Back
EA Community Cause Prioritization - Rethink Priorities Research Digest
blogCredibility Rating
2/5
Mixed(2)Mixed quality. Some useful content but inconsistent editorial standards. Claims should be verified.
Rating inherited from publication venue: Substack
This Rethink Priorities digest summarizes community survey data useful for understanding how EA—a major funder and talent pipeline for AI safety—collectively weighs AI risk against other cause areas, and how those weights have shifted over a decade.
Metadata
Importance: 52/100blog postdataset
Summary
The 2024 EA Survey (n≈1,850) tracks how the EA community prioritizes cause areas, finding AI risks and global health remain top priorities (~70% each), with animal welfare rising to join them. Long-term trends show AI risks and animal welfare increasing while climate change, mental health, and nuclear security have declined to record lows. Community engagement level is the strongest predictor of cause prioritization preferences.
Key Points
- •AI risks and global health are each rated 'near-top or top priority' by ~70% of respondents, with animal welfare now joining this top tier.
- •Long-term trends show AI risks and animal welfare rising steadily since 2015, while climate change, mental health, nuclear security, and cause prioritization research have hit all-time lows.
- •Animal welfare shows the greatest internal disagreement among cause areas, suggesting it is more contested despite its high average priority rating.
- •Engagement with EA is the strongest predictor of cause prioritization: highly engaged members favor AI risks, animal welfare, and EA movement building more strongly.
- •Survey covers ~1,850 respondents and tracks longitudinal shifts in cause prioritization from 2015 to 2024.
Cited by 1 page
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| EA and Longtermist Wins and Losses | -- | 53.0 |
Cached Content Preview
HTTP 200Fetched Mar 15, 20268 KB
Which cause areas do Effective Altruism community members prioritize?
Subscribe Sign in Which cause areas do Effective Altruism community members prioritize?
Results from the 2024 Effective Altruism Survey
Rethink Priorities Feb 13, 2026 6 3 1 Share Research authors: Julie Pedersen, David Moss
Summary author: Siobhan Ballan
Recently released findings from the 2024 Effective Altruism (EA) Survey examine how the effective altruism community prioritizes different cause areas, how those priorities have shifted over time, and how they relate to engagement with EA, demographics , and endorsement of EA-related ideas . The survey also explores how respondents think EA’s resources should be allocated across broad cause categories. Based on roughly 1,850 respondents, the results offer insight into where the community stands and where it’s headed.
Why this research matters
Cause prioritization shapes funding decisions, research agendas, and organizational focus across the EA ecosystem. Tracking how priorities evolve helps distinguish between short-term reactions to events and deeper shifts in worldview. The EA Survey is one of the few datasets that allows this longitudinal perspective on the community.
Key findings
AI risks and global health remain top priorities, but animal welfare has joined the top tier.
Around 70% of respondents rated both AI risks and global health and poverty as a near-top or top priority , with AI risks slightly more likely to be selected as the single top cause.
Biosecurity was the next highest ranked cause (62%), with many respondents placing it just below the top threshold.
Animal welfare , while rated slightly lower on average than biosecurity, attracted a comparatively large share of top-priority responses alongside a wider spread of lower ratings, indicating greater disagreement within the community .
Mental health and climate change ranked lower, but all causes retained meaningful support.
Mental health received the fewest top or near top-priority responses (19%), with most respondents (67%) allocating it between “some” and “significant” resources.
Climate change showed a more polarized pattern : over a third of respondents rated it near the top, while a similarly large share believed it should receive little or no funding.
Despite these differences, at least half of respondents believed each cause should receive significant resources or more.
Figure: Average cause prioritization ratings across major EA cause areas in the 2024 EA Survey. Bars show mean prioritization levels with 95% confidence intervals. Rethink Priorities (2025).
Trends si
... (truncated, 8 KB total)Resource ID:
e9ee3d3cd648ea8e | Stable ID: OThmMjhjNW