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March 2024

Your monthly roundup of news and opportunities
from New York City and around the world.

Hi <<First Name>>,

This week marks the official start of Spring and the EA NYC newsletter is debuting a fresh look! This newsletter is for you and we’re eager for your feedback and suggestions.

As the weather warms and the city comes alive, this month we invite you to contemplate the question, “How can I maintain a soft heart in an often heavy world?” Chime in on the EA NYC Slack with your thoughts!

~ Rocky and the EA NYC Team

Quick Links

1-on-1 Support

Career Resources

Donation Resources

Upcoming Events

Community Slack

Top Resources

In Today's Newsletter

Quick Reads
• Announcements: News on the latest conferences, EA Forum features, and EA Virtual Programs
• Things to Know from the Past Month: A small collection of recent news highlights
• Monthly Spotlight: An introduction to One for the World
• Events: Some highlights from our calendar (which you can import directly to your Google Calendar!)

Deep Dive
• Career and Opportunities: Our hand-picked selection for local jobs, our curated local opportunities (from the EA Opportunities Board), and additional resources
• News and Organizational Updates: A list of of the biggest news, sorted by category
• Evergreen Resources: A collection of tips and resources that we generally recommend in this newsletter or on our website

Announcements

1. The Centre for Effective Altruism announced upcoming conferences for 2024! You can still apply for EAGxAustin (April 13-14) before March 31st and EA Global London (May 31-June 2) before May 19th. Also keep an eye out for confirmation of EAGxToronto (this summer)!

Find out more about EAGx and EA Global conferences on their website!

2. The Effective Altruism Forum has had some updates! The new features allow new options for authors and generally improve user notifications.

They also made new threads for job seekers and for those hiring! Looking for a job? Looking to fill a role? Check them out!

3. The Animal & Vegan Advocacy Summit — the US's biggest animal advocacy conference — is scheduled for May 16-19 in Washington, DC! Join the #ava-2024 channel in the EA NYC Slack to coordinate with other attending New Yorkers.

4. EA Virtual Programs are eight-week, cohort-based courses exploring EA concepts. Applications for the next round close on April 7.

Things to Know from the Past Month

Animal Advocacy

Mabli Jones with the Social Change Lab posted findings showing that immediate advocacy backfire effects do not last | 5-minute read
Also, McDonald's now purchases exclusively cage-free eggs for US locations!

Biosecurity

OpenAI published research on building an early warning system for LLM-aided bio-risks | 5-minute read

Global Health, Development, and Wellbeing

Bloomberg wrote about how manufacturing changes to anti-malaria bed-nets have caused an increase in the spread of Malaria | 22-minute read
- See the (pay-walled) article here

Technological Governance

The EU AI Act passed! | 4-minute read

Technical AI Safety

Anthropic released Claude 3 | 3-minute read
Epoch published research suggesting that algorithmic progress in language models has been outpacing Moore’s Law | 7-minute read
- See also:
  - Epoch's full (31-page) academic paper on the topic
  - Gov AI's 28-page paper on What Increasing Compute Efficiency Means for the Proliferation of Dangerous Capabilities

Various

Effective Altruism DC released resources for people interested in US policy careers | 1-minute read

EA Organization Spotlight: One for the World

One for the World’s mission is to build a movement of people revolutionizing charitable giving to end extreme global poverty through education, training, and community building. They encourage individuals to donate at least 1% of their income to their nonprofit partners that are on the ground fighting extreme poverty through cost-effective interventions. And they’re currently looking for their next Executive Director! You can find the application pack here, and the application form here.

Join the Conversation:

EA NYC Community Slack

With over 1,300 members, the EA NYC Slack is the perfect place to meet other community members and stay up-to-date with EA NYC. Channels range from #serious_discussion to #casual_plans. Find roommates in #housing, be the first to learn about #job-opportunities, join virtual and in-person #coworking, and more!

Upcoming Events

To keep up to date on our upcoming events, check out our calendar on Facebook, Meetup, or Eventbrite or add us to your Google Calendar or Apple iCloud Calendar!

EA NYC hosts many events each month! You can see them all here.

Here are some highlights coming up in the next several weeks:
1. The Strategy and Theory Behind Animal Charity Evaluation ft. Stien van der Ploeg
→ Tuesday, April 9, 6:30 PM - Midtown
→ Register here to attend

2. Orienting Toward a High-Impact Career: Q&A and Discussion ft. Vaidehi Agarwalla
→ Wednesday, April 24, 6:30 PM - Central Park
→ Register here to attend

3. Animal Advocacy / Environmentalism Subgroup Crossover Meetup ft. Monica Chen (New Roots Institute)
→ Friday, April 26, 6:00 PM - Chelsea
→ Sign up for Animal Advocacy Subgroup events here

→ Sign up for Environmental Subgroup events here

4. High-Impact Opportunities in the US Government ft. Assemblymember Alex Bores
→ Monday, April 29, 6:30 PM - Midtown East
→ Register here to attend

And don't miss these other events from our calendar!
→ Regulatory Justice Reforms - March 21
→ Community Dim Sum - March 24
→ The Feeling of Value (Sharon Rawlette) - March 25
→ Climate Change Risk Reduction - April 18
→ Effective Altruism Hiking Discussion - April 20
→ Suffering-Focused Ethics (Magnus Vinding) - May 6

Looking for something more specific?
Check out EA NYC professional, cause, and affinity subgroups, which typically meet monthly.

External events
You can join many events in the broader EA community online - here's one coming soon!
→ EA Data Science: JFI presentation and Q&A - March 26

Effective Altruism Deep Dive

This is the section of the newsletter where things get long and detailed. We encourage you to skim for the parts most relevant to you.

