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80,000 Hours Podcast
The most important conversations about artificial intelligence you won’t hear anywhere else. Subscribe by searching for '80000 Hours' wherever you get podcasts. Hosted by Rob Wiblin, Luisa Rodriguez, Zershaaneh Qureshi, and Tom Reed.
Episodes
80,000 Hours Podcast#97 – Mike Berkowitz on keeping the US a liberal democratic country
Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election split the Republican party. There were those who went along with it — 147 members of…
80,000 Hours PodcastThe ten episodes of this show you should listen to first
Today we're launching a new podcast feed that might be useful to you and people you know. It's called 'Effective Altruism: An Introduction', and it's a…
80,000 Hours Podcast#96 – Nina Schick on disinformation and the rise of synthetic media
You might have heard fears like this in the last few years: What if Donald Trump was woken up in the middle of the night and shown a fake video —…
80,000 Hours Podcast#95 – Kelly Wanser on whether to deliberately intervene in the climate
How long do you think it’ll be before we’re able to bend the weather to our will? A massive rainmaking program in China, efforts to seed new oases in the…
80,000 Hours Podcast#94 – Ezra Klein on aligning journalism, politics, and what matters most
How many words in U.S. newspapers have been spilled on tax policy in the past five years? And how many words on CRISPR? Or meat alternatives? Or how AI may…
80,000 Hours Podcast#93 – Andy Weber on rendering bioweapons obsolete & ending the new nuclear arms race
COVID-19 has provided a vivid reminder of the power of biological threats. But the threat doesn't come from natural sources alone. Weaponized contagious…
80,000 Hours Podcast#92 – Brian Christian on the alignment problem
Brian Christian is a bestselling author with a particular knack for accurately communicating difficult or technical ideas from both mathematics and computer…
80,000 Hours Podcast#91 – Lewis Bollard on big wins against factory farming and how they happened
I suspect today's guest, Lewis Bollard, might be the single best person in the world to interview to get an overview of all the methods that might be effective…
80,000 Hours PodcastRob Wiblin on how he ended up the way he is
This is a crosspost of an episode of the Eureka Podcast. The interviewer is Misha Saul, a childhood friend of Rob's, who he has known for over 20 years. While…
80,000 Hours Podcast#90 – Ajeya Cotra on worldview diversification and how big the future could be
You wake up in a mysterious box, and hear the booming voice of God: “I just flipped a coin. If it came up heads, I made ten boxes, labeled 1 through 10 — each…
80,000 Hours PodcastRob Wiblin on self-improvement and research ethics
This is a crosspost of an episode of the Clearer Thinking Podcast: 022: Self-Improvement and Research Ethics with Rob Wiblin. Rob chats with Spencer Greenberg…
80,000 Hours Podcast#73 - Phil Trammell on patient philanthropy and waiting to do good [re-release]
Rebroadcast: this episode was originally released in March 2020. To do good, most of us look to use our time and money to affect the world around us today. But…
80,000 Hours Podcast#75 – Michelle Hutchinson on what people most often ask 80,000 Hours [re-release]
Rebroadcast: this episode was originally released in April 2020. Since it was founded, 80,000 Hours has done one-on-one calls to supplement our online content…
80,000 Hours Podcast#89 – Owen Cotton-Barratt on epistemic systems and layers of defense against potential global catastrophes
From one point of view academia forms one big 'epistemic' system — a process which directs attention, generates ideas, and judges which are good. Traditional…
80,000 Hours Podcast#88 – Tristan Harris on the need to change the incentives of social media companies
In its first 28 days on Netflix, the documentary The Social Dilemma — about the possible harms being caused by social media and other technology products — was…
80,000 Hours PodcastBenjamin Todd on what the effective altruism community most needs (80k team chat #4)
In the last '80k team chat' with Ben Todd and Arden Koehler, we discussed what effective altruism is and isn't, and how to argue for it. In this episode we…
80,000 Hours Podcast#87 – Russ Roberts on whether it's more effective to help strangers, or people you know
If you want to make the world a better place, would it be better to help your niece with her SATs, or try to join the State Department to lower the risk that…
80,000 Hours PodcastHow much does a vote matter? (Article)
Today’s release is the latest in our series of audio versions of our articles. In this one — How much does a vote matter? — I investigate the two key things…
80,000 Hours Podcast#86 – Hilary Greaves on Pascal's mugging, strong longtermism, and whether existing can be good for us
Had World War 1 never happened, you might never have existed. It’s very unlikely that the exact chain of events that led to your conception would have happened…
80,000 Hours PodcastBenjamin Todd on the core of effective altruism and how to argue for it (80k team chat #3)
