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  Introduction
  Your most important decision
  Summary
  Foundations
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  Effective altruism
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  The case for reducing existential risks
  This could be the most important century
  Our current list of pressing problems
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  The best solutions are far more effective
  Leverage
  What is leverage, and how to get it?
  Our list of high-impact careers
  Personal fit
  Fit is more important than you think
  Strategy
  What is career capital?
  How much to explore?
  Coordination and impact
  Balancing impact and doing what you love
  Aim higher: a rational case for dreaming big
  Three career stages
  Conclusion
  How much do careers differ in impact?
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  Top areas to work on
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  Sometimes-recommended paths
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  Promising but under-researched
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  2017 career guide
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Read the full guide →
Introduction
Your most important decision
Summary
Foundations
A definition of impact
Future generations & their moral significance
Effective altruism
Global priorities
Why problem selection is crucial
The case for reducing existential risks
This could be the most important century
Our current list of pressing problems
Solutions
The best solutions are far more effective
Leverage
What is leverage, and how to get it?
Our list of high-impact careers
Personal fit
Fit is more important than you think
Strategy
What is career capital?
How much to explore?
Coordination and impact
Balancing impact and doing what you love
Aim higher: a rational case for dreaming big
Three career stages
Conclusion
How much do careers differ in impact?
Read the full guide →
Go to problems hub →
Top areas to work on
Positively shaping the development of AI
Global priorities research
Building effective altruism
Reducing the risk of catastrophic pandemics
Nuclear security
Improving institutional decision making
Extreme climate change
Other promising areas
Mitigating great power conflict
Global governance
Space governance
See all →
Go to problems hub →
See all our career reviews →
Key categories of impactful careers
Government and policy
Organisation-building at effective nonprofits
Research
Applying an unusual strength to a needed niche
Communication
Earning to give
List of top-recommended career paths
AI safety technical research
Long-term AI policy
Founder of new projects
Helping build the effective altruism community
Grantmaker
Operations management in high-impact organisations
Research into global priorities
Biorisk research, strategy, and policy
China-related AI safety and governance
Forecasting research and implementation
Sometimes-recommended paths
High-impact but especially competitive
Promising but under-researched
Impactful if you’re an especially good fit
Recommended career capital
Steps to build your skills and network
Making the most of your current job
Doing good in any career
How to invest in yourself
See all our career reviews →
See all planning resources →
Create a high-impact career plan
8-week career planning course
Summary
Career plan template
Annual career check-up
Make good career decisions
Make an immediate decision
Improve your decision-making skills
See all planning resources →
Selected topics
Moral philosophy
Skills
Job satisfaction
Anonymous advice
Unconventional advice
What to study
Advocacy
Catastrophic risks
Meta-causes
Priority paths
See all topics →
Top articles from outside our guides
What makes for a dream job?
Best charities to donate to
Misconceptions about effective altruism
High-impact research questions
What are your chances of getting elected to Congress, if you try?
How many lives does a doctor save?
What's the impact of voting?
Advice for undergraduates
All articles →

2017 career guide
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Big picture (96)
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Priority paths (141)
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Updates (41)

Topic archive: Priority paths

Subtopics in "Priority paths":

AI policy (23)
AI technical safety (29)
Biorisk strategy & policy (22)
China specialists (5)
Earning to give in quant trading (6)
Forecasting & related research and implementation (14)
Grantmaker (14)
Operations at high impact organisations (13)
Global priorities research (35)
Roles at effective altruism organisations (16)

Filter by content type:
All141
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2022

July

#133 – Max Tegmark on how a 'put-up-or-shut-up' resolution led him to work on AI and algorithmic news selection
Podcast

June

#132 – Nova DasSarma on why information security may be critical to the safe development of AI systems
Podcast

May

Let’s get serious about preventing the next pandemic
Blog post
#6 – Clay Graubard and Robert de Neufville on forecasting the war in Ukraine
Podcast (80k After Hours)
#130 – Will MacAskill on balancing frugality with ambition, whether you need longtermism, & mental health under pressure
Podcast
Data collection for AI alignment
Career review

