An apology for our mistake with the book giveaway

80,000 Hours runs a programme where subscribers to our newsletter can order a free, paperback copy of a book to be sent to them in the mail. Readers choose between getting a copy of our career guide, Toby Ord’s The Precipice, and Will MacAskill’s Doing Good Better.

This giveaway has been open to all newsletter subscribers since early 2022. The number of orders we get depends on the number of new subscribers that day, but in general, we get around 150 orders a day.

Over the past week, however, we received an overwhelming number of orders. The offer of the free book appears to have been promoted by some very popular posts on Instagram, which generated an unprecedented amount of interest for us.

While we’re really grateful that these people were interested in what we have to offer, we couldn’t handle the massive uptick in demand. We’re a nonprofit funded by donations, and everything we provide is free. We had budgeted to run the book giveaway projecting the demand would be in line with what it’s been for the past two years. Instead, we had more than 20,000 orders in just a few days — which we anticipated would run through around six months of the book giveaway’s budget.

We’ve now paused taking new orders, and we’re unsure when we’ll be able to re-open them.

Also, because of this large spike in demand, we had to tell many people who subscribed to our newsletter hoping to get a physical book that we’re not able to complete their order.

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    Special podcast holiday release: One highlight from every episode in 2023

    Happy new year! We’re celebrating with a special podcast holiday release: our favourite highlights from each episode of the show that came out in 2023.

    That’s 32 of our favourite ideas packed into one episode that’s so bursting with substance it might be more than the human mind can safely handle.

    Find this episode wherever you get podcasts:

    There’s something for everyone here:

    …plus another 23 such gems from the rest of our 2023 guest lineup.

    And they’re in an order that our audio engineer Simon Monsour described as having an “eight-dimensional-tetris-like rationale.”

    I don’t know what the hell that means either, but I’m curious to find out.

    And remember: if you like these highlights,

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      Announcing our plan to become an independent organisation

      We are excited to share that 80,000 Hours has officially decided to spin out as a project from our parent organisations and establish an independent legal structure.

      80,000 Hours is a project of the Effective Ventures group — the umbrella term for Effective Ventures Foundation and Effective Ventures Foundation USA, Inc., which are two separate legal entities that work together. It also includes the projects Giving What We Can, the Centre for Effective Altruism, and others.

      We’re incredibly grateful to the Effective Ventures leadership and team and the other orgs for all their support, particularly in the last year. They devoted countless hours and enormous effort to helping ensure that we and the other orgs could pursue our missions.

      And we deeply appreciate Effective Ventures’ support in our spin-out. They recently announced that all of the other organisations under their umbrella will likewise become their own legal entities; we’re excited to continue to work alongside them to improve the world.

      Back in May, we investigated whether it was the right time to spin out of our parent organisations. We’ve considered this option at various points in the last three years.

      There have been many benefits to being part of a larger entity since our founding. But as 80,000 Hours and the other projects within Effective Ventures have grown, we concluded we can now best pursue our mission and goals independently. Effective Ventures leadership approved the plan.

      Becoming our own legal entity will allow us to:

      • Match our governing structure to our function and purpose
      • Design operations systems that best meet our staff’s needs
      • Reduce interdependence with other entities that raises financial,

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        #176 – Nathan Labenz on the final push for AGI, understanding OpenAI’s leadership drama, and red-teaming frontier models

        We’re in this seemingly maybe early phases of some sort of takeoff event, and in the end it is probably going to be very hard to get off of that trajectory broadly. But to the degree that we can bend it a bit, and give ourselves some time to really figure out what it is that we’re dealing with and what version of it we really want to create, I think that would be extremely worthwhile.

        And hopefully, again, I think the game board is in a pretty good spot. The people that are doing the frontier work for the most part seem to be pretty enlightened on all those questions as far as I can tell. So hopefully as things get more critical, they will exercise that restraint as appropriate.

        Nathan Labenz

        OpenAI says its mission is to build AGI — an AI system that is better than human beings at everything. Should the world trust them to do this safely?

        That’s the central theme of today’s episode with Nathan Labenz — entrepreneur, AI scout, and host of The Cognitive Revolution podcast. Nathan saw the AI revolution coming years ago, and, astonished by the research he was seeing, set aside his role as CEO of Waymark and made it his full-time job to understand AI capabilities across every domain. He has been obsessively tracking the AI world since — including joining OpenAI’s “red team” that probed GPT-4 to find ways it could be abused, long before it was public.

