Research Agendas

On this page, you can find the research agendas of organisations and researchers from or adjacent to effective altruism. If you want a quick introduction to why these causes are particularly important from an effective altruist perspective, see this TED video or read this article.

Collections covering multiple cause areas

• A central directory for open research questions on the EA forum by Michael Aird
• Collection of example research questions with potentially high social impact by 80,000 Hours
• Humanities Research Ideas for Longtermists by Lizka Vaintrob
  
  

Cause prioritisation research

• Global Priorities Institute at Oxford University: research agenda
• Research projects suggested by the Forethought Foundation
• Open Philanthropy project: Technical and Philosophical Questions That Might Affect Our Grantmaking
• Legal Priorities Project: A Research Agenda
  
  

Human Welfare

• Happier Lives Institute: research agenda
• Qualia Research Institute: ideas for further research
  
  

Animal Welfare

• The Good Food Institute: 2020 Consumer Research Priorities
• Animal Advocacy Africa:research agenda
• Animal Charity Evaluators: focus areas
• Faunalytics: research agenda
• Sentience Institute: research agenda
• Wild Animal Initiative: research agenda 2020
• Fish Welfare Initiative: Thesis ideas
• Capacity for Welfare & Moral Status by Jason Schukraft of Rethink Priorities
• Wild Animal Initiative: research agenda
  
  

Improving Institutional Decision-Making

• EA Geneva: questions related to improving institutional decision making
  
  

Global Development

• Innovations for Poverty Action: A Research Agenda for the Next Wave of Graduation Programs
• International Growth Centre's research priorities (more detailed PDF)
• Esther Duflo's Research Agenda for Development Economics
  
  

Charitable donations decision-making research

The Life You Can Save: research they would like to see more of

Extinction risks + suffering risks:

Technical AI safety

• Center for Human Compatible Artifical Intelligence: annotated bibliography of recommended reading materials
• Machine Intelligence Research Institute: Agent Foundations for Aligning Machine Intelligence with Human Interests (2017) and Alignment for Advanced Machine Learning Systems research agendas
• Center on Long-Term Risk: Cooperation, Conflict, and Transformative Artificial Intelligence: A Research Agenda (+ includes some questions related to AI governance)
• Paul Christiano’s research agenda summary (and FAQ and talk) (2018)
• Stuart Armstrong's research agenda (2019), example use and talk.
• Vanessa Kosoy's research agenda (2018)
  
  

AI governance

• AI Impacts: promising research projects and possible empirical investigations
• Governance of AI program at Future of Humanity Institute: Alan Dafoe's AI governance research agenda
• Center for a New American Security: Artificial Intelligence and Global Security Initiative Research Agenda
• Future of Life Institute: A survey of research questions for robust and beneficial AI (+ some aspects also fall into technical AI safety)
• Luke Muehlhauser’s list of research questions to improve our strategic picture of superintelligence (2014)
  
  

Other risks

• Alliance for Feeding The Earth in Disasters: research priorities and Effective Thesis research topics
• Center on Long-Term Risk: open research questions (+ includes some questions related to AI governance)
  

If you have suggestions on how to improve this page, please reach out or comment and suggest edits on this google doc.