EA Forum Digest #278
Benchmarks, bets, and building with excitement
Hello!
Draft Amnesty Week — an opportunity to share your long languishing or quickly sketched drafts — is scheduled for 23 Feb – 1 March. Learn more.
You can read a range of updates from EA organisations, added to throughout the week, on the EA Organization Updates thread.
— Toby (for the Forum team)
We recommend:
AI benchmarking has a Y-axis problem (Lizka, 9 min)
On Economics of A(S)I Agents (Margot Stakenborg, 57 min)
Idea: the intelligence explosion convention (Forethought, William_MacAskill, 11 min)
Some tools for collective epistemics and Some angel-on-the-shoulder AI tools (Forethought, multiple authors, 1-2 min, link-posts)
The shrimp bet: When big numbers outsprint the evidence (Vasco Grilo🔸, 21 min, link-post), with a comprehensive reply from Bob Fischer.
The Philosophy Paper That Haunted Me (Dean Guzman Wyrzykowski, 10 min)
Animal welfare in 1800 (Niki Dupuis, 8 min)
Community
Don’t just have a job role. Have a movement role. (SofiaBalderson, 6 min, link-post)
EA Grants Database - a new website (Brian Foerster, 1 min)
Remembering Benjamin Lay (Lizka, quick take)
Announcements:
Updates from organisations
Building sustainable momentum: progress report on CEA’s 2025-26 strategy (Zachary Robinson🔸, Oscar Howie, 15 min)
Charity Entrepreneurship Program Applications are Open & New Charity Ideas (Ambitious Impact, 4 min)
ACTRA: First-Year Learnings (Henning Peters, Laura Sofia, 10 min)
Job listings
There are multiple roles in the EA Organization Updates thread, and more will be published throughout the week.
Other opportunities to take action
The USDA is investing $100M in innovation for screwworm control and eradication. SFF can help you apply. (Screwworm Free Future, 2 min)
Vote for videos about EA charities! (Project for Awesome 2026) (EA_ProjectForAwesome, 2 min)
Announcing the Sentient Futures spring 2026 AI×Animals Fellowship (multiple authors, 1 min)
First Effective Altruism AI Uplift Meetup (Joey Bream🔸, 1 min)
Classic Forum post:
Excited Altruism (Holden Karnofsky, 4 min)