        Whether OpenAI was taking AI safety seriously enough became a topic of dinner table conversation around the world after the shocking firing and reinstatement of Sam Altman as CEO last month.

        Nathan’s view: it’s complicated. Discussion of this topic has often been heated, polarising, and personal. But Nathan wants to avoid that and simply lay out, in a way that is impartial and fair to everyone involved, what OpenAI has done right and how it could do better in his view.

        When he started on the GPT-4 red team, the model would do anything from diagnose a skin condition to plan a terrorist attack without the slightest reservation or objection. When later shown a “Safety” version of GPT-4 that was almost the same, he approached a member of OpenAI’s board to share his concerns and tell them they really needed to try out GPT-4 for themselves and form an opinion.

        In today’s episode, we share this story as Nathan told it on his own show, The Cognitive Revolution, which he did in the hope that it would provide useful background to understanding the OpenAI board’s reservations about Sam Altman, which to this day have not been laid out in any detail.

        But while he feared throughout 2022 that OpenAI and Sam Altman didn’t understand the power and risk of their own system, he has since been repeatedly impressed, and came to think of OpenAI as among the better companies that could hypothetically be working to build AGI.

        Their efforts to make GPT-4 safe turned out to be much larger and more successful than Nathan was seeing. Sam Altman and other leaders at OpenAI seem to sincerely believe they’re playing with fire, and take the threat posed by their work very seriously. With the benefit of hindsight, Nathan suspects OpenAI’s decision to release GPT-4 when it did was for the best.

        On top of that, OpenAI has been among the most sane and sophisticated voices advocating for AI regulations that would target just the most powerful AI systems — the type they themselves are building — and that could make a real difference. They’ve also invested major resources into new ‘Superalignment’ and ‘Preparedness’ teams, while avoiding using competition with China as an excuse for recklessness.

        At the same time, it’s very hard to know whether it’s all enough. The challenge of making an AGI safe and beneficial may require much more than they hope or have bargained for. Given that, Nathan poses the question of whether it makes sense to try to build a fully general AGI that can outclass humans in every domain at the first opportunity. Maybe in the short term, we should focus on harvesting the enormous possible economic and humanitarian benefits of narrow applied AI models, and wait until we not only have a way to build AGI, but a good way to build AGI — an AGI that we’re confident we want, which we can prove will remain safe as its capabilities get ever greater.

        By threatening to follow Sam Altman to Microsoft before his reinstatement as OpenAI CEO, OpenAI’s research team has proven they have enormous influence over the direction of the company. If they put their minds to it, they’re also better placed than maybe anyone in the world to assess if the company’s strategy is on the right track and serving the interests of humanity as a whole. Nathan concludes that this power and insight only adds to the enormous weight of responsibility already resting on their shoulders.

        In today’s extensive conversation, Nathan and host Rob Wiblin discuss not only all of the above, but also:

        • Speculation about the OpenAI boardroom drama with Sam Altman, given Nathan’s interactions with the board when he raised concerns from his red teaming efforts.
        • Which AI applications we should be urgently rolling out, with less worry about safety.
        • Whether governance issues at OpenAI demonstrate AI research can only be slowed by governments.
        • Whether AI capabilities are advancing faster than safety efforts and controls.
        • The costs and benefits of releasing powerful models like GPT-4.
        • Nathan’s view on the game theory of AI arms races and China.
        • Whether it’s worth taking some risk with AI for huge potential upside.
        • The need for more “AI scouts” to understand and communicate AI progress.
        • And plenty more.

        Producer and editor: Keiran Harris
        Audio Engineering Lead: Ben Cordell
        Technical editing: Milo McGuire and Dominic Armstrong
        Transcriptions: Katy Moore

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        Not sure where to donate this year? Here’s our advice.

        The idea this giving season: figuring out where to donate is tricky, but a few key tips can help.

        There are lots of pressing problems in the world, and even more possible solutions. We mostly focus on careers, but donating to effective organisations tackling these problems — if you can — is another great way to help.

        But how can you figure out where it’s best to donate?

