#16 - Dr Hutchinson on global priorities research & shaping the ideas of intellectuals

Global Priorities Institute (GPI) Establishment and Strategy

• The Global Priorities Institute (GPI) is a new research body at the University of Oxford, designed to serve as the "academic wing" of the effective altruism movement.
• The institute's central research question is determining how to maximize the amount of good generated per unit of resources.
• GPI aims to address the historical separation between effective altruism and academia, where the latter often lacks the interdisciplinary "big picture" focus required to evaluate global priorities.
• Current leadership includes Director Hilary Graves, researcher Will McCaskill, and incoming researcher Andreas Mohensen, alongside Michelle Hutchinson as Director of Operations.
• The institute intends to recruit approximately two to three new researchers annually, with a long-term vision of establishing satellite hubs at other universities to mirror models like J-PAL at MIT.
• Initial hiring focuses heavily on philosophy and economics to ensure credibility as a dual-disciplinary institute, with plans to expand into psychology and political science later.

Research Agenda and Methodology

• Comparative Cause Prioritization: A primary research focus is developing frameworks to compare vastly different interventions, such as saving a life from malaria now versus preventing a pandemic centuries later, accounting for long-term population effects.
• Moral Theory and Consequences: Researchers are investigating whether effective altruism's assumption that all consequences (including indirect societal effects) should be weighed is valid compared to the traditional academic ethical view of restricting consideration to direct impacts.
• Population Ethics: The team plans to apply population ethics and moral uncertainty to create actionable guidance on how to account for different plausible theories of population value.
• Metric Development: Work is underway to create a broader metric than the Quality-Adjusted Life-Year (QALY) that incorporates education and economic advancement.
• External Validity of RCTs: GPI is launching a workshop on March 1st to address the limitations of Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) regarding their generalizability (external validity) to different contexts.
• Collective Action vs. Individual Agency: Director Hilary Graves has published work arguing that individual expected value calculations can justify participation in collective actions (like protests or vegetarianism) even when an individual's specific marginal impact seems negligible.

Academic Integration and Institutional Challenges

• Name Selection: The institute was originally proposed as the "Institute for Effective Altruism" but was renamed "Global Priorities Institute" to signal a broader scope beyond individual altruism and to avoid negative connotations associated with "effective altruism" in some academic circles.
• Career Path Viability: A key strategic decision is to structure roles so researchers spend 50% of their time on the institute's agenda and 50% on traditional, high-status academic topics to protect candidates' long-term career prospects in competitive university departments.
• Administrative Constraints: Operating within Oxford University introduces significant bureaucratic hurdles and costs, including the requirement to secure full funding (potentially £5 million) for an indefinite post to employ a researcher long-term.
• Funding Strategy: The institute has found it more difficult to secure large academic grants due to slow turnaround times and misaligned funder priorities, leading to a reliance on aligned individual donors and foundations like Open Philanthropy.
• Hiring Bottlenecks: The primary current bottleneck is not funding but identifying and hiring top-tier researchers who are willing to work on non-traditional, high-priority topics within the rigid structure of a 900-year-old university system.
• Publication Standards: Success metrics will include the number of articles published in top-tier philosophy and economics journals, serving as a proxy for the quality and academic acceptance of the institute's work.

Employment Opportunities and Hiring Criteria

• Open Roles (Deadline: January 4, 2018): The institute is currently advertising four-year fixed-term research fellow and senior research fellow positions specifically for philosophers.
• Operations Role: A temporary Director of Operations position is open to cover Michelle Hutchinson's maternity leave from March to September.
• Candidate Profile: GPI seeks candidates with strong research records from top universities, high drive to solve global priority problems, and value alignment with the movement, with flexibility regarding PhD specialization.
• Research Adjacent Roles: The organization is explicitly encouraging applications for research assistant and project management roles, noting that competent operations staff are often a critical limiting factor for organizational growth.

Forward-Looking Statements and Risk Assessment

• Risk of Academic Rejection: There is a concern that if the movement appears dismissive of existing academic work (e.g., on disability-adjusted life years), it risks alienating the very experts needed to refine its frameworks.
• Growth Model Uncertainty: While the goal is to eventually spawn a network of centers, the institute currently lacks a fully tested model for scaling beyond a single, small, conceptually focused hub at Oxford.
• Impact Measurement: The institute acknowledges that academic papers often have low readership outside of immediate peers; they will monitor impact through response papers written by other academics and feedback from partner organizations like Open Philanthropy.
• Long-Term Stability: The institute anticipates that fundraising for permanent posts will become increasingly difficult, requiring a pivot toward demonstrating clear, high-quality academic output to justify the high costs of university employment to donors.