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80,000 Hours Podcast
80,000 Hours Podcast
Rob, Luisa, Keiran, and the 80,000 Hours team

Unusually in-depth conversations about the world's most pressing problems and what you can do to solve them. Subscribe by searching for '80000... more

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Episodes

#206 – Anil Seth on the predictive brain and how to study consciousness

"In that famous example of the dress, half of the people in the world saw [blue and black], half saw... more

01 Nov 2024 · 2 hours, 33 minutes
How much does a vote matter? (Article)

If you care about social impact, is voting important? In this piece, Rob investigates the two key things that determine... more

28 Oct 2024 · 32 minutes
#205 – Sébastien Moro on the most insane things fish can do

"You have a tank split in two parts: if the fish gets in the compartment with a red circle, it... more

23 Oct 2024 · 3 hours, 11 minutes
#204 – Nate Silver on making sense of SBF, and his biggest critiques of effective altruism

Rob Wiblin speaks with FiveThirtyEight election forecaster and author Nate Silver about his new book: On the Edge: The Art... more

16 Oct 2024 · 1 hour, 57 minutes
#203 – Peter Godfrey-Smith on interfering with wild nature, accepting death, and the origin of complex civilisation

"In the human case, it would be mistaken to give a kind of hour-by-hour accounting. You know, 'I had +4... more

03 Oct 2024 · 1 hour, 25 minutes
Luisa and Keiran on free will, and the consequences of never feeling enduring guilt or shame

In this episode from our second show, 80k After Hours, Luisa Rodriguez and Keiran Harris chat about the consequences of... more

27 Sep 2024 · 1 hour, 36 minutes
#202 – Venki Ramakrishnan on the cutting edge of anti-ageing science

"For every far-out idea that turns out to be true, there were probably hundreds that were simply crackpot ideas. In... more

19 Sep 2024 · 2 hours, 20 minutes
#201 – Ken Goldberg on why your robot butler isn’t here yet

"Perception is quite difficult with cameras: even if you have a stereo camera, you still can’t really build a map... more

13 Sep 2024 · 2 hours, 1 minute
#200 – Ezra Karger on what superforecasters and experts think about existential risks

"It’s very hard to find examples where people say, 'I’m starting from this point. I’m starting from this belief.' So... more

04 Sep 2024 · 2 hours, 49 minutes
#199 – Nathan Calvin on California’s AI bill SB 1047 and its potential to shape US AI policy

"I do think that there is a really significant sentiment among parts of the opposition that it’s not really just... more

29 Aug 2024 · 1 hour, 12 minutes
#198 – Meghan Barrett on challenging our assumptions about insects

"This is a group of animals I think people are particularly unfamiliar with. They are especially poorly covered in our... more

26 Aug 2024 · 3 hours, 48 minutes
#197 – Nick Joseph on whether Anthropic's AI safety policy is up to the task

The three biggest AI companies — Anthropic, OpenAI, and DeepMind — have now all released policies designed to make their... more

22 Aug 2024 · 2 hours, 29 minutes
#196 – Jonathan Birch on the edge cases of sentience and why they matter

"In the 1980s, it was still apparently common to perform surgery on newborn babies without anaesthetic on both sides of... more

15 Aug 2024 · 2 hours, 1 minute
#195 – Sella Nevo on who's trying to steal frontier AI models, and what they could do with them

"Computational systems have literally millions of physical and conceptual components, and around 98% of them are embedded into your infrastructure... more

01 Aug 2024 · 2 hours, 8 minutes
#194 – Vitalik Buterin on defensive acceleration and how to regulate AI when you fear government

"If you’re a power that is an island and that goes by sea, then you’re more likely to do things... more

26 Jul 2024 · 3 hours, 4 minutes
#193 – Sihao Huang on the risk that US–China AI competition leads to war

"You don’t necessarily need world-leading compute to create highly risky AI systems. The biggest biological design tools right now, like... more