April

#127 – Sam Bankman-Fried on taking a high-risk approach to crypto and doing good
Podcast

March

Engineering
Career review
Operations management in high-impact organisations (Updated)
Article

February

China-related AI safety and governance paths (First published)
Career review
Software engineering
Career review

2021

December

#118 – Jaime Yassif on safeguarding bioscience to prevent catastrophic lab accidents and bioweapons development
Podcast

November

China-related AI safety and governance paths (Updated)
Career review
Government and policy in an area relevant to a top problem
Article
Organisation-building at effective nonprofits
Article

October

Manager of a long-term philanthropic fund
Career review
Expert in AI hardware
Career review
Specialist in emerging global powers
Career review
Research management
Career review
Become an executive assistant for someone doing especially high-impact work
Career review
Policy careers focused on other pressing global issues
Career review
Non-technical roles in leading AI labs
Career review
Forecasting and related research and implementation
Career review
Earning to give in a high-paying role, such as quantitative trading
Career review
Biorisk research, strategy, and policy
Career review
Research into global priorities
Career review
Help build the effective altruism community
Career review
Grantmaker focused on pressing world problems
Career review
AI safety technical research
Career review
Long-term AI policy strategy research and implementation
Career review
#112 – Carl Shulman on the common-sense case for existential risk work and its practical implications
Podcast
Improving China-Western coordination on global catastrophic risks (Updated)
Career review

August

#110 – Holden Karnofsky on building aptitudes and kicking ass
Podcast
#109 – Holden Karnofsky on the most important century
Podcast
#108 – Chris Olah on working at top AI labs without an undergrad degree
Podcast
#107 – Chris Olah on what the hell is going on inside neural networks
Podcast

July

#105 – Alexander Berger on improving global health and wellbeing in clear and direct ways
Podcast

June

#104 – Pardis Sabeti on the Sentinel system for detecting and stopping pandemics
Podcast
#103 – Max Roser on building the world's first great source of COVID-19 data at Our World in Data
Podcast

May

Effective Altruism: Ten Global Problems — curated episodes from The 80,000 Hours Podcast
Article
#98 – Christian Tarsney on future bias and a possible solution to moral fanaticism
Podcast

March

#93 – Andy Weber on rendering bioweapons obsolete & ending the new nuclear arms race
Podcast
#92 – Brian Christian on the alignment problem
Podcast

February

#91 – Lewis Bollard on big wins against factory farming and how they happened
Podcast

January

#90 – Ajeya Cotra on worldview diversification and how big the future could be
Podcast

2020

December

The case for building expertise to work on US AI policy, and how to do it (Updated)
Article

November

Benjamin Todd on what the effective altruism community most needs (80k team chat #4)
Podcast

October

#86 – Hilary Greaves on Pascal's mugging, strong longtermism, and whether existing can be good for us
Podcast

September

Notes on good judgement and how to develop it
Blog post

August

How to use your career to help reduce existential risk
Article
Why I’ve come to think global priorities research is more important than I thought
Blog post
The emerging school of patient longtermism
Blog post

July

#81 – Ben Garfinkel on scrutinising classic AI risk arguments
Podcast
Building effective altruism (Updated)
Problem profile

June

#80 – Professor Stuart Russell on why our approach to AI is broken and how to fix it
Podcast
All our material on using your career to prevent catastrophic pandemics (Updated)
Article

May

#78 – Danny Hernandez on forecasting and measuring some of the most important drivers of AI progress
Podcast
#77 – Professor 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
Our current list of pressing world problems (Updated)
Article

April

#75 – Michelle Hutchinson on what people most often ask 80,000 Hours
Podcast
All our material on using your career to prevent catastrophic pandemics (First published)
Article
#74 – Dr Greg Lewis on COVID-19 & catastrophic biological risks
Podcast

March

Emergency episode: Rob & Howie on the menace of COVID-19, and what both governments & individuals might do to help
Podcast
Risks of catastrophic pandemics
Problem profile
#72 – Toby Ord on the precipice and humanity's potential futures
Podcast
#71 – Benjamin Todd on the key ideas of 80,000 Hours
Podcast

