Effective Altruism

Effective altruism — EA for short — is a social movement and school of thought. Its basic idea: if you want to do good, you should figure out which action achieves the most impact per euro or hour invested. It shouldn’t be feelings or tradition that decide where money or time flow — but evidence. The movement emerged around 2009 from circles of philosophy and development economics, the science that studies how poor countries grow economically. Today it has several tens of thousands of active members worldwide, its own foundations, and close ties to the tech industry.

Influence on the AI debate

EA would hardly be a term in tech media without its AI connection. Many EA adherents consider artificial intelligence one of the greatest risks humanity has ever faced. The reasoning: an AI that becomes smarter than humans and pursues its own goals could become uncontrollable — with catastrophic consequences. That sounds like science fiction, but it is a seriously discussed research field called AI safety.

Out of this conviction, EA-aligned organizations have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into AI safety research. The Open Philanthropy Project, one of the largest EA foundations, was among the early funders of OpenAI — the company behind ChatGPT. This influence makes EA a relevant player when it comes to how AI is regulated and developed.

How EA thinking can be recognized

EA adherents think in terms of three questions: How big is the problem? How neglected is it? How solvable is it? According to this logic, a problem that kills many people but already receives a lot of funding has lower priority than a lesser-known problem that costs just as many lives but gets hardly any attention. That’s why EA recommendations often end up in unexpected places — for example, measures against neglected tropical diseases in poor countries rather than popular charity projects.

Another characteristic is so-called longtermism, roughly translated as long-term thinking. It holds that future people count morally just as much as people today. If there will be billions or trillions of people who have not yet been born, then a catastrophe that wipes out humanity is the worst conceivable event — no matter when it occurs. This is precisely why AI risks rank at the very top of the priority list in the EA worldview.

EA in the news and public eye

EA drew major attention in November 2022, when Sam Bankman-Fried, at the time one of the most well-known EA adherents and founder of the crypto exchange FTX, was arrested for massive fraud. He had publicly advocated earning as much money as possible in order to then donate it for EA purposes — a principle called earning to give. His case sparked a broad debate about whether the movement places too much trust in dangerously idealistic thinkers.

At the same time, EA plays an active role in the current AI regulation debate. Several advisors in EU AI legislation and in the British Parliament have an EA background. Anyone reading articles about AI risks, AI safety, or “existential threats from AI” will sooner or later come across people, organizations, or arguments from this milieu — even if the abbreviation EA isn’t always explicitly mentioned.