex...

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, t...

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...

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 chall...

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 t...

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 suff...

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 o...

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 analysi...

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...

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...

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 doct...

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, contro...

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 B...

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 co...

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 pro...

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 exper...

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...

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...

This session features testimony from Ms. Tanaka Toshiko, Mr. Ogawa Tadayoshi, and other representatives from the Peace Boat's Hibakusha Project. Ms. Tanaka Mr. Ogawa are survivors of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—this session will recount the devastating impacts of nuclear warfare through first-hand accounts, illustrating the importance of ensuring such horrors are never repeated. Ms...