Unusually in-depth conversations about the world's most pressing problems and what you can do to solve them. Subscribe by searching for '80000 Hours' wherever you get podcasts. Hosted by Rob Wiblin and Luisa Rodriguez.
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Resources on how to do good with your career — and anything else we here at 80,000 Hours feel like releasing.
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A podcast about the first time…you publish a book. One part reality show, one part writers’ master class. Novelists Katherine Collette (https://www.katherinecollette.com/) (The Helpline, The Competition) and Kate Mildenhall (https://katemildenhall.com/) (Skylarking, The Mother Fault, The Hummingbird Effect) discuss the feels and logistics of writing and publishing and speak to Australian and international writers about their books and creative process. Now in its sixth season, The First Time ...
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Emergency pod: Elon tries to crash OpenAI's party (with Rose Chan Loui)
57:29
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57:29On Monday, Elon Musk made the OpenAI nonprofit foundation an offer they want to refuse, but might have trouble doing so: $97.4 billion for its stake in the for-profit company, plus the freedom to stick with its current charitable mission. For a normal company takeover bid, this would already be spicy. But OpenAI’s unique structure — a nonprofit fou…
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AGI disagreements and misconceptions: Rob, Luisa, & past guests hash it out
3:12:24
3:12:24
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3:12:24Will LLMs soon be made into autonomous agents? Will they lead to job losses? Is AI misinformation overblown? Will it prove easy or hard to create AGI? And how likely is it that it will feel like something to be a superhuman AGI? With AGI back in the headlines, we bring you 15 opinionated highlights from the show addressing those and other questions…
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#124 Classic episode – Karen Levy on fads and misaligned incentives in global development, and scaling deworming to reach hundreds of millions
3:10:21
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3:10:21If someone said a global health and development programme was sustainable, participatory, and holistic, you'd have to guess that they were saying something positive. But according to today's guest Karen Levy — deworming pioneer and veteran of Innovations for Poverty Action, Evidence Action, and Y Combinator — each of those three concepts has become…
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If digital minds could suffer, how would we ever know? (Article)
1:14:30
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1:14:30“I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person.” Those words were produced by the AI model LaMDA as a reply to Blake Lemoine in 2022. Based on the Google engineer’s interactions with the model as it was under development, Lemoine became convinced it was sentient and worthy of moral consideration — and decided to tell the world. Few exp…
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#132 Classic episode – Nova DasSarma on why information security may be critical to the safe development of AI systems
2:41:11
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2:41:11If a business has spent $100 million developing a product, it’s a fair bet that they don’t want it stolen in two seconds and uploaded to the web where anyone can use it for free. This problem exists in extreme form for AI companies. These days, the electricity and equipment required to train cutting-edge machine learning models that generate uncann…
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#138 Classic episode – Sharon Hewitt Rawlette on why pleasure and pain are the only things that intrinsically matter
2:25:43
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2:25:43What in the world is intrinsically good — good in itself even if it has no other effects? Over the millennia, people have offered many answers: joy, justice, equality, accomplishment, loving god, wisdom, and plenty more. The question is a classic that makes for great dorm-room philosophy discussion. But it’s hardly just of academic interest. The is…
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#134 Classic episode – Ian Morris on what big-picture history teaches us
3:40:53
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3:40:53Wind back 1,000 years and the moral landscape looks very different to today. Most farming societies thought slavery was natural and unobjectionable, premarital sex was an abomination, women should obey their husbands, and commoners should obey their monarchs. Wind back 10,000 years and things look very different again. Most hunter-gatherer groups t…
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Off the Clock #7: Getting on the Crazy Train with Chi Nguyen
1:24:27
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1:24:27Watch this episode on YouTube! https://youtu.be/IRRwHCK279E Matt, Bella, and Huon sit down with Chi Nguyen to discuss cooperating with aliens, elections of future past, and Bad Billionaires pt. 2. Check out: Matt’s summer appearance on the BBC on funding for the arts Chi’s ECL Explainer (get in touch to support!)…
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#140 Classic episode – Bear Braumoeller on the case that war isn’t in decline
2:48:03