18 Jul 2024 · 2 hours, 23 minutes
#192 – Annie Jacobsen on what would happen if North Korea launched a nuclear weapon at the US

"Ring one: total annihilation; no cellular life remains. Ring two, another three-mile diameter out: everything is ablaze. Ring three, another... more

12 Jul 2024 · 1 hour, 54 minutes
#191 (Part 2) – Carl Shulman on government and society after AGI

This is the second part of our marathon interview with Carl Shulman. The first episode is on the economy and... more

05 Jul 2024 · 2 hours, 20 minutes
#191 (Part 1) – Carl Shulman on the economy and national security after AGI

This is the first part of our marathon interview with Carl Shulman. The second episode is on government and society... more

27 Jun 2024 · 4 hours, 14 minutes
#190 – Eric Schwitzgebel on whether the US is conscious

"One of the most amazing things about planet Earth is that there are complex bags of mostly water — you... more

07 Jun 2024 · 2 hours,
#189 – Rachel Glennerster on how “market shaping” could help solve climate change, pandemics, and other global problems

"You can’t charge what something is worth during a pandemic. So we estimated that the value of one course of... more

29 May 2024 · 2 hours, 48 minutes
#188 – Matt Clancy on whether science is good

"Suppose we make these grants, we do some of those experiments I talk about. We discover, for example — I’m... more

23 May 2024 · 2 hours, 40 minutes
#187 – Zach Weinersmith on how researching his book turned him from a space optimist into a "space bastard"

"Earth economists, when they measure how bad the potential for exploitation is, they look at things like, how is labour... more

14 May 2024 · 3 hours, 6 minutes
#186 – Dean Spears on why babies are born small in Uttar Pradesh, and how to save their lives

"I work in a place called Uttar Pradesh, which is a state in India with 240 million people. One in... more

01 May 2024 · 1 hour, 18 minutes
#185 – Lewis Bollard on the 7 most promising ways to end factory farming, and whether AI is going to be good or bad for animals

"The constraint right now on factory farming is how far can you push the biology of these animals? But AI... more

18 Apr 2024 · 2 hours, 33 minutes
#184 – Zvi Mowshowitz on sleeping on sleeper agents, and the biggest AI updates since ChatGPT

Many of you will have heard of Zvi Mowshowitz as a superhuman information-absorbing-and-processing machine — which he definitely is. As... more

11 Apr 2024 · 3 hours, 31 minutes
AI governance and policy (Article)

Today’s release is a reading of our career review of AI governance and policy, written and narrated by Cody Fenwick.Advanced... more

28 Mar 2024 · 51 minutes
#183 – Spencer Greenberg on causation without correlation, money and happiness, lightgassing, hype vs value, and more

"When a friend comes to me with a decision, and they want my thoughts on it, very rarely am I... more

14 Mar 2024 · 2 hours, 36 minutes
#182 – Bob Fischer on comparing the welfare of humans, chickens, pigs, octopuses, bees, and more

"[One] thing is just to spend time thinking about the kinds of things animals can do and what their lives... more

08 Mar 2024 · 2 hours, 21 minutes
#181 – Laura Deming on the science that could keep us healthy in our 80s and beyond

"The question I care about is: What do I want to do? Like, when I'm 80, how strong do I... more

01 Mar 2024 · 1 hour, 37 minutes
#180 – Hugo Mercier on why gullibility and misinformation are overrated

The World Economic Forum’s global risks survey of 1,400 experts, policymakers, and industry leaders ranked misinformation and disinformation as the... more

21 Feb 2024 · 2 hours, 36 minutes
#179 – Randy Nesse on why evolution left us so vulnerable to depression and anxiety

Mental health problems like depression and anxiety affect enormous numbers of people and severely interfere with their lives. By contrast,... more

12 Feb 2024 · 2 hours, 56 minutes
#178 – Emily Oster on what the evidence actually says about pregnancy and parenting

"I think at various times — before you have the kid, after you have the kid — it's useful to... more

