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Top areas to work on
Preventing an AI-related catastrophe
Catastrophic pandemics
Nuclear weapons
Great power war
Factory farming
Global priorities research
Building effective altruism
Improving decision making
Emerging challenges
The moral status of digital minds
Risks of stable totalitarianism
S-risks
Space governance
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Research
Communicating ideas
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Engineering
Experience with an emerging power
Expertise relevant to a top problem
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See all →
Our list of top high-impact career paths
AI governance and policy
AI safety technical research
Biorisk research, strategy, and policy
Information security in high-impact areas
Expert in AI hardware
China-related AI safety and governance
Grantmaker
Helping build the effective altruism community
Nuclear weapons safety and security
Operations in high-impact organisations
Research into global priorities
More promising paths
Be a founder
Software engineering
Journalism
See more →
How to build great career capital
See our top recommendations →
See all career reviews →
Read the full series →
Introduction
Your most important decision
Foundations
A definition of impact
Longtermism
Harmful jobs
Global priorities
Problem selection
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Top problems list
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How to think about your contribution
Effective solutions
List of high-impact careers
Personal fit
Gut instinct
Differences in productivity
Comparative advantage
Strategy
Ambition
Coordination
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Impact and satisfaction
Accidental harm
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Misconceptions about effective altruism
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Topic archive: Government & policy

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All content tagged "Government & policy"

2024

August

#199 – Nathan Calvin on California's AI bill SB 1047 and its potential to shape US AI policy
Podcast
#195 – Sella Nevo on who's trying to steal frontier AI models, and what they could do with them
Podcast
AI governance and policy (Updated)
Career review

July

#194 – Vitalik Buterin on defensive acceleration and how to regulate AI when you fear government
Podcast

May

#189 – Rachel Glennerster on how "market shaping" could help solve climate change, pandemics, and other global problems
Podcast
#186 – Dean Spears on why babies are born small in Uttar Pradesh, and how to save their lives
Podcast

April

Nuclear weapons safety and security
Career review
#184 – Zvi Mowshowitz on sleeping on sleeper agents, and the biggest AI updates since ChatGPT
Podcast

2023

December

#175 – Lucia Coulter on preventing lead poisoning for $1.66 per child
Podcast
#174 – Nita Farahany on the neurotechnology already being used to convict criminals and manipulate workers
Podcast
Experience with an emerging power (especially China) (Updated)
Skill
Policy and political skills (Updated)
Skill

November

#171 – Alison Young on how top labs have jeopardised public health with repeated biosafety failures
Podcast
#170 – Santosh Harish on how air pollution is responsible for ~12% of global deaths — and how to get that number down
Podcast

October

Experience with an emerging power (especially China) (First published)
Skill
#166 – Tantum Collins on what he's learned as an AI policy insider at the White House, DeepMind and elsewhere
Podcast

September

Policy and political skills (First published)
Skill
#162 – Mustafa Suleyman on getting Washington and Silicon Valley to tame AI
Podcast

August

#161 – Michael Webb on whether AI will soon cause job loss, lower incomes, and higher inequality — or the opposite
Podcast

July

#157 – Ezra Klein on existential risk from AI and what DC could do about it
Podcast
#156 – Markus Anderljung on how to regulate cutting-edge AI models
Podcast
Working in US AI policy (Updated)
Article

June

#155 – Lennart Heim on the compute governance era and what has to come after
Podcast
AI governance and policy (First published)
Career review

April

Biorisk research, strategy, and policy (Updated)
Career review

March

Why and how to earn to give (Updated)
Article

2022

December

#143 – Jeffrey Lewis on the most common misconceptions about nuclear weapons
Podcast

August

#135 – Samuel Charap on key lessons from five months of war in Ukraine
Podcast

May

Climate change
Problem profile

April

#128 – Chris Blattman on the five reasons wars happen
Podcast
#127 – Sam Bankman-Fried on taking a high-risk approach to crypto and doing good
Podcast

March

#125 – Joan Rohlfing on how to avoid catastrophic nuclear blunders
Podcast
#123 – Samuel Charap on why Putin invaded Ukraine, the risk of escalation, and how to prevent disaster
Podcast

February

#120 – Audrey Tang on what we can learn from Taiwan's experiments with how to do democracy
Podcast

2021

December

#119 – Andrew Yang on our very long-term future, and other topics most politicians won't touch
Podcast
#118 – Jaime Yassif on safeguarding bioscience to prevent catastrophic lab accidents and bioweapons development
Podcast

October

#114 – Maha Rehman on working with governments to rapidly deliver masks to millions of people
Podcast
Research & advocacy promoting impactful climate solutions
Career review
Specialist in emerging global powers
Career review
Policy careers focused on other pressing global issues
Career review
Biorisk research, strategy, and policy (First published)
Career review