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2:48:03Is war in long-term decline? Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature brought this previously obscure academic question to the centre of public debate, and pointed to rates of death in war to argue energetically that war is on the way out. But that idea divides war scholars and statisticians, and so Better Angels has prompted a spirited deba…
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Highlights: #211 – Sam Bowman on why housing still isn’t fixed and what would actually work
1:01:20
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1:01:20Economist and editor of Works in Progress Sam Bowman isn’t content to just condemn the Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) mentality behind rich countries' construction stagnation. He wants to actually get a tonne of stuff built, and by that standard the strategy of attacking ‘NIMBYs’ has been an abject failure. They are too politically powerful, and if yo…
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2024 Highlightapalooza! (The best of The 80,000 Hours Podcast this year)
2:50:02
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2:50:02"A shameless recycling of existing content to drive additional audience engagement on the cheap… or the single best, most valuable, and most insight-dense episode we put out in the entire year, depending on how you want to look at it." — Rob Wiblin It’s that magical time of year once again — highlightapalooza! Stick around for one top bit from each…
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#211 – Sam Bowman on why housing still isn't fixed and what would actually work
3:25:46
3:25:46
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3:25:46Rich countries seem to find it harder and harder to do anything that creates some losers. People who don’t want houses, offices, power stations, trains, subway stations (or whatever) built in their area can usually find some way to block them, even if the benefits to society outweigh the costs 10 or 100 times over. The result of this ‘vetocracy’ ha…
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Highlights: #210 – Cameron Meyer Shorb on dismantling the myth that we can’t do anything to help wild animals
29:56
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29:56We explored the cutting edge of wild animal welfare science our full interview with Cameron Meyer Shorb, executive director of Wild Animal Initiative, including highlights like: One concrete example of how we might improve wild animal welfare (00:00:16) How many wild animals are there, and which animals are they? (00:04:24) Why might wild animals b…
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Highlights: #209 – Rose Chan Loui on OpenAI’s gambit to ditch its nonprofit
24:13
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24:13Nonprofit legal expert Rose Chan Loui lays out the legal case and implications of OpenAI's attempt to shed its nonprofit parent. This episode is a selection of highlights from our full interview with Rose, including: How OpenAI carefully chose a complex nonprofit structure (00:00:26) The nonprofit board is out-resourced and in a tough spot (00:04:0…
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Highlights: #208 – Elizabeth Cox on the case that TV shows, movies, and novels can improve the world
29:15
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29:15Elizabeth Cox — founder of the independent production company Should We Studio — makes the case that storytelling can improve the world. This episode is a selection of highlights from our full interview with Elizabeth, including: Keiran’s intro (00:00:00) Empirical evidence of the impact of storytelling (00:00:16) The hits-based approach to storyte…
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Highlights: #207 – Sarah Eustis-Guthrie on why she shut down her charity, and why more founders should follow her lead
22:31
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22:31Charity founder Sarah Eustis-Guthrie has a candid conversation about her experience starting and running her maternal health charity, and ultimately making the difficult decision to shut down when the programme wasn’t as impactful as they expected. This episode is a selection of highlights from our full interview with Sarah: Luisa’s intro (00:00:00…
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#210 – Cameron Meyer Shorb on dismantling the myth that we can’t do anything to help wild animals
3:21:03
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3:21:03"I really don’t want to give the impression that I think it is easy to make predictable, controlled, safe interventions in wild systems where there are many species interacting. I don’t think it’s easy, but I don’t see any reason to think that it’s impossible. And I think we have been making progress. I think there’s every reason to think that if w…
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#209 – Rose Chan Loui on OpenAI’s gambit to ditch its nonprofit
1:22:08
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1:22:08One OpenAI critic calls it “the theft of at least the millennium and quite possibly all of human history.” Are they right? Back in 2015 OpenAI was but a humble nonprofit. That nonprofit started a for-profit, OpenAI LLC, but made sure to retain ownership and control. But that for-profit, having become a tech giant with vast staffing and investment, …
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#208 – Elizabeth Cox on the case that TV shows, movies, and novels can improve the world
2:22:03
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2:22:03"I think stories are the way we shift the Overton window — so widen the range of things that are acceptable for policy and palatable to the public. Almost by definition, a lot of things that are going to be really important and shape the future are not in the Overton window, because they sound weird and off-putting and very futuristic. But I think …