01 Feb 2024 · 2 hours, 22 minutes
#177 – Nathan Labenz on recent AI breakthroughs and navigating the growing rift between AI safety and accelerationist camps

Back in December we spoke with Nathan Labenz — AI entrepreneur and host of The Cognitive Revolution Podcast — about... more

24 Jan 2024 · 2 hours, 47 minutes
#90 Classic episode – Ajeya Cotra on worldview diversification and how big the future could be

Rebroadcast: this episode was originally released in January 2021.You wake up in a mysterious box, and hear the booming voice... more

12 Jan 2024 · 2 hours, 59 minutes
#112 Classic episode – Carl Shulman on the common-sense case for existential risk work and its practical implications

Rebroadcast: this episode was originally released in October 2021.Preventing the apocalypse may sound like an idiosyncratic activity, and it sometimes... more

08 Jan 2024 · 3 hours, 50 minutes
#111 Classic episode – Mushtaq Khan on using institutional economics to predict effective government reforms

Rebroadcast: this episode was originally released in September 2021.If you’re living in the Niger Delta in Nigeria, your best bet... more

04 Jan 2024 · 3 hours, 22 minutes
2023 Mega-highlights Extravaganza

Happy new year! We've got a different kind of holiday release for you today. Rather than a 'classic episode,' we've... more

31 Dec 2023 · 1 hour, 53 minutes
#100 Classic episode – Having a successful career with depression, anxiety, and imposter syndrome

Rebroadcast: this episode was originally released in May 2021.Today’s episode is one of the most remarkable and really, unique, pieces... more

27 Dec 2023 · 2 hours, 51 minutes
#176 – Nathan Labenz on the final push for AGI, understanding OpenAI's leadership drama, and red-teaming frontier models

OpenAI says its mission is to build AGI — an AI system that is better than human beings at everything.... more

22 Dec 2023 · 3 hours, 46 minutes
#175 – Lucia Coulter on preventing lead poisoning for $1.66 per child

Lead is one of the most poisonous things going. A single sugar sachet of lead, spread over a park the... more

14 Dec 2023 · 2 hours, 14 minutes
#174 – Nita Farahany on the neurotechnology already being used to convict criminals and manipulate workers

"It will change everything: it will change our workplaces, it will change our interactions with the government, it will change... more

07 Dec 2023 · 2 hours,
#173 – Jeff Sebo on digital minds, and how to avoid sleepwalking into a major moral catastrophe

"We do have a tendency to anthropomorphise nonhumans — which means attributing human characteristics to them, even when they lack... more

22 Nov 2023 · 2 hours, 38 minutes
#172 – Bryan Caplan on why you should stop reading the news

Is following important political and international news a civic duty — or is it our civic duty to avoid it?It's... more

17 Nov 2023 · 2 hours, 23 minutes
#171 – Alison Young on how top labs have jeopardised public health with repeated biosafety failures

"Rare events can still cause catastrophic accidents. The concern that has been raised by experts going back over time, is... more

09 Nov 2023 · 1 hour, 46 minutes
#170 – Santosh Harish on how air pollution is responsible for ~12% of global deaths — and how to get that number down

"One [outrageous example of air pollution] is municipal waste burning that happens in many cities in the Global South. Basically,... more

01 Nov 2023 · 2 hours, 57 minutes
#169 – Paul Niehaus on whether cash transfers cause economic growth, and keeping theft to acceptable levels

"One of our earliest supporters and a dear friend of mine, Mark Lampert, once said to me, “The way I... more

26 Oct 2023 · 1 hour, 47 minutes
#168 – Ian Morris on whether deep history says we're heading for an intelligence explosion

"If we carry on looking at these industrialised economies, not thinking about what it is they're actually doing and what... more

23 Oct 2023 · 2 hours, 43 minutes
#167 – Seren Kell on the research gaps holding back alternative proteins from mass adoption

"There have been literally thousands of years of breeding and living with animals to optimise these kinds of problems. But... more