February

#70 – Dr Cassidy Nelson on the twelve best ways to stop the next pandemic (and limit COVID-19)
Podcast
#69 – Jeffrey Ding on China, its AI dream, and what we get wrong about both
Podcast
Bonus episode: What we do and don’t know about the 2019-nCoV coronavirus
Podcast

2019

December

#67 – David Chalmers on the nature and ethics of consciousness
Podcast

November

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

October

#64 – Bruce Schneier on the big risks in computer security, secrets, and surveillance without tyranny
Podcast
A framework for comparing global problems in terms of expected impact (Updated)
Article

September

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

August

Philosophy academia
Career review
#62 – Paul Christiano on messaging the future, increasing compute, & how CO2 impacts your brain
Podcast

July

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

June

#58 – Pushmeet Kohli of DeepMind on designing robust & reliable AI systems and how to succeed in AI
Podcast

May

Recap: why do some organisations say their recent hires are worth so much?
Blog post

April

#57 – Tom Kalil on how to do the most good in government
Podcast
#56 – Persis Eskander on wild animal welfare and what, if anything, to do about it
Podcast

March

#54 – Askell, Brundage & Clark from OpenAI on publication norms, malicious uses of AI, and general-purpose learning algorithms
Podcast

January

The case for building expertise to work on US AI policy, and how to do it (First published)
Article

2018

November

#48 – Brian Christian on better living through the wisdom of computer science
Podcast
ML engineering for AI safety & robustness: a Google Brain engineer’s guide to entering the field
Article
#47 – Catherine Olsson & Daniel Ziegler on the fast path into high-impact ML engineering roles
Podcast

October

#46 – Hilary Greaves on moral cluelessness, population ethics, & harnessing the brainpower of academia to tackle the most important research questions
Podcast
#45 – Prof Tyler Cowen's stubborn attachments to maximising economic growth, making civilization more stable & respecting human rights
Podcast
What skills or experience are most needed within professional effective altruism in 2018? And which problems are most effective to work on? New survey of organisational leaders.
Blog post
#44 – Dr Paul Christiano on how OpenAI is developing real solutions to the 'AI alignment problem', and his vision of how humanity will progressively hand over decision-making to AI systems
Podcast
Academic research
Career review

September

Doing good together: how to coordinate effectively, and avoid single-player thinking
Article
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
#42 – Amanda Askell on moral empathy, the value of information & the ethics of infinity
Podcast

August

#41 – David Roodman on incarceration, geomagnetic storms, & becoming a world-class researcher
Podcast
#40 – Katja Grace on forecasting future technology & how much we should trust expert predictions.
Podcast
Our current list of pressing world problems (First published)
Article
#39 – Spencer Greenberg on the scientific approach to solving difficult everyday questions.
Podcast
List of the most urgent global issues (Updated)
Article

July

#37 – GiveWell picks top charities by estimating the unknowable. James Snowden on how they do it.
Podcast
#36 – Tanya Singh on ending the operations management bottleneck in effective altruism
Podcast
Global priorities research (Updated)
Problem profile

June

#35 – Tara Mac Aulay on the audacity to fix the world without asking permission
Podcast

May

#33 – Dr Anders Sandberg on what if we ended ageing, solar flares & the annual risk of nuclear war
Podcast
#31 – Prof Allan Dafoe on defusing the political and economic risks posed by existing AI capabilities
Podcast
#29 – Dr Anders Sandberg on three new resolutions for the Fermi Paradox and how to easily colonise the universe
Podcast

April

#28 – Dr Owen Cotton-Barratt on why scientists should need insurance, PhD strategy & what if AI progresses fast
Podcast
#27 – Tom Inglesby on how to prevent global catastrophic biological risks
Podcast

March

Operations management in high-impact organisations (First published)
Article
Want to do good? Here’s how to choose an area to focus on
Article
#24 – Stefan Schubert on why it’s a bad idea to break the rules, even if it’s for a good cause
Podcast
#23 – How to actually become an AI alignment researcher, according to Dr Jan Leike
Podcast

