This semester, we won’t be running any alternative programming. However, you can feel free to check out some of the ones offered by these independent RSOs that share many of EA UW’s values.

Introductory Programs

We're holding our intro event 1pm - 2:30pm Saturday, September 13th at the SAC Caucus Room (4th Floor) 333 E Campus Mall. Come join us to meet new people and have some pizza!

Come to our Kickoff Event! 

Apply to join a community of smart, dedicated people trying to make the world better! Application deadline Friday, September 19th.

Fellowship applications are now open!

AI Governance Course

Intro to AI Safety Course

Animal Advocacy

Here’s a week-by-week breakdown of what you'll discuss:

Intro to EA Fellowship

Over the course of Week 1 and 2, we aim to introduce you to the core principles of Effective Altruism. This week we’ll investigate what opportunities to do good we have available to us, come to terms with the tradeoffs we face in our altruistic efforts, and explore tools that can help us find unusually high impact opportunities. You'll also get to know each other and your facilitator!

Week 1: The Effectiveness Mindset 

In Week 2 we continue to explore the core principles of Effective Altruism. We focus on giving you tools to quantify and evaluate how much good an intervention can achieve; introduce expected value reasoning; and investigate differences in expected cost-effectiveness between interventions.

Week 2: Differences in Impact

During Week 3 we explore who our moral consideration should expand to, with a particular focus on farmed animals as a case example. We also use the term “Cause X” to ask what opportunities we could be missing.

Week 3: Expanding Our Compassion

This week we’ll explore a different approach to finding high-impact interventions - ‘longtermism’ - which attempts to find interventions that beneficially influence the long-run course of humanity. 

Week 4: Longtermism

This week we’ll cover the definition of an existential risk; examine why existential risks might be a moral priority; and explore why existential risks are so neglected by society.

Week 5: Existential Risk

During this week, we’ll explore a few technological trends which might have relevance for existential risk. This week, understandably, can’t cover all the major considerations for what the future will be like, but we aim to cover two key emerging technologies that might be less well known - transformative artificial intelligence and advances in biotechnology.

Week 6: Emerging Technologies

This week, we’ll read and discuss critiques of effective altruism, and criticisms of how some people try to implement EA. We are dedicating a week to this because, to whatever extent we are wrong, it would be good to know. Honestly reckoning with strong counter arguments (from both within and outside of the EA community) can help us avoid confirmation bias and groupthink, and get us a little closer to identifying the most effective ways to do good.

Week 7: What Might We be Missing?

This week, instead of a normal fellowship meeting, you’ll be meeting individually with the EA-UW team to discuss plans for the future, potential careers, and general methods to put into practice what you have learned over the fellowship.