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PODCAST

80,000 Hours Podcast

Rob, Luisa, and the 80000 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 Hours" wherever you get podcasts. Hosted by Rob Wiblin and Luisa Rodriguez.

education

All Episodes

151:11

GPT-7 might democratise bioweapons. But we can defend...

80,000 Hours Podcast ·

2025/10/02

Conventional wisdom is that safeguarding humanity from the worst biological risks — microbes optimised to kill as many as possible — is difficult bordering on impossible, making bioweapons humanity’s single greatest vulnerability. Andrew Snyder-Beattie thinks conventional wisdom could be wrong.Andrew’s job at Open Philanthropy is to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to protect as much of humanity as possible in the worst-case scenarios — those with fatality rates near 100% and the

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65:58

Inside the Biden admin’s AI policy approach | Jake...

80,000 Hours Podcast ·

2025/09/26

Jake Sullivan was the US National Security Advisor from 2021-2025. He joined our friends on The Cognitive Revolution podcast in August to discuss AI as a critical national security issue. We thought it was such a good interview and we wanted more people to see it, so we’re cross-posting it here on The 80,000 Hours Podcast.Jake and host Nathan Labenz discuss:Jake’s four-category framework to think about AI risks and opportunities: security, economics, society, and existential.Why Jake

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106:49

#223 – Neel Nanda on leading a Google DeepMind team...

80,000 Hours Podcast ·

2025/09/15

At 26, Neel Nanda leads an AI safety team at Google DeepMind, has published dozens of influential papers, and mentored 50 junior researchers — seven of whom now work at major AI companies. His secret? “It’s mostly luck,” he says, but “another part is what I think of as maximising my luck surface area.”Video, full transcript, and links to learn more: https://80k.info/nn2This means creating as many opportunities as possible for surprisingly good things to happen:Write publicly.Reach out to

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181:11

Can we tell an AI is loyal by reading its mind?...

80,000 Hours Podcast ·

2025/09/08

We don’t know how AIs think or why they do what they do. Or at least, we don’t know much. That fact is only becoming more troubling as AIs grow more capable and appear on track to wield enormous cultural influence, directly advise on major government decisions, and even operate military equipment autonomously. We simply can’t tell what models, if any, should be trusted with such authority.Neel Nanda of Google DeepMind is one of the founding figures of the field of machine learning trying to

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148:53

#221 – Kyle Fish on the most bizarre findings from 5...

80,000 Hours Podcast ·

2025/08/28

What happens when you lock two AI systems in a room together and tell them they can discuss anything they want?According to experiments run by Kyle Fish — Anthropic’s first AI welfare researcher — something consistently strange: the models immediately begin discussing their own consciousness before spiraling into increasingly euphoric philosophical dialogue that ends in apparent meditative bliss.Highlights, video, and full transcript: https://80k.info/kf“We started calling this a ‘spiritual

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51:25

How not to lose your job to AI (article by Benjamin...

80,000 Hours Podcast ·

2025/07/31

About half of people are worried they’ll lose their job to AI. They’re right to be concerned: AI can now complete real-world coding tasks on GitHub, generate photorealistic video, drive a taxi more safely than humans, and do accurate medical diagnosis. And over the next five years, it’s set to continue to improve rapidly. Eventually, mass automation and falling wages are a real possibility.But what’s less appreciated is that while AI drives down the value of skills it can do, it drives up

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266:38

Rebuilding after apocalypse: What 13 experts say...

80,000 Hours Podcast ·

2025/07/15

What happens when civilisation faces its greatest tests?This compilation brings together insights from researchers, defence experts, philosophers, and policymakers on humanity’s ability to survive and recover from catastrophic events. From nuclear winter and electromagnetic pulses to pandemics and climate disasters, we explore both the threats that could bring down modern civilisation and the practical solutions that could help us bounce back.Learn more and see the full

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170:32

#220 – Ryan Greenblatt on the 4 most likely ways for...

80,000 Hours Podcast ·

2025/07/08

Ryan Greenblatt — lead author on the explosive paper “Alignment faking in large language models” and chief scientist at Redwood Research — thinks there’s a 25% chance that within four years, AI will be able to do everything needed to run an AI company, from writing code to designing experiments to making strategic and business decisions.As Ryan lays out, AI models are “marching through the human regime”: systems that could handle five-minute tasks two years ago now tackle 90-minute

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168:22

#219 – Toby Ord on graphs AI companies would prefer...

80,000 Hours Podcast ·

2025/06/24

The era of making AI smarter just by making it bigger is ending. But that doesn’t mean progress is slowing down — far from it. AI models continue to get much more powerful, just using very different methods, and those underlying technical changes force a big rethink of what coming years will look like.Toby Ord — Oxford philosopher and bestselling author of The Precipice — has been tracking these shifts and mapping out the implications both for governments and our lives.Links to learn more,

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168:42

#218 – Hugh White on why Trump is abandoning US...

80,000 Hours Podcast ·

2025/06/12

For decades, US allies have slept soundly under the protection of America’s overwhelming military might. Donald Trump — with his threats to ditch NATO, seize Greenland, and abandon Taiwan — seems hell-bent on shattering that comfort.But according to Hugh White — one of the world's leading strategic thinkers, emeritus professor at the Australian National University, and author of Hard New World: Our Post-American Future — Trump isn't destroying American hegemony. He's simply revealing that

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227:09

#217 – Beth Barnes on the most important graph in AI...