        Our article on choosing where to donate lays out how you can make this choice. First, you have to decide whether:

        • You want to defer to someone you think is trustworthy, shares your values, and has already evaluated charities. Just following their recommendations can save you work. (We discuss some options below.)
        • You want to do your own research instead, which might allow you to find unusually high-impact options matched to your specific values, plus improve your knowledge of effective giving.
        • You can also enter a donor lottery — learn more about them here.

        If you decide to do your own research, you can use our article to figure out how much time you should spend. For example, we think young people might especially benefit from doing research since they’ll learn lessons about charity evaluation that they can apply for a long time in the future.

        If you do your own research, we recommend you:

        1. Decide which global problems you think are most pressing right now.

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          Engineering skills

          In 1958, Nils Bohlin was recruited as an engineer for Volvo. At the time, over 100,000 people were dying in road accidents every year.

          Bohlin came up with one very simple invention: the modern seat belt.

          Within a year, Volvo began equipping their cars with seat belts as standard, and — as a result of its importance to safety — opened up the patent so that other manufacturers could do the same. Volvo claims that Bohlin’s invention has saved over a million lives. That would make Bohlin one of the highest-impact people in history, alongside David Nalin, the inventor of oral rehydration therapy for diarrhoea.

          We’d guess Bohlin’s impact wasn’t quite that large. For one thing, seat belts already existed: in 1951, a Y-shaped three-point seat belt was patented that avoided the risks of internal injuries from simple lap belts. Bohlin’s innovation was doing this with just one strap, making it simple and convenient to use. For another thing, it seems likely that someone else would have come up with Bohlin’s design eventually.

          Nevertheless, a simple estimate suggests that Bohlin saved hundreds of lives at the very least — incredible for such a simple piece of engineering.

          Thanks to Jessica Wen and Sean Lawrence at High Impact Engineers for their help with this article. Much of the content is based on their website.

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          Software and tech skills

          Why are software and tech skills valuable?

          By “software and tech” skills we basically mean what your grandma would call “being good at computers.”

          When investigating the world’s most pressing problems, we’ve found that in many cases there are software-related bottlenecks.

          For example, machine learning (ML) engineering is a core skill needed to contribute to AI safety technical research. Experts in information security are crucial to reducing the risks of engineered pandemics, as well as other risks. And software engineers are often needed by nonprofits, whether they’re working on reducing poverty or mitigating the risks of climate change.

          Also, having skills in this area means you’ll likely be highly paid, offering excellent options to earn to give.

          Moreover, basic programming skills can be extremely useful whatever you end up doing. You’ll find ways to automate tasks or analyse data throughout your career.

          What does a career using software and tech skills involve?

          A career using these skills typically involves three steps:

          1. Learn to code with a university course or self-study and then find positions where you can get great mentorship. (Read more about how to get started.)
          2. Optionally, specialise in a particular area, for example, by building skills in machine learning or information security.
          3. Apply your skills to helping solve a pressing global problem.

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          Specialist knowledge relevant to a top problem

          What specialist knowledge is valuable?

          Many highly specific areas of knowledge seem applicable to solving the world’s most pressing problems, especially risks posed by biotechnology and artificial intelligence.

          In particular we’d highlight:

          • Subfields of biology relevant to pandemic prevention. Working on many of the possible technical solutions to reduce the risk of pandemics will require expertise in parts of biology. We’d particularly highlight synthetic biology, mathematical biology, virology, immunology, pharmacology, and vaccinology. This expertise can also be helpful for pursuing a biorisk-focused policy career. (Read more about careers to prevent catastrophic pandemics.)
          • AI hardware. Specialised hardware is a crucial input to the development of frontier AI systems. As a result, we expect expertise in AI hardware to become increasingly important to the governance of AI systems. (Read more about becoming an expert in AI hardware).
          • Economics. Understanding economics can be valuable in a huge range of impactful roles when combined with another skill set. For example, economics research is crucial for conducting global priorities research and improving decision making in large institutions. And a knowledge of economics can also support you in building policy and political skills, particularly for policy design and governance research.
          • Other areas we sometimes recommend include history, knowledge of China, and law.

          Of course,

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          Communicating ideas

          Many of the highest-impact people in history have been communicators and advocates of one kind or another.

