20 Oct 2025
Last week, I attended the 2025 EA Global conference in NYC. Given that I’ve had limited involvement with Effective Altruism thus far, I wasn’t exactly the target audience, but I’m happy I decided to go. (Thanks to the folks at 80,000 Hours for encouraging me to apply.)
The event mostly centered around networking. About a week before the event, I used Google Gemini to analyze the attendee spreadsheet and recommend who I should connect with, and this mostly worked.
I spoke with a few folks with similar backgrounds and goals to mine—career technologists looking to increase their impact—along with some folks with drastically different interests and cause areas: the environment, animal welfare, global health, etc. The conversations were engaging but it’s unclear whether they actually benefitted either party. (There were exceptions of course, such as a chat with an ex-teacher who shared good insights and advice, and with whom I hope to maintain a connection.)
The talks I attended were quite good—highlights include a keynote by Sjir Hoeijmakers, the CEO of Giving What We Can, and an overview of the current state of AI policy by New York Assemblymember Alex Bores—but there weren’t enough of them to keep me busy, so it was back to networking.
By the end of the first day, I was completely burned out and had to take a nap in the designated nap room, which was actually quite nice. (Air mattresses organized neatly into rows, gentle lighting, etc.) I decided to opt out of the second day of the conference in favor of some other tasks that needed doing.
Immediately following the conference, I wasn’t quite sure I got my money’s worth ($500 is the regular price of attendance) but upon further reflection I think I gained some valuable perspective that made the whole thing worth it:
Most people at EA Global didn’t fully subscribe to the “maximum impact at any cost” philosophy that I previously assumed was pervasive. The fact that other people didn’t neglect their own needs and desires—as irrational as they might be—makes me feel better about attending to my own, too. Teaching might be low-leverage to some, but if it makes me happy, who’s to say I shouldn’t do it?
Along those same lines, I think I’ve finally realized that I don’t need—or want—to change the whole world. As a human being with finite energy, it’s exhausing and depressing to think about things at that scale. Instead, I think I much prefer being a big fish in a small pond, making a big difference for the people closest to me.
Almost everyone I spoke with wanted to know how they could get a job like mine, something adjacent to AI safety at a top research lab. It made me realize that, despite the suboptimal parts of the job, I’m incredibly lucky to be where I am. It reinvigorated my desire to do good work and hopefully steer us—ever so slightly—towards a better future.