Zach Freitas-Groff 🔸 (@zdgroff) / X

Zach Freitas-Groff 🔸

4,198 posts

Zach Freitas-Groff 🔸

@zdgroff

AI Program Officer @ longview.org. Research Affiliate @UTAustin, PhD @Stanford. Effective altruism; econ; AI; animals; 🎬. Opinions are mine only. 🏳️‍🌈

London, England

Joined January 2015

Pinned
Zach Freitas-Groff 🔸
@zdgroff
Jun 1
💡 Another round of Longview Philanthropy’s digital minds request for proposals is open for applications. A year ago I would have called this niche. Now AI labs publish model welfare research, public discussion of digital sentience is growing, and the field is expanding. 📈
7.9K
Zach Freitas-Groff 🔸
@zdgroff
Nov 2, 2023
📈Job market paper time📉 I’m excited to finally share my job market paper! My JMP studies whether and why policy choices are stubbornly persistent. For example, Oregon has an income tax, but Washington doesn’t—seemingly because of nearly century-old choices. Is this typical?
186K
Zach Freitas-Groff 🔸
@zdgroff
Dec 11, 2024
Banger quote from @dylanmatt: "If I were to file effective altruism down to its more core, elemental truth, it’s this: “We should let children die to rebuild a cathedral” is not a principle anyone should be willing to accept."
1.3M
Zach Freitas-Groff 🔸
@zdgroff
Jan 25, 2021
Alright, here we go: my cousin @CindySueSci challenged me to the #RenewDemocracy challenge (kicked off by @AVindman). Here's what democracy means to me:
00:00
Zach Freitas-Groff 🔸
@zdgroff
Aug 2, 2024
10 years since I took the 🔸10% Pledge (to donate at least 10% of my income to highly effective charities). Now my husband and I do it together, and it's one of the most joyous parts of our marriage!
4.4K
Zach Freitas-Groff 🔸
@zdgroff
Jun 17, 2024
Got my Ph.D. yesterday. Grateful to family, friends, collaborators, and advisors who enabled me to get to this point! For my next step, I'm excited to be a researcher + grantmaker at Longview Philanthropy and an affiliate @UTAustin's Population Wellbeing Initiative.
4.8K
Zach Freitas-Groff 🔸
@zdgroff
Dec 21, 2024
Working paper out! Does cultured meat make people more open to animal welfare concerns with factory farming? Models of motivated beliefs (or cognitive dissonance) would generally predict yes (substitute = less attachment to meat). We find no!
22K
Zach Freitas-Groff 🔸
@zdgroff
Oct 25, 2023
Neat. Evidence that legal same-sex marriage decreased enrollment in priestly studies (because fewer gay men avoid coming out): digitalcommons.chapman.edu/cgi/viewconten… @RohitTicku @SerorAvner
12K
Zach Freitas-Groff 🔸
@zdgroff
Oct 1, 2023
Excited to share that I won a second prize in Open Philanthropy's 2023 AI Worldviews contest!
Coefficient Giving
@coeff_giving
Sep 30, 2023
We just announced the winning entries in our 2023 AI Worldviews contest: openphilanthropy.org/research/annou…
9.5K
Zach Freitas-Groff 🔸
@zdgroff
Apr 23, 2023
If you're not watching Schmigadoon, you either have poor taste or are really depriving yourself. youtube.com/watch?v=wece6G…
2.9K
Zach Freitas-Groff 🔸
@zdgroff
Aug 23, 2022
One of the better spam messages I've gotten recently.
Zach Freitas-Groff 🔸
@zdgroff
Nov 7, 2023
Very kind note on Marginal Revolution this morning. "EA-adjacent" 🤔
Persistence in policy: evidence from close votes - Marginal REVOLUTION
From marginalrevolution.com
13K
Zach Freitas-Groff 🔸
@zdgroff
Nov 1, 2024
It's plausible we'll have AI with an internal mental life like humans (and many animals) have sometime this century. Not long ago, there was ~nobody working on this. Very glad we now have some people on the case, who also happen to be thoughtful, cautious, and clear writers!
3.1K
Zach Freitas-Groff 🔸
@zdgroff
Nov 22, 2024
My work covered by @voxdotcom. @KennyTorrella did an exceptional job with this. When I read press coverage of something I worked on, I expect to find at least one error that makes me cringe. Not one in this article. He captured the cloudy picture well.
Americans are eating less meat. And more meat. How?
From vox.com
6.7K