          Take Rosa Parks, who in 1955 refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus, sparking a protest which led to a Supreme Court ruling that segregated buses were unconstitutional. Parks was a seamstress in her day job, but in her spare time she was involved with the civil rights movement. When Parks sat down on that bus, she wasn’t acting completely spontaneously: just a few months before she’d been attending workshops on effective communication and civil disobedience, and the resulting boycott was carefully planned by Parks and the local NAACP. After she was arrested, they used widely distributed fliers to launch a total boycott of buses in a city with 40,000 African Americans, while simultaneously pushing forward with legal action. This led to major progress for civil rights.

          There are many ways to communicate ideas. One is social advocacy, like Rosa Parks. Another is more like being an individual public intellectual, who can either specialise in a mass audience (like Carl Sagan), or a particular niche (like Paul Farmer, a medical anthropologist who wrote about global health). Or you can learn skills in marketing and public relations and then work as part of a team or organisation to spread important ideas.

          Why are communication skills valuable?

          In the 20th century, smallpox killed around 400 million people — far more than died in all the century’s wars and political famines.

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          #175 – Lucia Coulter on preventing lead poisoning for $1.66 per child

          I always wonder if one part of it is just the really invisible nature of lead as a poison. Of course impacts aren’t invisible: millions of deaths and trillions of dollars in lost income. But the fact that lead is the cause is not apparent. It’s not apparent when you’re being exposed to the lead. The paint just looks like any other paint; the cookware looks like any other cookware.

          And also, if you are suffering the effects of lead poisoning, if you have cognitive impairment and heart disease, you’re not going to think, “Oh, it was that lead exposure.” It’s just not going to be clear.

          Lucia Coulter

          Lead is one of the most poisonous things going. A single sugar sachet of lead, spread over a park the size of an American football field, is enough to give a child that regularly plays there lead poisoning. For life they’ll be condemned to a ~3-point-lower IQ; a 50% higher risk of heart attacks; and elevated risk of kidney disease, anaemia, and ADHD, among other effects.

          We’ve known lead is a health nightmare for at least 50 years, and that got lead out of car fuel everywhere. So is the situation under control? Not even close.

          Around half the kids in poor and middle-income countries have blood lead levels above 5 micrograms per decilitre; the US declared a national emergency when just 5% of the children in Flint, Michigan exceeded that level. The collective damage this is doing to children’s intellectual potential, health, and life expectancy is vast — the health damage involved is around that caused by malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV combined.

          This week’s guest, Lucia Coulter — cofounder of the incredibly successful Lead Exposure Elimination Project (LEEP) — speaks about how LEEP has been reducing childhood lead exposure in poor countries by getting bans on lead in paint enforced.

          Various estimates suggest the work is absurdly cost effective. LEEP is in expectation preventing kids from getting lead poisoning for under $2 per child (explore the analysis here). Or, looking at it differently, LEEP is saving a year of healthy life for $14, and in the long run is increasing people’s lifetime income anywhere from $300–1,200 for each $1 it spends, by preventing intellectual stunting.

          Which raises the question: why hasn’t this happened already? How is lead still in paint in most poor countries, even when that’s oftentimes already illegal? And how is LEEP able to get bans on leaded paint enforced in a country while spending barely tens of thousands of dollars? When leaded paint is gone, what should they target next?

          With host Robert Wiblin, Lucia answers all those questions and more:

          • Why LEEP isn’t fully funded, and what it would do with extra money (you can donate here).
          • How bad lead poisoning is in rich countries.
          • Why lead is still in aeroplane fuel.
          • How lead got put straight in food in Bangladesh, and a handful of people got it removed.
          • Why the enormous damage done by lead mostly goes unnoticed.
          • The other major sources of lead exposure aside from paint.
          • Lucia’s story of founding a highly effective nonprofit, despite having no prior entrepreneurship experience, through Charity Entrepreneurship’s Incubation Program.
          • Why Lucia pledges 10% of her income to cost-effective charities.
          • Lucia’s take on why GiveWell didn’t support LEEP earlier on.
          • How the invention of cheap, accessible lead testing for blood and consumer products would be a game changer.
          • Generalisable lessons LEEP has learned from coordinating with governments in poor countries.
          • And plenty more.

