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Top areas to work on
Preventing an AI-related catastrophe
Catastrophic pandemics
Nuclear war
Great power war
Climate change
Capacity building
Building effective altruism
Global priorities research
Improving decision making
Other promising areas
Civilisation resilience
Artificial sentience
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Our list of top high-impact career paths
AI safety technical research
AI governance and policy
Biorisk research, strategy, and policy
Information security in high-impact areas
Expert in AI hardware
Helping build the effective altruism community
China-related AI safety and governance
Grantmaker
Operations in high-impact organisations
Research into global priorities
More promising paths
Be a founder
Software engineering
Journalism
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How to build great career capital
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Introduction
Your most important decision
Foundations
A definition of impact
Longtermism
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Topic archive: Government & policy

Subtopics in "Government & policy":

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All content tagged "Government & policy"

2024

April

#184 – Zvi Mowshowitz on sleeping on sleeper agents, and the biggest AI updates since ChatGPT
Podcast

February

AI governance and policy (Updated)
Career review

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 using institutional economics to predict effective government reforms
Podcast

April

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

March

#93 – Andy Weber on rendering bioweapons obsolete and 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 done well and badly, and what we should reopen first
Podcast

April

Policy and research ideas to reduce existential risk
Blog post

2019

November

#65 – Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins on 8 years of combating WMD terrorism
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 effective altruism, better ways to fund public goods, the blockchain’s problems so far, and how it could yet change the world
Podcast

July

#61 – Helen Toner on the new 30-person research group in DC investigating how emerging technologies could affect national security
Podcast

June

#60 – Accurately predicting the future is central to absolutely everything. Phil Tetlock has spent 40 years studying how to do it better.
Podcast

April

#57 – Tom Kalil on how to have a big impact in government & huge organisations, based on 16 years’ experience in the White House
Podcast

March

#55 – Mark Lutter on trying to end poverty by founding well-governed ‘charter’ cities, ft Tamara Winter
Podcast
#54 – Askell, Brundage & Clark on whether policy has a hope of keeping up with AI advances
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, and a practical plan for dismantling them
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 – If the US put fewer people in prison, would crime go up? Not at all, according to Open Philanthropy’s renowned researcher David Roodman.
Podcast

May

#34 – Politics is so much worse because we use an atrocious 18th century voting system. Aaron Hamlin has a viable plan to fix it.
Podcast
Congressional staffer
Career review
#30 – Eva Vivalt’s research suggests social science findings don’t generalize. So evidence-based development – what is it good for?
Podcast

March

#25 – Why we have to lie to ourselves about why we do what we do, according to economist Robin Hanson
Podcast
Blog: A new recommended career path for effective altruists: China specialist
Blog post
#22 – Leah Utyasheva on how to massively cut suicide rates in Sri Lanka, and her non-profit’s plan to do the same around the world
Podcast

February

#19 – Samantha Pitts-Kiefer on her job worrying about any way nukes could get used
Podcast

January

#18 – Ofir Reich on using data science to end poverty and 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 fought Ebola for the White House. Now she works to stop something even worse.
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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