Today’s episode is the latest conversation between Arden Koehler, and our CEO, Ben Todd. Ben’s been thinking a lot about effective altruism recently, including…
80,000 Hours PodcastIdeas for high impact careers beyond our priority paths (Article)
Today’s release is the latest in our series of audio versions of our articles. In this one, we go through some more career options beyond our priority paths…
80,000 Hours PodcastBenjamin Todd on varieties of longtermism and things 80,000 Hours might be getting wrong (80k team chat #2)
Today’s bonus episode is a conversation between Arden Koehler, and our CEO, Ben Todd. Ben’s been doing a bunch of research recently, and we thought it’d be…
80,000 Hours PodcastGlobal issues beyond 80,000 Hours’ current priorities (Article)
Today’s release is the latest in our series of audio versions of our articles. In this one, we go through 30 global issues beyond the ones we usually…
80,000 Hours Podcast#85 - Mark Lynas on climate change, societal collapse & nuclear energy
A golf-ball sized lump of uranium can deliver more than enough power to cover all of your lifetime energy use. To get the same energy from coal, you’d need…
80,000 Hours Podcast#84 – Shruti Rajagopalan on what India did to stop COVID-19 and how well it worked
When COVID-19 struck the US, everyone was told that hand sanitizer needed to be saved for healthcare professionals, so they should just wash their hands…
80,000 Hours Podcast#83 - Jennifer Doleac on preventing crime without police and prisons
The killing of George Floyd has prompted a great deal of debate over whether the US should reduce the size of its police departments. The research literature…
80,000 Hours Podcast#82 – James Forman Jr on reducing the cruelty of the US criminal legal system
No democracy has ever incarcerated as many people as the United States. To get its incarceration rate down to the global average, the US would have to release…
80,000 Hours Podcast#81 - Ben Garfinkel on scrutinising classic AI risk arguments
80,000 Hours, along with many other members of the effective altruism movement, has argued that helping to positively shape the development of artificial…
80,000 Hours PodcastAdvice on how to read our advice (Article)
This is the fourth release in our new series of audio articles. If you want to read the original article or check out the links within it, you can find them…
80,000 Hours Podcast#80 – Stuart Russell on why our approach to AI is broken and how to fix it
Stuart Russell, Professor at UC Berkeley and co-author of the most popular AI textbook, thinks the way we approach machine learning today is fundamentally…
80,000 Hours PodcastWhat anonymous contributors think about important life and career questions (Article)
Today we’re launching the final entry of our ‘anonymous answers' series on the website. It features answers to 23 different questions including “How have you…
80,000 Hours Podcast#79 – A.J. Jacobs on radical honesty, following the whole Bible, and reframing global problems as puzzles
Today’s guest, New York Times bestselling author A.J. Jacobs, always hated Judge Judy. But after he found out that she was his seventh cousin, he thought, "You…
80,000 Hours Podcast#78 – Danny Hernandez on forecasting and the drivers of AI progress
Companies use about 300,000 times more computation training the best AI systems today than they did in 2012 and algorithmic innovations have also made them 25…
80,000 Hours Podcast#77 – Marc Lipsitch on whether we're winning or losing against COVID-19
In March Professor Marc Lipsitch — Director of Harvard's Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics — abruptly found himself a global celebrity, his social media…
80,000 Hours PodcastArticle: Ways people trying to do good accidentally make things worse, and how to avoid them
Today’s release is the second experiment in making audio versions of our articles. The first was a narration of Greg Lewis’ terrific problem profile on…
80,000 Hours Podcast#76 – Tara Kirk Sell on misinformation, who's done well and badly, & what to reopen first
Amid a rising COVID-19 death toll, and looming economic disaster, we’ve been looking for good news — and one thing we're especially thankful for is the Johns…
80,000 Hours Podcast#75 – Michelle Hutchinson on what people most often ask 80,000 Hours
Since it was founded, 80,000 Hours has done one-on-one calls to supplement our online content and offer more personalised advice. We try to help people get…
80,000 Hours Podcast#74 – Dr Greg Lewis on COVID-19 & catastrophic biological risks
Our lives currently revolve around the global emergency of COVID-19; you’re probably reading this while confined to your house, as the death toll from the…
80,000 Hours PodcastArticle: Reducing global catastrophic biological risks
In a few days we'll be putting out a conversation with Dr Greg Lewis, who studies how to prevent global catastrophic biological risks at Oxford's Future of…
80,000 Hours PodcastEmergency episode: Rob & Howie on the menace of COVID-19, and what both governments & individuals might do to help
From home isolation Rob and Howie just recorded an episode on: 1. How many could die in the crisis, and the risk to your health personally. 2. What individuals…
80,000 Hours Podcast#73 – Phil Trammell on patient philanthropy and waiting to do good