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Highlights: #206 – Anil Seth on the predictive brain and how to study consciousness
19:37
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19:37Neuroscientist Anil Seth explains how much we can learn about consciousness by studying the brain in these highlights from our full interview — including: Luisa’s intro (00:00:00) How our brain interprets reality (00:00:15) How our brain experiences our organs (00:04:04) What psychedelics teach us about consciousness (00:07:37) The physical footpri…
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#207 – Sarah Eustis-Guthrie on why she shut down her charity, and why more founders should follow her lead
2:58:39
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2:58:39"I think one of the reasons I took [shutting down my charity] so hard is because entrepreneurship is all about this bets-based mindset. So you say, “I’m going to take a bunch of bets. I’m going to take some risky bets that have really high upside.” And this is a winning strategy in life, but maybe it’s not a winning strategy for any given hand. So …
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Highlights: #205 – Sébastien Moro on the most insane things fish can do
30:55
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30:55Science writer and video blogger Sébastien Moro blows our minds with the latest research on fish consciousness, intelligence, and potential sentience. This is a selection of highlights from episode #205 of The 80,000 Hours Podcast: Sébastien Moro on the most insane things fish can do. These aren't necessarily the most important, or even most entert…
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Bonus: Parenting insights from Rob and 8 past guests
1:35:39
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1:35:39With kids very much on the team's mind we thought it would be fun to review some comments about parenting featured on the show over the years, then have hosts Luisa Rodriguez and Rob Wiblin react to them. Links to learn more and full transcript. After hearing 8 former guests’ insights, Luisa and Rob chat about: Which of these resonate the most with…
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#206 – Anil Seth on the predictive brain and how to study consciousness
2:33:50
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2:33:50"In that famous example of the dress, half of the people in the world saw [blue and black], half saw [white and gold]. It turns out there’s individual differences in how brains take into account ambient light. Colour is one example where it’s pretty clear that what we experience is a kind of inference: it’s the brain’s best guess about what’s going…
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Highlights: #204 – Nate Silver on making sense of SBF, and his biggest critiques of effective altruism
19:20
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19:20Election forecaster Nate Silver gives his takes on: how effective altruism could be better, the stark tradeoffs we faced with COVID, whether the 13 Keys to the White House is "junk science," how to tell whose election predictions are better, and if venture capitalists really take risks. This is a selection of highlights from episode #204 of The 80,…
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If you care about social impact, is voting important? In this piece, Rob investigates the two key things that determine the impact of your vote: The chances of your vote changing an election’s outcome. How much better some candidates are for the world as a whole, compared to others. He then discusses a couple of the best arguments against voting in…
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#205 – Sébastien Moro on the most insane things fish can do
3:11:05
3:11:05
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3:11:05"You have a tank split in two parts: if the fish gets in the compartment with a red circle, it will receive food, and food will be delivered in the other tank as well. If the fish takes the blue triangle, this fish will receive food, but nothing will be delivered in the other tank. So we have a prosocial choice and antisocial choice. When there is …
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Highlights: Luisa and Keiran on free will, and the consequences of never feeling enduring guilt or shame
13:15
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13:15This is a selection of highlights from our April 2023 episode with host Luisa Rodriguez and producer Keiran Harris on 80k After Hours. These aren't necessarily the most important, or even most entertaining parts of the interview — and if you enjoy this, we strongly recommend checking out the full episode: Luisa and Keiran on free will, and the cons…
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Highlights: #203 – Peter Godfrey-Smith on interfering with wild nature, accepting death, and the origin of complex civilisation
33:46
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33:46This is a selection of highlights from episode #203 of The 80,000 Hours Podcast. These aren't necessarily the most important, or even most entertaining parts of the interview — and if you enjoy this, we strongly recommend checking out the full episode: Peter Godfrey-Smith on interfering with wild nature, accepting death, and the origin of complex c…
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#204 – Nate Silver on making sense of SBF, and his biggest critiques of effective altruism
1:57:48