          Producer and editor: Keiran Harris
          Audio Engineering Lead: Ben Cordell
          Technical editing: Milo McGuire and Dominic Armstrong
          Transcriptions: Katy Moore

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          Experience with an emerging power (especially China)

          China will likely play an especially influential role in determining the outcome of many of the biggest challenges of the next century. India also seems very likely to be important over the next few decades, and many other non-western countries — for example, Russia — are also major players on the world stage.

          A lack of understanding and coordination between all these countries and the West means we might not tackle those challenges as well as we can (and need to).

          So it’s going to be very valuable to have more people gaining real experience with emerging powers, especially China, and then specialising in the intersection of emerging powers and pressing global problems.

          Why is experience with an emerging power (especially China) valuable?

          China in particular plays a crucial role in many of the major global problems we highlight. For instance:

          • The Chinese government ‘s spending on artificial intelligence research and development is estimated to be on the same order of magnitude as that of the US government.
          • As the largest trading partner of North Korea, China plays an important role in reducing the chance of conflict, especially nuclear conflict, on the Korean peninsula.
          • China is the largest emitter of CO2, accounting for 30% of the global total.
          • China recently became the largest consumer of factory-farmed meat.
          • China is one of the most important nuclear and military powers.

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          Research skills

          Norman Borlaug was an agricultural scientist. Through years of research, he developed new, high-yielding, disease-resistant varieties of wheat.

          It might not sound like much, but as a result of Borlaug’s research, wheat production in India and Pakistan almost doubled between 1965 and 1970, and formerly famine-stricken countries across the world were suddenly able to produce enough food for their entire populations. These developments have been credited with saving up to a billion people from famine, and in 1970, Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

          Many of the highest-impact people in history, whether well-known or completely obscure, have been researchers.

          Why are research skills valuable?

          Not everyone can be a Norman Borlaug, and not every discovery gets adopted. Nevertheless, we think research can often be one of the most valuable skill sets to build — if you’re a good fit.

          We’ll argue that:

          Together, this suggests that research skills could be particularly useful for having an impact.

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          Policy and political skills

          Suzy Deuster wanted to be a public defender, a career path that could help hundreds receive fair legal representation. But she realised that by shifting her focus to government work, she could improve the justice system for thousands or even millions. Suzy ended up doing just that from her position in the US Executive Office of the President, working on criminal justice reform.

          This logic doesn’t just apply to criminal justice. For almost any global issue you’re interested in, roles in powerful institutions like governments often offer unique and high-leverage ways to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time.

          Why are policy and political skills valuable?

          We’ll argue that:

          Together, this suggests that building the skills needed to get things done in large institutions could give you a lot of opportunities to have an impact.

          Later, we’ll look at:

          Governments (and other powerful institutions) have a huge impact in the world

          National governments are hugely powerful.

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          Organisation-building

          When most people think of careers that “do good,” the first thing they think of is working at a charity.

          The thing is, lots of jobs at charities just aren’t that impactful.

          Some charities focus on programmes that don’t work, like Scared Straight, which actually caused kids to commit more crimes. Others focus on ways of helping that, while thoughtful and helpful, don’t have much leverage, like knitting individual sweaters for penguins affected by oil spills (this actually happened!) instead of funding large-scale ocean cleanup projects.

          A penguin wearing a knitted sweaterWhile this penguin certainly looks all warm and cosy, we’d guess that knitting each sweater one-by-one wouldn’t be the best use of an organisation’s time.

          But there are also many organisations out there — both for-profit and nonprofit — focused on pressing problems, implementing effective and scalable solutions, run by great teams, and in need of people.

          If you can build skills that are useful for helping an organisation like this, it could well be one of the highest-impact things you can do.

          In particular, organisations often need generalists able to do the bread and butter of building an organisation — hiring people, management, administration, communications, running software systems, crafting strategy, fundraising, and so on.

          We call these ‘organisation-building’ skills. They can be high impact because you can increase the scale and effectiveness of the organisation you’re working at, while also gaining skills that can be applied to a wide range of global problems in the future (and make you generally employable too).

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          Preventing catastrophic pandemics

          Some of the deadliest events in history have been pandemics. COVID-19 demonstrated that we’re still vulnerable to these events, and future outbreaks could be far more lethal.