18 Oct 2023 · 1 hour, 54 minutes
#166 – Tantum Collins on what he’s learned as an AI policy insider at the White House, DeepMind and elsewhere

"If you and I and 100 other people were on the first ship that was going to go settle Mars,... more

12 Oct 2023 · 3 hours, 8 minutes
#165 – Anders Sandberg on war in space, whether civilisations age, and the best things possible in our universe

"Now, the really interesting question is: How much is there an attacker-versus-defender advantage in this kind of advanced future? Right... more

06 Oct 2023 · 2 hours, 48 minutes
#164 – Kevin Esvelt on cults that want to kill everyone, stealth vs wildfire pandemics, and how he felt inventing gene drives

"Imagine a fast-spreading respiratory HIV. It sweeps around the world. Almost nobody has symptoms. Nobody notices until years later, when... more

02 Oct 2023 · 3 hours, 3 minutes
Great power conflict (Article)

Today’s release is a reading of our Great power conflict problem profile, written and narrated by Stephen Clare.If you want... more

22 Sep 2023 · 1 hour, 19 minutes
#163 – Toby Ord on the perils of maximising the good that you do

Effective altruism is associated with the slogan "do the most good." On one level, this has to be unobjectionable: What... more

08 Sep 2023 · 3 hours, 7 minutes
The 80,000 Hours Career Guide (2023)

An audio version of the 2023 80,000 Hours career guide, also available on our website, on Amazon and on Audible.If... more

04 Sep 2023 · 4 hours, 41 minutes
#162 – Mustafa Suleyman on getting Washington and Silicon Valley to tame AI

Mustafa Suleyman was part of the trio that founded DeepMind, and his new AI project is building one of the... more

01 Sep 2023 · 59 minutes
#161 – Michael Webb on whether AI will soon cause job loss, lower incomes, and higher inequality — or the opposite

"Do you remember seeing these photographs of generally women sitting in front of these huge panels and connecting calls, plugging... more

23 Aug 2023 · 3 hours, 30 minutes
#160 – Hannah Ritchie on why it makes sense to be optimistic about the environment

"There's no money to invest in education elsewhere, so they almost get trapped in the cycle where they don't get... more

14 Aug 2023 · 2 hours, 36 minutes
#159 – Jan Leike on OpenAI's massive push to make superintelligence safe in 4 years or less

In July, OpenAI announced a new team and project: Superalignment. The goal is to figure out how to make superintelligent... more

07 Aug 2023 · 2 hours, 51 minutes
We now offer shorter 'interview highlights' episodes

Over on our other feed, 80k After Hours, you can now find 20-30 minute highlights episodes of our 80,000 Hours... more

05 Aug 2023 · 6 minutes
#158 – Holden Karnofsky on how AIs might take over even if they're no smarter than humans, and his 4-part playbook for AI risk

Back in 2007, Holden Karnofsky cofounded GiveWell, where he sought out the charities that most cost-effectively helped save lives. He... more

31 Jul 2023 · 3 hours, 13 minutes
#157 – Ezra Klein on existential risk from AI and what DC could do about it

In Oppenheimer, scientists detonate a nuclear weapon despite thinking there's some 'near zero' chance it would ignite the atmosphere, putting... more

24 Jul 2023 · 1 hour, 18 minutes
#156 – Markus Anderljung on how to regulate cutting-edge AI models

"At the front of the pack we have these frontier AI developers, and we want them to identify particularly dangerous... more

10 Jul 2023 · 2 hours, 6 minutes
Bonus: The Worst Ideas in the History of the World

Today’s bonus release is a pilot for a new podcast called ‘The Worst Ideas in the History of the World’,... more

30 Jun 2023 · 35 minutes
#155 – Lennart Heim on the compute governance era and what has to come after

As AI advances ever more quickly, concerns about potential misuse of highly capable models are growing. From hostile foreign governments... more

22 Jun 2023 · 3 hours, 12 minutes
#154 - Rohin Shah on DeepMind and trying to fairly hear out both AI doomers and doubters