Career

"You’ll spend about 80,000 hours working in your career: 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, for 40 years. So how to spend that time is one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make." -80,000 Hours

See our curated NYC job board

Talk 1-on-1 with EA NYC

Job-Seeker

Resources

Career Advising & Mentorship

If you decide to apply to any of the roles in our database or other EA-aligned roles, let us know! We're happy to help how we can.

Featured Jobs of the Month

Animal Advocacy
1. Program Coordinator / Program Officer - The Insect Institute

Building Effective Altruism
1. Recruiting Staff - Centre for Effective Altruism

Climate Change & the Environment
1. Chief of Staff - Carbon Direct
2. Climate Communications Manager - Founders Pledge

Global Health, Development, and Wellbeing
1. Recruitment Specialist - MiracleFeet

Global Priorities Research / Global Catastrophic Risks
1. Junior Research Scientist, Research Assistant - New York University, Effective Altruism Psychology Lab

International Security/Cooperation
1. Policy Researcher, Biosecurity - RAND Corporation
2. Political Affairs Officer, Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs - United Nations

Technical AI Safety
1. Research Engineer, Alignment Science - Anthropic

Support our Work

If you get value from our newsletter, Slack, and/or other programs, please consider supporting us so that we can sustainably maintain our operations!

Donate

Opportunities

You may work 40 hours each week, but how are you spending the other 128? Explore opportunities to learn, upskill, volunteer, work part-time, and apply for funding.

Curated NYC Opportunities

EA Funding Opportunities

EA Opportunities Board

EA Virtual Programs

Featured Opportunities of the Month

Animal Advocacy
1. Intern in Corporate Engagement - Good Food Institute
2. Apply for Animal Advocacy Movement Grants - Animal Charity Evaluators

Building Effective Altruism
1. Manage Projects Part-Time to Help Support EA Community Members - Magnify Mentoring

Global Health, Development, and Wellbeing
1. Complete a Research Internship - Fortify Health

Technological Governance
1. Join an AI Governance Course this Fall - BlueDot Impact

Other Pressing Problems
1. Apply to Join Charity Entrepreneurship's 2024 Incubation Program - Ambitious Impact

News & Organizational Updates

You can also sign up to receive monthly updates by subscribing to the EA Organization Updates thread on the EA Forum.

News

Animal Advocacy
1. Animal Ethics on the case for animal-inclusive longtermism | 5-minute read (summary of 24-page academic paper) -- See their full research paper here

2. Lewis Bollard for Open Philanthropy on how the factory farming industry prevents progress | 12-minute read

3. Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser for Our World In Data on the percentage of earth's habitable land used for agriculture | 6-minute read

Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness
1. Anemone Franz and Tessa Alexanian for 80,000 Hours on biosecurity and pandemic prevention misconceptions | 32-minute read

2. SecureDNA publicly released a free, cutting-edge gene synthesis screening software | 3-minute read

Building Effective Altruism
1. Moritz Stumpe and Aashish Khimasia with a charity evaluation of Animal Advocacy Careers | 83-minute read (68-page academic report)

2. The Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy with a series of articles on Effective Altruism -- See also: NYU Professor Jeff Sebo's 15-page article

3. Kelsey Piper for Vox Future Perfect on Effective Altruism's changing culture | 8-minute read

Climate Change & the Environment
1. Rachel Glennerster and Seema Jayachandran for Foreign Affairs on (pay-walled) climate change mitigation cost effectiveness | 16-minute read

Global Health, Development, and Wellbeing
1. Aaron Gertler for Open Philanthropy on social science research they'd like to see in global health and wellbeing | 21-minute read

Global Priorities / Global Catastrophic Risks
1. Gabriel Weil on the role of Tort law in mitigating AI risk | 6-minute read

2. Christian Ruhl and Stephen Clare for Founders Pledge on great power competition and transformative technologies | 7-minute read – See full 47-page report here

Technological Governance
1. The Center for the Governance of AI (GovAI) with a research summary: computing and AI governance | 22-minute read – See the 104-page research paper here

2. Ruxandra Iordache for Time with a new bipartisan AI task force | 7-minute read

Nuclear Security
1. Conor Barnes for 80,000 Hours on why not to work on nuclear disarmament | 15-minute read – See also: has extreme nuclear risk been exaggerated?

2. Carl Robichaud on the Clearer Thinking Podcast on possible histories and futures with nuclear weapons | 78-minute read

Other Pressing Problems
1. Dan Williams on understanding what counts as misinformation | 34-minute read -- See also: 80,000 Hours Podcast on why misinformation is overrated

2. Chi Nguyen on reasons we might prioritize s-risk | 3-minute read -- See also: some recommended readings (with their summaries!)

Organization Updates

Animal Advocacy
1. "Sentient Media” is now “Sentient” | 1-minute read

2. Wild Animal Initiative with some of their latest research grants | 13-minute read

Biosecurity
1. Nuclear Threat Initiative with the launch of International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science (IBBIS), a new biosecurity organization | 1-minute read

Building effective altruism
1. Frances Lorenz, Ivan Burduk, and Isobel Phillips for Centre for Effective Altruism with a review of (alongside photos and videos from) EAG Global Catastrophic Risks | 4-minute read

2. Benjamin Tereick for Open Philanthropy with a new grantmaking program for forecasting | 2-minute read

Technological Governance
1. aigov.world is a new interactive map for exploring AI Governance orgs | 1-minute read – See also: OpenAI's new board members