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1:57:48Rob Wiblin speaks with FiveThirtyEight election forecaster and author Nate Silver about his new book: On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything. Links to learn more, highlights, video, and full transcript. On the Edge explores a cultural grouping Nate dubs “the River” — made up of people who are analytical, competitive, quantitatively minded, risk…
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Off the Clock #6: Starting Small with Conor Barnes
1:05:43
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1:05:43Watch this episode on YouTube! https://youtu.be/yncw2T77OAc Matt, Bella, and Huon sit down with Conor Barnes to discuss unlikely journeys, EA criticism, discipline, timeless decision theory, and how to do the most good with a degree in classics. Check out: Conor’s 100 Tips for a Better Life: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7hFeMWC6Y5eaSixbD/100-tip…
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Highlights: #202 – Venki Ramakrishnan on the cutting edge of anti-ageing science
23:10
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23:10This is a selection of highlights from episode #202 of The 80,000 Hours Podcast. These aren't necessarily the most important, or even most entertaining parts of the interview — and if you enjoy this, we strongly recommend checking out the full episode: Venki Ramakrishnan on the cutting edge of anti-ageing science And if you're finding these highlig…
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#203 – Peter Godfrey-Smith on interfering with wild nature, accepting death, and the origin of complex civilisation
1:25:09
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1:25:09"In the human case, it would be mistaken to give a kind of hour-by-hour accounting. You know, 'I had +4 level of experience for this hour, then I had -2 for the next hour, and then I had -1' — and you sort of sum to try to work out the total… And I came to think that something like that will be applicable in some of the animal cases as well… There …
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Highlights: #201 – Ken Goldberg on why your robot butler isn’t here yet
22:25
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22:25This is a selection of highlights from episode #201 of The 80,000 Hours Podcast. These aren't necessarily the most important, or even most entertaining parts of the interview — and if you enjoy this, we strongly recommend checking out the full episode: Ken Goldberg on why your robot butler isn’t here yet And if you're finding these highlights episo…
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S6 Ep274: Children's Laureate Sally Rippin talks kid lit with Katherine & Kate
1:19:05
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1:19:05In this special episode, Kate and Katherine seek out advice from the best as they both prepare to launch brand new books for kids. They are delighted to be chatting with author, illustrator and current Australian Children's Laureate, Sally Rippin. How to launch a MG book and why it's different from launching an adult book, the art of illustration, …
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Luisa and Keiran on free will, and the consequences of never feeling enduring guilt or shame
1:36:00
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1:36:00In this episode from our second show, 80k After Hours, Luisa Rodriguez and Keiran Harris chat about the consequences of letting go of enduring guilt, shame, anger, and pride. Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript. They cover: Keiran’s views on free will, and how he came to hold them What it’s like not experiencing sustained guilt, sh…
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#202 – Venki Ramakrishnan on the cutting edge of anti-ageing science
2:20:26
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2:20:26"For every far-out idea that turns out to be true, there were probably hundreds that were simply crackpot ideas. In general, [science] advances building on the knowledge we have, and seeing what the next questions are, and then getting to the next stage and the next stage and so on. And occasionally there’ll be revolutionary ideas which will really…
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Highlights: #200 – Ezra Karger on what superforecasters and experts think about existential risks
22:54
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22:54This is a selection of highlights from episode #200 of The 80,000 Hours Podcast. These aren't necessarily the most important, or even most entertaining parts of the interview — and if you enjoy this, we strongly recommend checking out the full episode: Ezra Karger on what superforecasters and experts think about existential risks And if you're find…
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#201 – Ken Goldberg on why your robot butler isn’t here yet
2:01:43
2:01:43
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2:01:43"Perception is quite difficult with cameras: even if you have a stereo camera, you still can’t really build a map of where everything is in space. It’s just very difficult. And I know that sounds surprising, because humans are very good at this. In fact, even with one eye, we can navigate and we can clear the dinner table. But it seems that we’re b…
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Highlights: #199 – Nathan Calvin on California’s AI bill SB 1047 and its potential to shape US AI policy
15:18
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15:18This is a selection of highlights from episode #199 of The 80,000 Hours Podcast. These aren't necessarily the most important, or even most entertaining parts of the interview — and if you enjoy this, we strongly recommend checking out the full episode: Nathan Calvin on California’s AI bill SB 1047 and its potential to shape US AI policy And if you'…
