New releases

#174 – Nita Farahany on the neurotechnology already being used to convict criminals and manipulate workers

Podcast by and · Published December 7th, 2023

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Nita Farahany — professor of law and philosophy at Duke Law School — about applications of cutting-edge neurotechnology.

They cover:

  • How close we are to actual mind reading.
  • How hacking neural interfaces could cure depression.
  • How companies might use neural data in the workplace — like tracking how productive you are, or using your emotional states against you in negotiations.
  • How close we are to being able to unlock our phones by singing a song in our heads.
  • How neurodata has been used for interrogations, and even criminal prosecutions.
  • The possibility of linking brains to the point where you could experience exactly the same thing as another person.
  • Military applications of this tech, including the possibility of one soldier controlling swarms of drones with their mind.
  • And plenty more.

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Benjamin Todd on the history of 80,000 Hours

Podcast (80k After Hours) by , and · Published December 2023

In this episode of 80k After Hours — recorded in June 2022 — Rob Wiblin and Benjamin Todd discuss the history of 80,000 Hours.

They cover:

  • Ben’s origin story
  • How 80,000 Hours got off the ground
  • Its scrappy early days
  • How 80,000 Hours evolved
  • Team trips to China and Thailand
  • The choice to set up several programmes rather than focus on one
  • The move to California and back
  • Various mistakes they think 80,000 Hours has made along the way
  • Why Ben left the CEO position
  • And the future of 80,000 Hours

Who this episode is for:

  • People who work on or plan to work on promoting important ideas in a way that’s similar to 80,000 Hours
  • People who work at organisations similar to 80,000 Hours
  • People who work at 80,000 Hours

Who this episode isn’t for:

  • People who, if asked if they’d like to join a dinner at 80,000 Hours where the team reminisce on the good old days, would say, “Sorry, can’t make it — I’m washing my hair that night”

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#173 – Jeff Sebo on digital minds, and how to avoid sleepwalking into a major moral catastrophe

Podcast by , and · Published November 22nd, 2023

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez interviews Jeff Sebo — director of the Mind, Ethics, and Policy Program at NYU — about preparing for a world with digital minds.

They cover:

  • The non-negligible chance that AI systems will be sentient by 2030
  • What AI systems might want and need, and how that might affect our moral concepts
  • What happens when beings can copy themselves? Are they one person or multiple people? Does the original own the copy or does the copy have its own rights? Do copies get the right to vote?
  • What kind of legal and political status should AI systems have? Legal personhood? Political citizenship?
  • What happens when minds can be connected? If two minds are connected, and one does something illegal, is it possible to punish one but not the other?
  • The repugnant conclusion and the rebugnant conclusion
  • The experience of trying to build the field of AI welfare
  • What improv comedy can teach us about doing good in the world
  • And plenty more.

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#172 – Bryan Caplan on why you should stop reading the news

Podcast by and · Published November 17th, 2023

Is following important political and international news a civic duty — or is it our civic duty to avoid it?

It’s common to think that ‘staying informed’ and checking the headlines every day is just what responsible adults do.

But in today’s episode, host Rob Wiblin is joined by economist Bryan Caplan to discuss the book Stop Reading the News: A Manifesto for a Happier, Calmer and Wiser Life — which argues that reading the news both makes us miserable and distorts our understanding of the world. Far from informing us and enabling us to improve the world, consuming the news distracts us, confuses us, and leaves us feeling powerless.

In the first half of the episode, Bryan and Rob discuss various alleged problems with the news, including:

  • That it overwhelmingly provides us with information we can’t usefully act on.
  • That it’s very non-representative in what it covers, in particular favouring the negative over the positive and the new over the significant.
  • That it obscures the big picture, falling into the trap of thinking ‘something important happens every day.’
  • That it’s highly addictive, for many people chewing up 10% or more of their waking hours.
  • That regularly checking the news leaves us in a state of constant distraction and less able to engage in deep thought.
  • And plenty more.

Bryan and Rob conclude that if you want to understand the world, you’re better off blocking news websites and spending your time on Wikipedia, Our World in Data, or reading a textbook. And if you want to generate political change, stop reading about problems you already know exist and instead write your political representative a physical letter — or better yet, go meet them in person.