To do good, most of us look to use our time and money to affect the world around us today. But perhaps that's all wrong. If you took $1,000 you were going to…
80,000 Hours Podcast#72 - Toby Ord on the precipice and humanity's potential futures
This week Oxford academic and 80,000 Hours trustee Dr Toby Ord released his new book The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity. It's about how…
80,000 Hours Podcast#71 - Benjamin Todd on the key ideas of 80,000 Hours
The 80,000 Hours Podcast is about “the world’s most pressing problems and how you can use your career to solve them”, and in this episode we tackle that…
80,000 Hours PodcastArden & Rob on demandingness, work-life balance & injustice (80k team chat #1)
Today's bonus episode of the podcast is a quick conversation between me and my fellow 80,000 Hours researcher Arden Koehler about a few topics, including the…
80,000 Hours Podcast#70 - Dr Cassidy Nelson on the 12 best ways to stop the next pandemic (and limit nCoV)
nCoV is alarming governments and citizens around the world. It has killed more than 1,000 people, brought the Chinese economy to a standstill, and continues to…
80,000 Hours Podcast#69 – Jeffrey Ding on China, its AI dream, and what we get wrong about both
The State Council of China's 2017 AI plan was the starting point of China’s AI planning; China’s approach to AI is defined by its top-down and monolithic…
80,000 Hours PodcastRob & Howie on what we do and don't know about 2019-nCoV
Two 80,000 Hours researchers, Robert Wiblin and Howie Lempel, record an experimental bonus episode about the new 2019-nCoV virus. See this list of resources…
80,000 Hours Podcast#68 - Will MacAskill on the paralysis argument, whether we're at the hinge of history, & his new priorities
You’re given a box with a set of dice in it. If you roll an even number, a person's life is saved. If you roll an odd number, someone else will die. Each time…
80,000 Hours Podcast#44 Classic episode - Paul Christiano on finding real solutions to the AI alignment problem
Rebroadcast: this episode was originally released in October 2018. Paul Christiano is one of the smartest people I know. After our first session produced such…
80,000 Hours Podcast#33 Classic episode - Anders Sandberg on cryonics, solar flares, and the annual odds of nuclear war
Rebroadcast: this episode was originally released in May 2018. Joseph Stalin had a life-extension program dedicated to making himself immortal. What if he had…
80,000 Hours Podcast#17 Classic episode - Will MacAskill on moral uncertainty, utilitarianism & how to avoid being a moral monster
Rebroadcast: this episode was originally released in January 2018. Immanuel Kant is a profoundly influential figure in modern philosophy, and was one of the…
80,000 Hours Podcast#67 – David Chalmers on the nature and ethics of consciousness
What is it like to be you right now? You're seeing this text on the screen, smelling the coffee next to you, and feeling the warmth of the cup. There’s a lot…
80,000 Hours Podcast#66 – Peter Singer on being provocative, effective altruism, & how his moral views have changed
In 1989, the professor of moral philosophy Peter Singer was all over the news for his inflammatory opinions about abortion. But the controversy stemmed from…
80,000 Hours Podcast#65 – Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins on 8 years pursuing WMD arms control, & diversity in diplomacy
"…it started when the Soviet Union fell apart and there was a real desire to ensure security of nuclear materials and pathogens, and that scientists with…
80,000 Hours Podcast#64 – Bruce Schneier on how insecure electronic voting could break the United States — and surveillance without tyranny
November 3 2020, 10:32PM: CNN, NBC, and FOX report that Donald Trump has narrowly won Florida, and with it, re-election. November 3 2020, 11:46PM: The NY Times…
80,000 Hours PodcastRob Wiblin on plastic straws, nicotine, doping, & whether changing the long-term is really possible
Today's episode is a compilation of interviews I recently recorded for two other shows, Love Your Work and The Neoliberal Podcast. If you've listened to…
80,000 Hours PodcastHave we helped you have a bigger social impact? Our annual survey, plus other ways we can help you.
1. Fill out our annual impact survey here. 2. Find a great vacancy on our job board. 3. Learn about our key ideas, and get links to our top articles. 4. Join…
80,000 Hours Podcast#63 – Vitalik Buterin on better ways to fund public goods, blockchain's failures, & effective giving
Historically, progress in the field of cryptography has had major consequences. It has changed the course of major wars, made it possible to do business on the…
80,000 Hours Podcast#62 – Paul Christiano on messaging the future, increasing compute, & how CO2 impacts your brain
Imagine that – one day – humanity dies out. At some point, many millions of years later, intelligent life might well evolve again. Is there any message we…
80,000 Hours Podcast#61 - Helen Toner on emerging technology, national security, and China
From 1870 to 1950, the introduction of electricity transformed life in the US and UK, as people gained access to lighting, radio and a wide range of household…