Can there be a more exciting and strange place to work today than a leading AI lab? Your CEO has... more

09 Jun 2023 · 3 hours, 9 minutes
#153 – Elie Hassenfeld on 2 big picture critiques of GiveWell's approach, and 6 lessons from their recent work

GiveWell is one of the world's best-known charity evaluators, with the goal of "searching for the charities that save or... more

02 Jun 2023 · 2 hours, 56 minutes
#152 – Joe Carlsmith on navigating serious philosophical confusion

What is the nature of the universe? How do we make decisions correctly? What differentiates right actions from wrong ones?Such... more

19 May 2023 · 3 hours, 26 minutes
#151 – Ajeya Cotra on accidentally teaching AI models to deceive us

Imagine you are an orphaned eight-year-old whose parents left you a $1 trillion company, and no trusted adult to serve... more

12 May 2023 · 2 hours, 49 minutes
#150 – Tom Davidson on how quickly AI could transform the world

It’s easy to dismiss alarming AI-related predictions when you don’t know where the numbers came from. For example: what if... more

05 May 2023 · 3 hours, 1 minute
Andrés Jiménez Zorrilla on the Shrimp Welfare Project (80k After Hours)

In this episode from our second show, 80k After Hours, Rob Wiblin interviews Andrés Jiménez Zorrilla about the Shrimp Welfare... more

22 Apr 2023 · 1 hour, 17 minutes
#149 – Tim LeBon on how altruistic perfectionism is self-defeating

Being a good and successful person is core to your identity. You place great importance on meeting the high moral,... more

12 Apr 2023 · 3 hours, 11 minutes
#148 – Johannes Ackva on unfashionable climate interventions that work, and fashionable ones that don't

If you want to work to tackle climate change, you should try to reduce expected carbon emissions by as much... more

03 Apr 2023 · 2 hours, 17 minutes
#147 – Spencer Greenberg on stopping valueless papers from getting into top journals

Can you trust the things you read in published scientific research? Not really. About 40% of experiments in top social... more

24 Mar 2023 · 2 hours, 38 minutes
#146 – Robert Long on why large language models like GPT (probably) aren't conscious

By now, you’ve probably seen the extremely unsettling conversations Bing’s chatbot has been having. In one exchange, the chatbot told... more

14 Mar 2023 · 3 hours, 12 minutes
#145 – Christopher Brown on why slavery abolition wasn't inevitable

In many ways, humanity seems to have become more humane and inclusive over time. While there’s still a lot of... more

11 Feb 2023 · 2 hours, 42 minutes
#144 – Athena Aktipis on why cancer is actually one of our universe's most fundamental phenomena

What’s the opposite of cancer? If you answered “cure,” “antidote,” or “antivenom” — you’ve obviously been reading the antonym section... more

26 Jan 2023 · 3 hours, 15 minutes
#79 Classic episode - A.J. Jacobs on radical honesty, following the whole Bible, and reframing global problems as puzzles

Rebroadcast: this episode was originally released in June 2020. Today’s guest, New York Times bestselling author A.J. Jacobs, always hated... more

16 Jan 2023 · 2 hours, 35 minutes
#81 Classic episode - Ben Garfinkel on scrutinising classic AI risk arguments

Rebroadcast: this episode was originally released in July 2020. 80,000 Hours, along with many other members of the effective altruism... more

09 Jan 2023 · 2 hours, 37 minutes
#83 Classic episode - Jennifer Doleac on preventing crime without police and prisons

Rebroadcast: this episode was originally released in July 2020. Today’s guest, Jennifer Doleac — Associate Professor of Economics at Texas... more

04 Jan 2023 · 2 hours, 17 minutes
80,000 Hours Podcast
#146 – Robert Long on why large language models like GPT (probably) aren't conscious
80,000 Hours Podcast
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Description

By now, you’ve probably seen the extremely unsettling conversations Bing’s chatbot has been having. In one exchange, the chatbot told a user:... more