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A note of appreciation for your efforts to help others

Blog post by · Published November 10th, 2023

The idea this week: it’s incredible how dedicated many of you are to helping others.

One of my favourite parts of working on the one-on-one advising team is getting to see the important work so many people are doing up close. It’s incredibly inspiring to learn about the thoughtful, dedicated steps you’re taking to have an impact. In our conversations, we get to directly express appreciation for each person’s efforts. But we only get to do that for a fraction of readers, and only occasionally.

So I wanted to take this chance to say thank you to all of you working so hard and intentionally to help others. There are countless ways to make a difference — different problems needing solutions and different approaches to tackle them. I can’t speak to nearly all of those here. But I do want to highlight a few examples of work I know many of you are doing that I find deeply admirable.

  • To those working long hours at a challenging job in order to donate a significant portion of your salary to effective organisations — thank you. It’s hard to stay motivated when the work itself doesn’t feel valuable. It’s hard to make time outside a full-time job to thoughtfully decide where your money can do the most good. And it can be tough being surrounded by people with different values who get to directly enjoy the fruits of their labour rather than using it to reduce suffering.

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#171 – Alison Young on how top labs have jeopardised public health with repeated biosafety failures

Podcast by and · Published November 9th, 2023

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez interviews award-winning investigative journalist Alison Young on the surprising frequency of lab leaks and what needs to be done to prevent them in the future.

They cover:

  • The most egregious biosafety mistakes made by the CDC, and how Alison uncovered them through her investigative reporting
  • The Dugway life science test facility case, where live anthrax was accidentally sent to labs across the US and several other countries over a period of many years
  • The time the Soviets had a major anthrax leak, and then hid it for over a decade
  • The 1977 influenza pandemic caused by vaccine trial gone wrong in China
  • The last death from smallpox, caused not by the virus spreading in the wild, but by a lab leak in the UK
  • Ways we could get more reliable oversight and accountability for these labs
  • And the investigative work Alison’s most proud of

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New opportunities are opening up in AI governance

Blog post by · Published November 3rd, 2023

The news this week: major new initiatives show governments are taking AI risks seriously — but there’s still a long way to go.

From DC to London and beyond, leaders are waking up to AI. They see potential dangers from the technology on the horizon.

Take the White House. This week, President Joe Biden announced a sweeping new executive order to respond to the risks potentially posed by advanced AI systems, including risks to national security.

The new order includes the following:

  • A requirement for AI labs working on the most powerful models to share information about safety tests and training plans
  • Direction to the National Institute of Standards and Technology to create standards for red teaming and assessing the safety of powerful new AI models
  • Efforts to reduce the risk of AI-related biological threats and to mitigate cybersecurity vulnerabilities
  • Provisions on fraud, privacy, equity, civil rights, workers’ rights, and international coordination

Vice President Kamala Harris also announced the creation of the United States AI Safety Institute this week, which will help evaluate and mitigate dangerous capabilities of AI models.

And the US government is making a big push to hire more AI professionals. They’ve extended the deadline for applying to the Presidential Innovation Fellowship in light of this push.

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#170 – Santosh Harish on how air pollution is responsible for ~12% of global deaths — and how to get that number down

Podcast by and · Published November 1st, 2023

In today’s episode, host Rob Wiblin interviews Santosh Harish — leader of Open Philanthropy’s grantmaking in South Asian air quality — about the scale of the harm caused by air pollution.

They cover:

  • How bad air pollution is for our health and life expectancy
  • The different kinds of harm that particulate pollution causes
  • The strength of the evidence that it damages our brain function and reduces our productivity
  • Whether it was a mistake to switch our attention to climate change and away from air pollution
  • Whether most listeners to this show should have an air purifier running in their house right now
  • Where air pollution in India is worst and why, and whether it’s going up or down
  • Where most air pollution comes from
  • The policy blunders that led to many sources of air pollution in India being effectively unregulated
  • Why indoor air pollution packs an enormous punch
  • The politics of air pollution in India
  • How India ended up spending a lot of money on outdoor air purifiers
  • The challenges faced by foreign philanthropists in India
  • Why Santosh has made the grants he has so far
  • And plenty more

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#169 – Paul Niehaus on whether cash transfers cause economic growth, and keeping theft to acceptable levels

Podcast by and · Published October 26th, 2023

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez interviews Paul Niehaus — cofounder of GiveDirectly — on the case for giving unconditional cash to the world’s poorest households.