          In fact, we face the possibility of biological disasters that are worse than ever before due to developments in technology.

          The chances of such catastrophic pandemics — bad enough to potentially derail civilisation and threaten humanity’s future — seem uncomfortably high. We believe this risk is one of the world’s most pressing problems.

          And there are a number of practical options for reducing global catastrophic biological risks (GCBRs). So we think working to reduce GCBRs is one of the most promising ways to safeguard the future of humanity right now.

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

          It will change everything: it will change our workplaces, it will change our interactions with the government, it will change our interactions with each other. It will make all of us unwitting neuromarketing subjects at all times, because at every moment in time, when you’re interacting on any platform that also has issued you a multifunctional device where they’re looking at your brainwave activity, they are marketing to you, they’re cognitively shaping you.

          So I wrote the book as both a wake-up call, but also as an agenda-setting: to say, what do we need to do, given that this is coming? And there’s a lot of hope, and we should be able to reap the benefits of the technology, but how do we do that without actually ending up in this world of like, “Oh my god, mind reading is here. Now what?”

          Nita Farahany

          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.

          Producer and editor: Keiran Harris
          Audio Engineering Lead: Ben Cordell
          Technical editing: Simon Monsour and Milo McGuire
          Additional content editing: Katy Moore and Luisa Rodriguez
          Transcriptions: Katy Moore

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          Benjamin Todd on the history of 80,000 Hours

          The very first office we had was just a balcony in an Oxford College dining hall. It was totally open to the dining hall, so every lunch and dinner time it would be super noisy because it’d be like 200 people all eating below us.

          And then I think we just had a bit where we just didn’t have an office, so we worked out of the canteen in the library for at least three months or something. And then it was only after that we moved into this tiny, tiny room at the back of an estate agent off in St Clement’s in Oxford.

          One of our early donors came and we gave him a tour, and when he came into the office, his first reaction was, “Is this legal?”

          Benjamin Todd

          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”

          Producer: Keiran Harris
          Audio mastering: Ryan Kessler and Ben Cordell

          Gershwin – Rhapsody in Blue, original 1924 version” by Jason Weinberger is licensed under creative commons

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

          We do have a tendency to anthropomorphise nonhumans — which means attributing human characteristics to them, even when they lack those characteristics. But we also have a tendency towards anthropodenial — which involves denying that nonhumans have human characteristics, even when they have them. And those tendencies are both strong, and they can both be triggered by different types of systems. So which one is stronger, which one is more probable, is again going to be contextual.

          But when we then consider that we, right now, are building societies and governments and economies that depend on the objectification, exploitation, and extermination of nonhumans, that — plus our speciesism, plus a lot of other biases and forms of ignorance that we have — gives us a strong incentive to err on the side of anthropodenial instead of anthropomorphism.

          Jeff Sebo

          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.

          Producer and editor: Keiran Harris
          Audio Engineering Lead: Ben Cordell
          Technical editing: Dominic Armstrong and Milo McGuire
          Additional content editing: Katy Moore and Luisa Rodriguez
          Transcriptions: Katy Moore

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

          If someone were to say, “You’re basically right, but I can cut down 90%; I can still be almost as well informed while reducing the harm,” I think that’s a really obvious position, and I think that one’s almost impossible to argue against. What if you spent half as much time in the news? Would you really be noticeably less informed? No. But would you be less unhappy? At least in the time diary sense, where you are counting the experiences of the day, then I don’t see how you could fail to be more happy as a result of cutting down 50%, with really virtually no change in the level of knowledge that you have, even about the events themselves.

          Bryan Caplan

          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.

          In the second half of the episode, Bryan and Rob cover:

          • Why Bryan is pretty sceptical that AI is going to lead to extreme, rapid changes, or that there’s a meaningful chance of it going terribly.
          • Bryan’s case that rational irrationality on the part of voters leads to many very harmful policy decisions.
          • How to allocate resources in space.
          • Bryan’s experience homeschooling his kids.

          Producer and editor: Keiran Harris
          Audio Engineering Lead: Ben Cordell
          Technical editing: Simon Monsour and Milo McGuire
          Transcriptions: Katy Moore

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          A note of appreciation for your efforts to help others

          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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