September

#111 – Mushtaq Khan on how mainstream economics gets corruption and good governance all wrong
Podcast

April

#97 – Mike Berkowitz on keeping the U.S. a liberal democratic country
Podcast

March

#93 – Andy Weber on rendering bioweapons obsolete & ending the new nuclear arms race
Podcast

2020

December

#88 – Tristan Harris on the need to change the incentives of social media companies
Podcast

October

If you care about social impact, why is voting important?
Article

August

How to use your career to help reduce existential risk
Article
#84 – Shruti Rajagopalan on what India did to stop COVID-19 and how well it worked
Podcast
Ideas for high-impact careers beyond our priority paths
Blog post

July

#83 – Jennifer Doleac on ways to prevent crime other than police and prisons
Podcast
#82 – James Forman Jr on reducing the cruelty of the US criminal legal system
Podcast

May

#77 – Marc Lipsitch on whether we're winning or losing against COVID-19
Podcast
#76 – Tara Kirk Sell on COVID-19 misinformation, who's over and under-performed, and what we can reopen first
Podcast

April

Policy and research ideas to reduce existential risk
Blog post

2019

November

#65 – Amb. Bonnie Jenkins on 8 years pursuing WMD arms control, & diversity in diplomacy
Podcast

October

#64 – Bruce Schneier on how insecure electronic voting could break the United States — and surveillance without tyranny
Podcast

September

#63 – Vitalik Buterin on better ways to fund public goods, blockchain's failures, & effective giving
Podcast

July

#61 – Helen Toner on emerging technology, national security, and China
Podcast

June

#60 – Prof Tetlock on why accurate forecasting matters for everything, and how you can do it better
Podcast

April

#57 – Tom Kalil on how to do the most good in government
Podcast

March

#55 – Mark Lutter & Tamara Winter on founding charter cities with outstanding governance to end poverty
Podcast
#54 – Askell, Brundage & Clark from OpenAI on publication norms, malicious uses of AI, and general-purpose learning algorithms
Podcast

January

Working in US AI policy (First published)
Article
#51 – Martin Gurri on the revolt of the public & crisis of authority in the information age
Podcast

2018

September

#43 – Daniel Ellsberg on the creation of nuclear doomsday machines, the institutional insanity that maintains them, & how they could be dismantled
Podcast
American with a science PhD? Get a fast-track into AI and STEM policy by applying for the acclaimed AAAS Science & Technology Fellowship by Nov 1.
Blog post

August

#41 – David Roodman on incarceration, geomagnetic storms, & becoming a world-class researcher
Podcast

May

#34 – We use the worst voting system that exists. Here's how Aaron Hamlin is going to fix it.
Podcast
Congressional staffer
Career review
#30 – Eva Vivalt on how little social science findings generalize from one study to another
Podcast

March

#25 – Robin Hanson on why we have to lie to ourselves about why we do what we do
Podcast
Blog: A new recommended career path for effective altruists: China specialist
Blog post
#22 – Leah Utyasheva on the nonprofit that figured out how to massively cut suicide rates
Podcast

February

#19 – Samantha Pitts-Kiefer on working next to the White House trying to prevent nuclear war
Podcast

January

#18 – Ofir Reich on using data science to end poverty & the spurious action-inaction distinction
Podcast

2017

October

#13 – Claire Walsh on testing which policies work & how to get governments to listen to the results
Podcast
#12 – Beth Cameron works to stop you dying in a pandemic. Here's what keeps her up at night.
Podcast
New problem profile: Improving institutional decision-making
Blog post
New career review: Policy-oriented civil service (with a UK focus)
Blog post
Policy-oriented government jobs
Career review

June

The Schwarzman Scholarship: An exciting opportunity to learn more about China and get a Masters in Global Affairs
Blog post
#1 – Miles Brundage on the world's desperate need for AI strategists and policy experts
Podcast

2016

November

How much is one vote worth?
Blog post

June

How to do high impact research (Updated)
Article

2015

July

Effective altruists love systemic change
Blog post
What are your chances of getting elected to Congress, if you try?
Blog post

2014

September

Why and how to earn to give (First published)
Article
How to do high impact research (First published)
Article

February

In which career can you make the most difference?
Blog post

January

Reasoning about influence in politics
Blog post

2012

March

Review of Dead Aid
Blog post

February

How hard is it to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom?
Blog post

January

Policy careers
Blog post

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80,000 Hours is an Effective Ventures project. Effective Ventures Foundation (UK) (EV UK) is a charity in England and Wales (with registered charity number 1149828, registered company number 07962181, and is also a Netherlands registered tax-deductible entity ANBI 825776867). Effective Ventures Foundation USA Inc. (EV US) is a section 501(c)(3) organization in the USA (EIN 47-1988398). EV UK and EV US are separate charities that collaborate closely under the “Effective Ventures” name.

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