February

Improving China-Western coordination on global catastrophic risks (First published)
Career review
#21 – Holden Karnofsky on times philanthropy transformed the world & Open Phil's plan to do the same
Podcast

January

#17 – Prof Will MacAskill on moral uncertainty, utilitarianism & how to avoid being a moral monster
Podcast

2017

December

#16 – Dr Hutchinson on global priorities research & shaping the ideas of intellectuals
Podcast

November

#15 – Prof Tetlock on how chimps beat Berkeley undergrads and when it’s wise to defer to the wise
Podcast
What are the most important talent gaps in the effective altruism community?
Blog post

October

#12 – Dr Beth Cameron works to stop you dying in a pandemic. Here’s what keeps her up at night.
Podcast
#10 – Dr Nick Beckstead on how to spend billions of dollars preventing human extinction
Podcast

September

#8 – Lewis Bollard on how to end factory farming in our lifetimes
Podcast
Improving institutional decision-making
Problem profile
#7 – Julia Galef on making humanity more rational, what EA does wrong, and why Twitter isn’t all bad
Podcast
Working at effective nonprofits
Career review

August

#5 – Alex Gordon-Brown on how to donate millions in your 20s working in quantitative trading
Podcast
#4 – Howie Lempel on pandemics that kill hundreds of millions and how to stop them
Podcast

July

#3 – Dr Dario Amodei on OpenAI and how AI will change the world for good and ill
Podcast

June

Machine Learning PhDs
Career review
Working at effective altruist organisations
Career review
The Schwarzman Scholarship: An exciting opportunity to learn more about China and get a Masters in Global Affairs
Blog post
Guide to working in AI policy and strategy
Article
#1 – Miles Brundage on the world's desperate need for AI strategists and policy experts
Podcast

May

How much do hedge fund traders earn?
Blog post
Which industry has the highest-paying jobs?
Article

March

Building effective altruism (First published)
Problem profile
What skills are effective altruist organisations short of? Results from our survey.
Blog post
Some further resources on high-impact careers
Article
Positively shaping the development of artificial intelligence
Problem profile

2016

August

AI safety syllabus
Article

June

How to do high impact research (Updated)
Article

April

Global priorities research (First published)
Problem profile
A framework for comparing global problems in terms of expected impact (First published)
Article

2015

October

Research into risks from artificial intelligence (First published)
Career review

September

Research into risks from artificial intelligence (Updated)
Career review

August

Biomedical research
Career review

July

Foundation grantmaker
Career review

2014

September

How to do high impact research (First published)
Article

August

Trading in quantitative hedge funds (for earning to give) (First published)
Career review
Improving decision making (First published)
Article
Promoting effective altruism (First published)
Article
Global priorities research (First published)
Article
List of the most urgent global issues (First published)
Article

July

Trading in quantitative hedge funds (for earning to give) (Updated)
Career review
Global priorities research (Updated)
Article

2013

November

Improving decision making (Updated)
Article
Promoting effective altruism (Updated)
Article

Filter by content type:
All141
Podcasts74
Career reviews29
Key articles21
Blog posts11
Problem profiles5
Podcasts (80k After Hours)1

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80,000 Hours is part of the Centre for Effective Altruism, a registered charity in England and Wales (Charity Number 1149828) and a registered 501(c)(3) Exempt Organization in the USA (EIN 47-1988398).

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© 2021 – all rights reserved. Please contact us if you wish to redistribute, translate, or adapt this work.

80,000 Hours is part of the Centre for Effective Altruism, a registered charity in England and Wales (Charity Number 1149828) and a registered 501(c)(3) Exempt Organization in the USA (EIN 47-1988398).

Please contact us to suggest ideas, improvements, or corrections.

We do our best to provide useful information, but how you use the information is up to you. We don’t take responsibility for any loss that results from the use of information on the site. Please consult our full legal disclaimer and privacy policy.

© 2021 – all rights reserved. Please contact us if you wish to redistribute, translate, or adapt this work.