They cover:

  • The empirical evidence on whether giving cash directly can drive meaningful economic growth
  • How the impacts of GiveDirectly compare to USAID employment programmes
  • GiveDirectly vs GiveWell’s top-recommended charities
  • How long-term guaranteed income affects people’s risk-taking and investments
  • Whether recipients prefer getting lump sums or monthly instalments
  • How GiveDirectly tackles cases of fraud and theft
  • The case for universal basic income, and GiveDirectly’s UBI studies in Kenya, Malawi, and Liberia
  • The political viability of UBI
  • Plenty more

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#168 – Ian Morris on whether deep history says we’re heading for an intelligence explosion

Podcast by and · Published October 23rd, 2023

In today’s episode, host Rob Wiblin speaks with repeat guest Ian Morris about what big-picture history says about the likely impact of machine intelligence.

They cover:

  • Some crazy anomalies in the historical record of civilisational progress
  • Whether we should think about today’s technology from an evolutionary perspective
  • Whether war will make a resurgence
  • Why we can’t end up living like The Jetsons
  • Whether stagnation or cyclical futures are realistic
  • What it means that over the very long term the rate of economic growth has increased
  • Whether violence between humans and powerful AI systems is likely
  • The most likely reasons for Rob and Ian to be really wrong about all of this
  • How professional historians react to this sort of talk
  • The future of Ian’s work
  • Plenty more

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#167 – Seren Kell on the research gaps holding back alternative proteins from mass adoption

Podcast by and · Published October 18th, 2023

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez interviews Seren Kell — Senior Science and Technology Manager at the Good Food Institute Europe — about making alternative proteins as tasty, cheap, and convenient as traditional meat, dairy, and egg products.

They cover:

  • The basic case for alternative proteins, and why they’re so hard to make
  • Why fermentation is a surprisingly promising technology for creating delicious alternative proteins
  • The main scientific challenges that need to be solved to make fermentation even more useful
  • The progress that’s been made on the cultivated meat front, and what it will take to make cultivated meat affordable
  • How GFI Europe is helping with some of these challenges
  • How people can use their careers to contribute to replacing factory farming with alternative proteins
  • The best part of Seren’s job
  • Plenty more

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#166 – Tantum Collins on what he’s learned as an AI policy insider at the White House, DeepMind and elsewhere

Podcast by and · Published October 12th, 2023

In today’s episode, host Rob Wiblin gets the rare chance to interview someone with insider AI policy experience at the White House and DeepMind who’s willing to speak openly — Tantum Collins.

They cover:

  • How AI could strengthen government capacity, and how that’s a double-edged sword
  • How new technologies force us to confront tradeoffs in political philosophy that we were previously able to pretend weren’t there
  • To what extent policymakers take different threats from AI seriously
  • Whether the US and China are in an AI arms race or not
  • Whether it’s OK to transform the world without much of the world agreeing to it
  • The tyranny of small differences in AI policy
  • Disagreements between different schools of thought in AI policy, and proposals that could unite them
  • How the US AI Bill of Rights could be improved
  • Whether AI will transform the labour market, and whether it will become a partisan political issue
  • The tensions between the cultures of San Francisco and DC, and how to bridge the divide between them
  • What listeners might be able to do to help with this whole mess
  • Panpsychism
  • Plenty more

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#165 – Anders Sandberg on war in space, whether civilisations age, and the best things possible in our universe

Podcast by and · Published October 6th, 2023

In today’s episode, host Rob Wiblin speaks with repeat guest and audience favourite Anders Sandberg about the most impressive things that could be achieved in our universe given the laws of physics.