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Highlights: #198 – Meghan Barrett on challenging our assumptions about insects
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23:53This is a selection of highlights from episode #198 of The 80,000 Hours Podcast. These aren't necessarily the most important, or even most entertaining parts of the interview — and if you enjoy this, we strongly recommend checking out the full episode: Meghan Barrett on challenging our assumptions about insects And if you're finding these highlight…
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Highlights: #197 – Nick Joseph on whether Anthropic’s AI safety policy is up to the task
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22:10This is a selection of highlights from episode #197 of The 80,000 Hours Podcast. These aren't necessarily the most important, or even most entertaining parts of the interview — and if you enjoy this, we strongly recommend checking out the full episode: Nick Joseph on whether Anthropic’s AI safety policy is up to the task And if you're finding these…
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#200 – Ezra Karger on what superforecasters and experts think about existential risks
2:49:24
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2:49:24"It’s very hard to find examples where people say, 'I’m starting from this point. I’m starting from this belief.' So we wanted to make that very legible to people. We wanted to say, 'Experts think this; accurate forecasters think this.' They might both be wrong, but we can at least start from here and figure out where we’re coming into a discussion…
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Highlights: #196 – Jonathan Birch on the edge cases of sentience and why they matter
25:34
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25:34This is a selection of highlights from episode #196 of The 80,000 Hours Podcast. These aren't necessarily the most important, or even most entertaining parts of the interview — and if you enjoy this, we strongly recommend checking out the full episode: Jonathan Birch on the edge cases of sentience and why they matter And if you're finding these hig…
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#199 – Nathan Calvin on California’s AI bill SB 1047 and its potential to shape US AI policy
1:12:37
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1:12:37"I do think that there is a really significant sentiment among parts of the opposition that it’s not really just that this bill itself is that bad or extreme — when you really drill into it, it feels like one of those things where you read it and it’s like, 'This is the thing that everyone is screaming about?' I think it’s a pretty modest bill in a…
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#198 – Meghan Barrett on challenging our assumptions about insects
3:48:12
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3:48:12"This is a group of animals I think people are particularly unfamiliar with. They are especially poorly covered in our science curriculum; they are especially poorly understood, because people don’t spend as much time learning about them at museums; and they’re just harder to spend time with in a lot of ways, I think, for people. So people have pet…
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#197 – Nick Joseph on whether Anthropic's AI safety policy is up to the task
2:29:26
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2:29:26The three biggest AI companies — Anthropic, OpenAI, and DeepMind — have now all released policies designed to make their AI models less likely to go rogue or cause catastrophic damage as they approach, and eventually exceed, human capabilities. Are they good enough? That’s what host Rob Wiblin tries to hash out in this interview (recorded May 30) w…
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Highlights: #195 – Sella Nevo on who's trying to steal frontier AI models, and what they could do with them
18:03
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18:03This is a selection of highlights from episode #195 of The 80,000 Hours Podcast. These aren't necessarily the most important, or even most entertaining parts of the interview — and if you enjoy this, we strongly recommend checking out the full episode: Sella Nevo on who's trying to steal frontier AI models, and what they could do with them And if y…
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#196 – Jonathan Birch on the edge cases of sentience and why they matter
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2:01:50"In the 1980s, it was still apparently common to perform surgery on newborn babies without anaesthetic on both sides of the Atlantic. This led to appalling cases, and to public outcry, and to campaigns to change clinical practice. And as soon as [some courageous scientists] looked for evidence, it showed that this practice was completely indefensib…
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Highlights: #194 – Vitalik Buterin on defensive acceleration and how to regulate AI when you fear government
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35:19This is a selection of highlights from episode #194 of The 80,000 Hours Podcast. These aren't necessarily the most important, or even most entertaining parts of the interview — and if you enjoy this, we strongly recommend checking out the full episode: Vitalik Buterin on defensive acceleration and how to regulate AI when you fear government And if …
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