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80,000 Hours Podcast

Unusually in-depth conversations about the world's most pressing problems and what you can do to sol

Episodes

Total: 267

#160 – Hannah Ritchie on why it makes sense to be optimistic about the environment
2023/8/14

"There's no money to invest in education elsewhere, so they almost get trapped in the cycle where th

#159 – Jan Leike on OpenAI's massive push to make superintelligence safe in 4 years or less
2023/8/7

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

We now offer shorter 'interview highlights' episodes
2023/8/5

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

#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
2023/7/31

Back in 2007, Holden Karnofsky cofounded GiveWell, where he sought out the charities that most cost-

#157 – Ezra Klein on existential risk from AI and what DC could do about it
2023/7/24

In Oppenheimer, scientists detonate a nuclear weapon despite thinking there's some 'near zero' chanc

#156 – Markus Anderljung on how to regulate cutting-edge AI models
2023/7/10

"At the front of the pack we have these frontier AI developers, and we want them to identify particu

Bonus: The Worst Ideas in the History of the World
2023/6/30

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

#155 – Lennart Heim on the compute governance era and what has to come after
2023/6/22

As AI advances ever more quickly, concerns about potential misuse of highly capable models are growi

#154 - Rohin Shah on DeepMind and trying to fairly hear out both AI doomers and doubters
2023/6/9

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

#153 – Elie Hassenfeld on 2 big picture critiques of GiveWell's approach, and 6 lessons from their recent work
2023/6/2

GiveWell is one of the world's best-known charity evaluators, with the goal of "searching for the ch

#152 – Joe Carlsmith on navigating serious philosophical confusion
2023/5/19

What is the nature of the universe? How do we make decisions correctly? What differentiates right ac

#151 – Ajeya Cotra on accidentally teaching AI models to deceive us
2023/5/12

Imagine you are an orphaned eight-year-old whose parents left you a $1 trillion company, and no trus

#150 – Tom Davidson on how quickly AI could transform the world
2023/5/5

It’s easy to dismiss alarming AI-related predictions when you don’t know where the numbers came from

Andrés Jiménez Zorrilla on the Shrimp Welfare Project (80k After Hours)
2023/4/22

In this episode from our second show, 80k After Hours, Rob Wiblin interviews Andrés Jiménez Zorrilla

#149 – Tim LeBon on how altruistic perfectionism is self-defeating
2023/4/12

Being a good and successful person is core to your identity. You place great importance on meeting t

#148 – Johannes Ackva on unfashionable climate interventions that work, and fashionable ones that don't
2023/4/3

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

#147 – Spencer Greenberg on stopping valueless papers from getting into top journals
2023/3/24

Can you trust the things you read in published scientific research? Not really. About 40% of experim

#146 – Robert Long on why large language models like GPT (probably) aren't conscious
2023/3/14

By now, you’ve probably seen the extremely unsettling conversations Bing’s chatbot has been having.

#145 – Christopher Brown on why slavery abolition wasn't inevitable
2023/2/11

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

#144 – Athena Aktipis on why cancer is actually one of our universe's most fundamental phenomena
2023/1/26

What’s the opposite of cancer? If you answered “cure,” “antidote,” or “antivenom” — you’ve obvious