They cover:

  • The epic new book Anders is working on, and whether he’ll ever finish it
  • Whether there’s a best possible world or we can just keep improving forever
  • What wars might look like if the galaxy is mostly settled
  • The impediments to AI or humans making it to other stars
  • How the universe will end a million trillion years in the future
  • Whether it’s useful to wonder about whether we’re living in a simulation
  • The grabby aliens theory
  • Whether civilizations get more likely to fail the older they get
  • The best way to generate energy that could ever exist
  • Black hole bombs
  • Whether superintelligence is necessary to get a lot of value
  • The likelihood that life from elsewhere has already visited Earth
  • And plenty more.

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We’ve made mistakes in our careers — here’s what we learned

Blog post by · Published October 6th, 2023

The idea this week: you can learn a lot from mistakes.

In that spirit, we’re sharing six stories of mistakes that staff at 80,000 Hours think they’ve made in their careers.

And if you’re interested in hearing more, we strongly recommend a recent episode of our podcast, 80k After Hours, about 10 mistakes people make when pursuing a high-impact career.

1. Not asking for help

A mistake I have frequently made, and still sometimes do, is not asking for help with applications. I usually feel awkward about others reading my letters or essays or practicing interview questions, and I also don’t want to waste my friends’ time.

But whenever I end up asking for help, it improves my applications significantly, and people are usually happy to help. (I enjoy giving feedback on applications as well!)

–Anemone Franz, advisor

2. Ruling out an option too quickly

I first became concerned about risks from artificial intelligence in 2014, when I read Superintelligence. The book convinced me these risks were serious. And more importantly, I couldn’t find persuasive counterarguments at the time.

But because I didn’t have a background in technical fields — I thought of myself as a writer — I concluded there was little I could contribute to the field and mostly worked on other problems.

Now I think this was a mistake.

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#164 – Kevin Esvelt on cults that want to kill everyone, stealth vs wildfire pandemics, and how he felt inventing gene drives

Podcast by and · Published October 2nd, 2023

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez interviews Kevin Esvelt — a biologist at the MIT Media Lab and the inventor of CRISPR-based gene drive — about the threat posed by engineered bioweapons.

They cover:

  • Why it makes sense to focus on deliberately released pandemics
  • Case studies of people who actually wanted to kill billions of humans
  • How many people have the technical ability to produce dangerous viruses
  • The different threats of stealth and wildfire pandemics that could crash civilisation
  • The potential for AI models to increase access to dangerous pathogens
  • Why scientists try to identify new pandemic-capable pathogens, and the case against that research
  • Technological solutions, including UV lights and advanced PPE
  • Using CRISPR-based gene drive to fight diseases and reduce animal suffering
  • And plenty more.

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Building career capital: some new advice on three paths

Blog post by · Published September 29th, 2023

The idea this week: building career capital is a key part of having an impactful career over the long term — and we have new content about some specific paths you might take.

If you want to do good with your career, we usually don’t recommend trying to have an impact right away. We think most people should spend their early career getting good at something useful.

Here’s some of our new content on specific ways to potentially build career capital:

1. US policy master’s degrees

We recently published an in-depth review of US policy master’s degrees.

Working in policy can be an excellent way to have a positive impact on many top problems, including AI, biosecurity, great power conflict, animal welfare, global health, and more.

The first part details the value of policy master’s degrees with a focus on the US — though some of the information is likely to apply more broadly. We think this is one of the best ways to get career capital for a career in US policy.

The second part covers specifics about how to choose which program to apply to based on reputation and personal fit, advice for preparing your application, and information on how to fund your degree.

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What you should know about our updated career guide

Blog post by · Published September 19th, 2023

The question this week: what are the biggest changes to our career guide since 2017?

  • Read the new and updated career guide here, by our founder Benjamin Todd and the 80,000 Hours team.

Our 2023 career guide isn’t just a fancy new design — here’s a rundown of how the content has been updated:

1. Career capital: get good at something useful

In our previous career guide, we argued that your primary focus should be on building very broadly applicable skills, credentials, and connections — what we called transferable career capital.

We also highlighted jobs like consulting as a way to get this.

