2024 in review: some of our top pieces from this year

This week, we’re looking back at some of our top content from the year!

Here are some of our favourite and most important articles, posts, and podcast episodes we published in 2024:

Articles

Factory farming — There’s a clear candidate for the biggest moral mistake that humanity is currently making: factory farming. We raise and slaughter 1.6-4.5 trillion animals a year on factory farms, causing tremendous amounts of suffering.

The moral status of digital minds — Understanding whether AI systems might suffer, be sentient, or otherwise matter morally is potentially one of the most pressing problems in the world.

Should you work at a frontier AI company? — Working at a frontier AI company is plausibly some people’s highest-impact option, but some roles could be extremely harmful. So it’s critical to be discerning when considering this option — and particularly open to changing course. We’ve previously written about this topic, but explored it in more depth this year while taking account of recent developments, such as prominent departures at OpenAI.

Risks of stable totalitarianism — Some of the worst atrocities have been committed by totalitarian rulers. In the future, the threat posed by these regimes could be even greater.

Nuclear weapons safety and security — Nuclear weapons continue to pose an existential threat to humanity, but there are some promising pathways to reducing the risk.

Other posts

AI for epistemics — Our president and founder, Benjamin Todd, wrote about one of the most exciting ideas he’s heard about recently: using advancing AI technology to improve our decision making and understanding of the world.

Why we get burned out — and what helps — Laura González Salmerón, an 80,000 Hours adviser, wrote about how she experienced burnout in a previous role, and what you can learn from her experience.

What are the biggest misconceptions about biosecurity? — We asked experts about key mistakes they see in the field. They gave us their frank, and sometimes conflicting, answers.

Podcast episodes

Carl Shulman part one and part two — We explored wild answers to the question: what if we develop AI systems that can accomplish everything the most productive humans can?

Meghan Barrett — Can insects suffer? Meghan makes a strong case for taking the possibility very seriously in this genuinely mind-bending episode.

Randy Nesse — Understanding why evolution left many people prone to severe depression and anxiety may help us better manage mood disorders.

Sihao Huang — How can the US and China avoid a destructive AI arms race that no one would win?

Rose Chan Loui — One critic has described OpenAI’s plan to jettison nonprofit status as “the theft of at least the millennium and quite possibly all of human history.” Are they right?

Rachel Gennerster — A pioneer in the field of development economics talked about how we can leverage market forces to drive innovations that can solve climate change, pandemics, and other global problems.