EA - EA Wins 2023 by Shakeel Hashim

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Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: EA Wins 2023, published by Shakeel Hashim on December 31, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.Crossposted from Twitter.As the year comes to an end, we want to highlight and celebrate some of the incredible achievements from in and around the effective altruism ecosystem this year.1. A new malaria vaccineThe World Health Organizationrecommended its second-ever malaria vaccine this year: R21/Matrix-M, designed to protect babies and young children from malaria. The drug's recently concludedPhase III trial, which was co-funded by Open Philanthropy, found that the vaccine was between 68-75% effective at targeting the disease, which kills around 600,000 people (mainly children) each year.The work didn't stop there, though. Following advocacy from many people - includingZacharia Kafuko of 1 Day Sooner - the WHO quickly prequalified the vaccine, laying the groundwork for an expedited deployment and potentially saving hundreds of thousands of children's lives. 1 Day Sooner isnow working to raise money to expedite the deployment further.2. The Supreme Court upholds an animal welfare lawIn 2018, Californians voted for Proposition 12 - a bill that banned intensive cage confinement and the sale of animal products from animals in intensive confinement. The meat industry challenged the law for being unconstitutional - but in May of this year, the US Supreme Courtupheld Prop 12, a decision that will improve the lives of millions of animals who would otherwise be kept in cruel and inhumane conditions.Organizations such as The Humane League - one of Animal Charity Evaluators'top charities - are a major part of this victory; their tireless campaigning is part of what made Prop 12 happen.Watch a panel discussion featuring The Humane League at EAG London 2023here.3. AI safety goes mainstream2023 was the year AI safety went mainstream. After years of work from people in and around effective altruism, this year saw hundreds of high-profile AI experts - including two Turing Award winnerssay that "mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority".That was followed by a flurry of activity from policymakers, including aUS Executive Order, an internationalAI Safety Summit, the establishment of the UKFrontier AI Taskforce, and a deal on theEU AI Act - which, thanks to the efforts of campaigners, is now going to regulate foundation models that pose a systemic risk to society.Important progress was made in technical AI safety, too, including work onadversarial robustness,mechanistic interpretability, andlie detection.Watch a talk from EAG Boston 2023 on technical AI safetyhere.4. Results from the world's largest UBI studySince 2018, GiveDirectly - an organization that distributes direct cash transfers to those in need - has been running the world's largestuniversal basic income experiment in rural Kenya.In September, researchers led by MIT economist Taveneet Suri and Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee, published theirlatest analysis of the data - finding that giving people money as a lump sum leads to better results than dispersing it via monthly payments. Long-term UBI was also found to be highly effective and didn't discourage work. The results could have significant implications for how governments disburse cash aid.Watch GiveDirectly'stalk at EAGx Nordics 2023.5. Cultivated meat approved for sale in USAfter years of work from organizations like the Good Food Institute, in June 2023 the USDA finallyapproved cultivated meat for sale in the US.The watershed moment made the US the second country (after Singapore) to legalize the product, which could have significant impacts on animal welfare by reducing the number of animals that need to be raised and killed for meat.Watch the Good Food Institute's Bruce Friedrich talk about alternative ...