However, since launching the 2017 version of the career guide, we came to think a focus on transferable career capital might lead you to neglect experience that can be very useful to enter the most impactful jobs — for example, experience working in an AI lab or studying synthetic biology.

OK, so how should you figure out the best career capital option for you?

Our new advice: get good at something useful.

In more depth — choose some valuable skills to learn, and that are a good fit for you, and then find opportunities that let you practise those skills. And then have concrete back-up plans and plan Bs in mind,

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#163 – Toby Ord on the perils of maximising the good that you do

Podcast by and · Published September 8th, 2023

Effective altruism is associated with the slogan “do the most good.” On one level, this has to be unobjectionable: What could be bad about helping people more and more?

But in today’s interview, Toby Ord — moral philosopher at the University of Oxford and one of the founding figures of effective altruism — lays out three reasons to be cautious about the idea of maximising the good that you do. He suggests that rather than “doing the most good that we can,” perhaps we should be happy with a more modest and manageable goal: “doing most of the good that we can.”

Toby was inspired to revisit these ideas by the possibility that Sam Bankman-Fried, who stands accused of committing severe fraud as CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was motivated to break the law by a desire to give away as much money as possible to worthy causes.

Toby’s top reason not to fully maximise is the following: if the goal you’re aiming at is subtly wrong or incomplete, then going all the way towards maximising it will usually cause you to start doing some very harmful things.

This result can be shown mathematically, but can also be made intuitive, and may explain why we feel instinctively wary of going “all-in” on any idea, or goal, or way of living — even something as benign as helping other people as much as possible.

Toby gives the example of someone pursuing a career as a professional swimmer. Initially, as our swimmer takes their training and performance more seriously, they adjust their diet, hire a better trainer, and pay more attention to their technique. While swimming is the main focus of their life, they feel fit and healthy and also enjoy other aspects of their life as well — family, friends, and personal projects.

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Open positions: 1on1 team

Blog post by · Published September 7th, 2023

We’re looking for candidates to join our 1on1 team.

The 1on1 team at 80,000 Hours talks to people who want to have a positive impact in their work and helps them find career paths tackling the world’s most pressing problems. We’re keen to expand our team by hiring people who can help with at least one (and hopefully more!) of the following responsibilities:

  • Advising: talking one-on-one to talented and altruistic applicants in order to help them find high-impact careers.
  • Running our headhunting product: working with hiring managers at the most effective organisations to help them find exceptional employees.
  • Improving our systems: building tech-based systems to support our team members.

If you think you’d be interested in taking on more than one of these duties, and enjoy wearing multiple hats in your job, we strongly encourage you to apply. The start dates of these roles are flexible, although we’re likely to prioritise candidates who can start sooner, all else equal.

These roles have starting salaries from £50,000 to £85,000 (depending on skills and experience) and are ideally London-based. We’re able to sponsor visa applications.

About 80,000 Hours

Our mission is to get talented people working on the world’s most pressing problems by providing them with excellent support, advice, and resources on how to do so.

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Alex Lawsen on avoiding 10 mistakes people make when pursuing a high-impact career

Podcast (80k After Hours) by , , and · Published September 2023

In this episode of 80k After Hours, Luisa Rodriguez and Alex Lawsen discuss common mistakes people make when trying to do good with their careers, and advice on how to avoid them.

They cover:

  • Taking 80,000 Hours’ rankings too seriously
  • Not trying hard enough to fail
  • Feeling like you need to optimise for having the most impact now
  • Feeling like you need to work directly on AI immediately
  • Not taking a role because you think you’ll be replaceable
  • Constantly considering other career options
  • Overthinking or over-optimising career choices
  • Being unwilling to think things through for yourself
  • Ignoring conventional career wisdom
  • Doing community work even if you’re not suited to it

Who this episode is for:

  • People who want to pursue a high-impact career
  • People wondering how much AI progress should change their plans
  • People who take 80,000 Hours’ career advice seriously

Who this episode isn’t for:

  • People not taking 80k’s career advice seriously enough
  • People who’ve never made any career mistakes
  • People who don’t want to hear Alex say “I said a bunch of stuff, maybe some of it’s true” every time he’s on the podcast

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