International agreements to spend percentage of GDP on global public goods | Hauke Hillebrandt

06/11/21 • 27 min

Hauke reviews international agreements to spend a percentage of GDP on public goods such as aid (0.7%), defence (NATO’s 2% target), R&D, global governance, etc. He shows how these agreements interact with priorities in effective altruism because they are large in scale, solve (global) public good dilemmas, and relate to differential technological development. Finally, he argues that we should advocate for a new international agreement to spend 1% of GDP on global risk reduction.
Hauke did a PhD in Neuroscience and was planning to go into academia. But after reading our research, he applied to all our top recommended careers: jobs in German politics, consulting, tech-startups and our parent organisation, the Centre for Effective Altruism. He’s now Director of Research at Giving What We Can, where he researches which charities most effectively alleviate extreme poverty.
This talk was taken from EA Global Asia and Pacific 2020. Click here to watch the talk with the PowerPoint presentation.

Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

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Farm animal welfare and alternative protein opportunities in Asia-Pacific | Lewis Bollard

Asia-Pacific is home to most of the world's farm animals, and some of the best opportunities to help them. Lewis outlines the current state of farm animal welfare and alternative protein opportunities across the region, including what's changed in 2020.
Lewis Bollard leads Open Philanthropy’s strategy for Farm Animal Welfare. Prior to joining Open Philanthropy, he worked as Policy Advisor & International Liaison to the CEO at The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). Prior to that, he was a litigation fellow at HSUS, a law student, and an associate consultant at Bain & Company. He has a B.A. from Harvard University in Social Studies and a JD from Yale Law School.

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AI alignment, philosophical pluralism, and the relevance of non-Western philosophy | Tan Zhi Xuan

How can we build (super) intelligent machines that are robustly aligned with human values? AI alignment researchers strive to meet this challenge, but currently draw upon a relatively narrow set of philosophical perspectives common in effective altruism and computer science. This could pose risks in a world where human values are complex, plural, and fragile. Xuan discusses how these risks might be mitigated by greater philosophical pluralism, describing several problems in AI alignment where non-Western philosophies might provide insight.
Tan Zhi Xuan is a multi-disciplinary researcher broadly interested in cognitive approaches to building AI, so as to better understand and conform to human preferences, intentions, norms, and values. Current projects include developing probabilistic programming frameworks for Bayesian inverse planning and goal inference.
This talk was taken from EA Global Asia and Pacific 2020. Click here to watch the talk with the PowerPoint presentation.