News
Seeking Expressions of Interest for Special Projects next year
Rethink Priorities' Special Projects Team is looking for new impactful projects we can support in 2024!
Rethink Priorities needs your support. Here's what we'd do with it.
As Rethink Priorities faces significant funding gaps for our work in 2024, Co-CEO Peter Wildeford explains why it is an unusually good time for individuals to donate. Your support would affect the future trajectory of the organization and determine what RP will be able to achieve next year.
Webinar invitation: learn how to use Rethink Priorities’ new prioritization tool
What do your views imply about the relative cost-effectiveness of various causes? With Giving Tuesday coming up, it's worth tackling this question. Rethink Priorities’ new cross-cause cost-effectiveness model (CCM) might be able to help. Join our webinar to learn more!
Rethink Priorities’ 2023 summary, 2024 strategy, and funding gaps
In this post, we review Rethink Priorities’ 2023 activities and outcomes. We also provide readers with insight into our strategy and funding gaps for the coming year.
Introducing the Institute for AI Policy and Strategy
RP has launched the Institute for AI Policy and Strategy. IAPS has the mission of reducing risks related to the development and deployment of frontier AI systems.
How Rethink Priorities’ Research could inform your grantmaking
Rethink Priorities has advised, consulted, and/or been commissioned by a number of major funders in order to inform their grantmaking. This year, we are launching a pilot project to see if we can do this work for an even broader audience.
A Model Estimating the Value of Research Influencing Funders
This post outlines a methodology for estimating the impact of research to improve resource allocations.
Readers are encouraged to use their own inputs in our spreadsheets or tools in order to estimate the potential value of research of this nature.
New surveys find that most Americans support AI regulation, believing that AI risk mitigation is a global priority
Rethink Priorities has released the findings of three studies of U.S. public opinion on artificial intelligence (AI) policy and risk.
Five years of Rethink Priorities: impact, plans, funding needs
This piece highlights Rethink Priorities’ accomplishments, mistakes, and changes since its establishment in 2018. We discuss RP’s future plans as well as potential constraints to our impact.
Rethink Priorities’ Worldview Investigation Team: Introductions and Next Steps
Some months ago, Rethink Priorities announced its interdisciplinary Worldview Investigation Team (WIT). Now, we’re pleased to introduce the team’s members.
Five Years of Rethink Priorities: What We've Learned
The post contains a reflection on the journey of Peter Wildeford and Marcus A. Davis as co-founders of Rethink Priorities.
Our research process: an overview from Rethink Priorities’ Global Health and Development team
The Global Health and Development team is a multidisciplinary ten-person team conducting research around various global health, international development, and climate change topics. In this post, the team provides an inside look at their research process in the hope of making their work as transparent as possible.
Rethink Priorities’ 2022 Impact, 2023 Strategy, and Funding Gaps
Over the course of 2022, Rethink Priorities spent ~$7.5M USD and worked on ~60 different research pieces, with ~33% completed under a consultancy model. In 2023, RP intends to further increase the effectiveness of others’ work on global priorities and to drive progress on promising ways to address pressing issues (eg. via accelerating priority projects). We also intend to launch a Worldview Investigations team. This post lists funding gaps by area and scenario (no, moderate, or high growth) and reasons why this funding is likely to be high impact.
Rethink Priorities' 2022 hires
During 2022, Rethink Priorities (RP) scaled substantially. We hired 32 new people for a total of 58 permanent staff, corresponding to 55 full-time equivalents.
Announcing EA Survey 2022
The EA Survey provides valuable information about the EA community and how it is changing over time. Every year the survey is used to inform the decisions of a number of different EA orgs. And, despite the survey being much shorter this year, this year we have included requests from a wider variety of decision-makers than ever before.
Announcing the Rethink Priorities Special Projects Program
Rethink Priorities has launched a Special Projects (SP) Program to help start promising EA initiatives by providing fiscal sponsorship and full-service operational support–including, but not limited to hiring, finance, event planning, and communications. There are various ways to get involved in the SP Program: join our team, apply to have your project sponsored, or share with us lessons you’ve learned incubating projects if you have experience in this arena. Please reach out by submitting an Expression of Interest form.
Announcing EA Pulse, large monthly US surveys on EA
Rethink Priorities is excited to announce EA Pulse—a large, monthly survey of the US population aimed at measuring and understanding public perceptions of effective altruism and EA-aligned cause areas. The Survey Team intends to 1) track changes in responses to key questions relevant to EA and longtermism over time and 2) run ad hoc questions requested by EA organizations. Please e-mail david@rethinkpriorities.org (ideally by October 20) if you would like to request either type of these questions.
Rethink Priorities 2022 Mid-Year Update: Progress, Plans, Funding
Rethink Priorities’ mission is to generate the most impact we can for others in the present and the long-term future. As of 2022, RP is doing more consultancy-like research, much of which is not–or not yet–published, especially in the areas of global health and development (including climate change) as well as AI governance. We are also setting up a Special Projects department to help launch promising initiatives.
Conference on interspecies comparisons of welfare
In April 2022, Rethink Priorities and The London School of Economics and Political Science Foundations of Animal Sentience (ASENT) project sponsored a conference on the problems and prospects for making interspecies welfare comparisons.
2021 fellowship and internship program at Rethink Priorities
In early 2021, Rethink Priorities welcomed its first cohort of Fellows and Interns. We received nearly 665 applications, out of which we invited 11 candidates to join our team. Between June and September 2021, we hosted nine Visiting Fellows and two Interns across all our departments, including Farmed and Wild Animal Welfare, EA Movement Research/Surveys, Longtermism, and Operations Research.