Effective Altruism: the charitable movement influencing Silicon Valley

Effective altruism, a charitable movement that has become highly influential in Silicon Valley, suffered a huge blow to its reputation in 2022 — when its most famous proponent, Sam Bankman-Fried, was exposed for fraud and his FTX crypto exchange collapsed.

But while it moved out of the limelight, it never went away. And when AI company Anthropic goes public next week, analysts are predicting that effective altruism-linked charitable causes could be poised to rake in tens of billions of dollars.

Today, we look at the philosophical foundations of effective altruism, its many controversies, and how it influences Silicon Valley executives’ thinking and the tech they develop.

Our guest is David Z Morris. He’s the Managing Editor of Zero Knowledge Media, a former reporter for Fortune Magazine, a former chief columnist at CoinDesk, and the author of Stealing the Future: Sam Bankman-Fried, Elite Fraud, and the Cult of Techno-Utopia.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts