Inside Peter Singer’s new ethical giving machine

A NON-profit organisation dedicated to fighting extreme poverty has launched an AI-powered ‘SmartAdvisor’ to help donors maximise their impact this giving season.

Founded by Australian philosopher Peter Singer, The Life You Can Save was created to promote high-impact, research-based, cost-effective philanthropy. Its mission is to improve the lives of people living in poverty by changing the way people think about and donate to charity.

The organisation said 30 per cent of annual charitable giving occurs in December alone, and 10 per cent occurs during the final three days of the year.

The new tool, developed through ChatGPT and integrated into The Life You Can Save’s website, provides donors with personalised recommendations based on their interests, values and philanthropic goals.

“AI is a very powerful technology. It’s obviously going to stay with us for a long time, and it needs to be used for good as much as possible, and we need to try to curtail the more negative side of it,” Singer said.

“OpenAI, which created ChatGPT, has done the work, and what we did was to give it access to all of the research that we do, which is extensive, and not something that an individual would really want to go through.

“There are so many different charities, and to find out which are the most effective ones for an individual to start from scratch would take an enormous amount of work, but the SmartAdvisor has been trained on that, so it’s able to give answers quite rapidly that would take an individual days or weeks to arrive at.”

The Life You Can Save has also released The Better Giving Guide: A Practical Guide to High-Impact Giving, offering practical insights on how to choose causes, evaluate charities and understand impact. Singer believes it is a moral obligation to help people in poverty.

“We’re fortunate to have been born in a country like Australia, or to live and work here, we have opportunities to live comfortably, and we don’t have to worry generally about things like clean drinking water, or sending kids to school, or affording basic health care,” he said.

“We should recognise that there are other people in the world who are not so fortunate, and through no fault of their own, were born into much more difficult circumstances.

“We should also be aware that there are some charities which can help them in a very cost-effective way. I think we ought to really try to equalise the burdens a little bit, at least try to give more people opportunities and resources to live a decent life.

“You don’t need to be a major philanthropist and employ an advisor to distribute your wealth, and one of the barriers to encouraging people to give is that they don’t know where to give.

“That’s what SmartAdvisor is about, whether it’s $50 or 50,000, to try to do the most good with it per dollar that you can.”

For more information, visit thelifeyoucansave.org.au