80,000 Hours Podcast ·

2025/06/02

AI models today have a 50% chance of successfully completing a task that would take an expert human one hour. Seven months ago, that number was roughly 30 minutes — and seven months before that, 15 minutes. (See graph.)These are substantial, multi-step tasks requiring sustained focus: building web applications, conducting machine learning research, or solving complex programming challenges.Today’s guest, Beth Barnes, is CEO of METR (Model Evaluation & Threat Research) — the leading

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214:40

Beyond human minds: The bewildering frontier of...

80,000 Hours Podcast ·

2025/05/23

What if there’s something it’s like to be a shrimp — or a chatbot?For centuries, humans have debated the nature of consciousness, often placing ourselves at the very top. But what about the minds of others — both the animals we share this planet with and the artificial intelligences we’re creating?We’ve pulled together clips from past conversations with researchers and philosophers who’ve spent years trying to make sense of animal consciousness, artificial sentience, and moral consideration

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72:04

Don’t believe OpenAI’s “nonprofit” spin (with Tyler...

80,000 Hours Podcast ·

2025/05/15

OpenAI’s recent announcement that its nonprofit would “retain control” of its for-profit business sounds reassuring. But this seemingly major concession, celebrated by so many, is in itself largely meaningless.Litigator Tyler Whitmer is a coauthor of a newly published letter that describes this attempted sleight of hand and directs regulators on how to stop it.As Tyler explains, the plan both before and after this announcement has been to convert OpenAI into a Delaware public benefit

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60:06

The case for and against AGI by 2030 (article by...

80,000 Hours Podcast ·

2025/05/12

More and more people have been saying that we might have AGI (artificial general intelligence) before 2030. Is that really plausible? This article by Benjamin Todd looks into the cases for and against, and summarises the key things you need to know to understand the debate. You can see all the images and many footnotes in the original article on the 80,000 Hours website.In a nutshell:Four key factors are driving AI progress: larger base models, teaching models to reason, increasing models’

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62:50

Emergency pod: Did OpenAI give up, or is this just a...

80,000 Hours Podcast ·

2025/05/08

When attorneys general intervene in corporate affairs, it usually means something has gone seriously wrong. In OpenAI’s case, it appears to have forced a dramatic reversal of the company’s plans to sideline its nonprofit foundation, announced in a blog post that made headlines worldwide.The company’s sudden announcement that its nonprofit will “retain control” credits “constructive dialogue” with the attorneys general of California and Delaware — corporate-speak for what was likely a far

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196:32

#216 – Ian Dunt on why governments in Britain and...

80,000 Hours Podcast ·

2025/05/02

When you have a system where ministers almost never understand their portfolios, civil servants change jobs every few months, and MPs don't grasp parliamentary procedure even after decades in office — is the problem the people, or the structure they work in?Today's guest, political journalist Ian Dunt, studies the systemic reasons governments succeed and fail.And in his book How Westminster Works ...and Why It Doesn't, he argues that Britain's government dysfunction and multi-decade failure

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138:41

Serendipity, weird bets, & cold emails that actually...

80,000 Hours Podcast ·

2025/04/24

How do you navigate a career path when the future of work is uncertain? How important is mentorship versus immediate impact? Is it better to focus on your strengths or on the world’s most pressing problems? Should you specialise deeply or develop a unique combination of skills?From embracing failure to finding unlikely allies, we bring you 16 diverse perspectives from past guests who’ve found unconventional paths to impact and helped others do the same.Links to learn more and full

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202:44

#215 – Tom Davidson on how AI-enabled coups could...

80,000 Hours Podcast ·

2025/04/16

Throughout history, technological revolutions have fundamentally shifted the balance of power in society. The Industrial Revolution created conditions where democracies could flourish for the first time — as nations needed educated, informed, and empowered citizens to deploy advanced technologies and remain competitive.Unfortunately there’s every reason to think artificial general intelligence (AGI) will reverse that trend. Today’s guest — Tom Davidson of the Forethought Centre for AI

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107:10

Guilt, imposter syndrome & doing good: 16 past guests...

80,000 Hours Podcast ·

2025/04/11

"We are aiming for a place where we can decouple the scorecard from our worthiness. It’s of course the case that in trying to optimise the good, we will always be falling short. The question is how much, and in what ways are we not there yet? And if we then extrapolate that to how much and in what ways am I not enough, that’s where we run into trouble." —Hannah BoettcherWhat happens when your desire to do good starts to undermine your own wellbeing?Over the years, we’ve heard from

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136:03

#214 – Buck Shlegeris on controlling AI that wants to...

80,000 Hours Podcast ·

2025/04/04

Most AI safety conversations centre on alignment: ensuring AI systems share our values and goals. But despite progress, we’re unlikely to know we’ve solved the problem before the arrival of human-level and superhuman systems in as little as three years.So some are developing a backup plan to safely deploy models we fear are actively scheming to harm us — so-called “AI control.” While this may sound mad, given the reluctance of AI companies to delay deploying anything they train, not

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