Park Güell, Barcelona

    January to June: Highlights of the first half of 2024!

    Let us take you through some of the best moments of 2024 so far:

    January

    Four smiling attendees with name badges outside in London; a yellow arrow points to Ricard in an EAG London 2024 T-shirt

    Ricard joins the community building team!

    We’re very happy to announce that multilingual translator & animal activist, Ricard Soler, has joined the community building team alongside Mel Brennan. Ricard is now bringing his local knowledge and contagious enthusiasm for projects that improve the world to all our activities.

    February

    Bruce Friedrich speaks on a spotlit stage under a glowing Norrsken sign, in front of a seated audience

    Bruce Friedrich speaks at Norrsken House

    EA Barcelona collaborated with Norrsken House and Naked Innovations in inviting Bruce Friedrich of the Good Food Institute to talk about the transformative potential of alternative proteins to an audience of 100 people. You can watch the talk on our YouTube channel here.

    Project for Awesome ’24 and GiveDirectly logos next to a woman speaking to the camera in a fundraising video

    Project for Awesome

    We participated in the Project for Awesome fundraising event to raise money for charity, and GiveDirectly and Against Malaria Foundation were successful in receiving more than $37,000 each! You can watch the videos and subscribe to our EA Barcelona YouTube channel here.

    March

    Cover of The Scout Mindset by Julia Galef: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t

    Book club

    We concluded our 5-week book club for The Scout Mindset by Julia Galef. Together, we enjoyed learning more about how cognitive biases affect our decision making skills, and the techniques we can apply to overcome them.

    April

    Eight participants of the nuclear risks deep dive pose together with name badges in a lounge bar

    Nuclear risks deep dive

    Pablo Rosado guided us through a structured discussion about the history of nuclear bombs, their destructive potential and ways in which members of the effective altruism community are trying to mitigate this risk. You can watch Pablo’s subsequent YouTube video on this topic here.

    May

    Rationality meetup attendees with name tags pose on the grass in Parc de la Ciutadella on a sunny day

    Rationality meetup

    EA Barcelona hosted the Astral Codex Ten Annual Rationality Meetup in Parc Ciutadella. We had a lot of fun getting to know each other by playing some games to practise confidence calibration. Also, congratulations to Laura Correa for winning the chickpea counting contest!

    Students in a university lecture hall face a slide that reads: LLMs are not necessarily aligned with human interests and values

    AI safety talks

    The emerging AI Safety Barcelona community hosted its launch event at Universitat de Barcelona with two keynote speakers on recent developments in AI safety. You can watch the talks here and stay tuned for more AIS events soon!

    Giving game participants pose with large Giving Game cheques for charities such as Against Malaria and GiveDirectly

    Giving game

    Guillem Lajara, the CEO of Karoteno, organised a “giving game” at the local civic centre in El Prat. We learned how to compare the impact and cost effectiveness of three different charities and together decided how to split a sum of money between them.

    June

    Four EA Barcelona members with conference badges stand together in the venue lobby at EAG London

    EAG London

    Four of us headed off to London for the annual EA global conference, to learn about community building, AI safety and animal welfare, as well as making dozens of new connections with people working on different projects.

    Tobi Baur presents a slide titled Consequences to participants seated around a table

    OpenAI deep dive

    Tobi Baur took us through the history and development of OpenAI & the controversies surrounding the company over the past 12 months, then guided us through an open discussion on AI safety dilemmas.

    Four smiling community members at a café table with laptops and coffee during a coworking session

    Coworking

    And of course, throughout the year we have had plenty of coworking sessions. These sessions allow us to share our experiences & challenges, exchange resources and tap into each others’ networks.