Best The 80000 Hours team Podcasts (2024)

1
#194 – Vitalik Buterin on defensive acceleration and how to regulate AI when you fear government 3:04:18

1h ago3:04:18

3:04:18

"If you’re a power that is an island and that goes by sea, then you’re more likely to do things like valuing freedom, being democratic, being pro-foreigner, being open-minded, being interested in trade. If you are on the Mongolian steppes, then your entire mindset is kill or be killed, conquer or be conquered … the breeding ground for basically eve…

1
“We need an independent investigation into how EA leadership has handled SBF and FTX” by AnonymousEAForumAccount 34:46

1d ago34:46

34:46

Summary Rebecca Kagan believes “EA needs an investigation, done externally and shared publicly, on mistakes made in the EA community's relationship with FTX.” She is far from the only person who has called for an independent investigation, but Kagan's experience and knowledge as a former board member of Effective Ventures makes her perspective part…

1
Highlights: #192 – Annie Jacobsen on what would happen if North Korea launched a nuclear weapon at the US 23:33

39m ago23:33

23:33

This is a selection of highlights from episode #192 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: Annie Jacobsen on what would happen if North Korea launched a nuclear weapon at the US And if you…

1
Off the Clock #5: Leaving 80k with Maria Gutierrez Rojas 1:23:23

1h ago1:23:23

1:23:23

You can check out the video version of this episode on YouTube at https://youtu.be/AUuEaYltONg Matt, Bella, and Cody sit down with Maria Gutierrez Rojas to discuss the 80k’s aesthetics, religion (again), bad billionaires, and why it’s hard to be an org that both gives advice and has opinions.By The 80000 Hours team

1
“Warren Buffett changes giving plans (for the worse)” by katriel 2:08

1h ago2:08

2:08

This is a link post. Folks in philanthropy and development definitely know that the Gates Foundation is the largest private player in that realm by far. Until recently it was likely to get even larger, as Warren Buffet had stated that the Foundation would receive the bulk of his assets when he died. A few weeks ago, Buffet announced that he had cha…

1
“Rethink Priorities’ Moral Parliament Tool” by Derek Shiller, arvomm, Bob Fischer, Hayley Clatterbuck 30:17

9d ago30:17

30:17

Link to tool: https://parliament.rethinkpriorities.org (1 min) Introductory Video (6 min) Basic Features Video Executive Summary This post introduces Rethink Priorities’ Moral Parliament Tool, which models ways an agent can make decisions about how to allocate goods in light of normative uncertainty. We treat normative uncertainty as uncertainty ov…

1
Highlights: #191 (Part 2) – Carl Shulman on government and society after AGI 33:06

1h ago33:06

33:06

This is a selection of highlights from episode #191 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: Carl Shulman on government and society after AGI And if you're finding these highlights episodes …

1
#193 – Sihao Huang on the risk that US–China AI competition leads to war 2:23:34

1h ago2:23:34

2:23:34

"You don’t necessarily need world-leading compute to create highly risky AI systems. The biggest biological design tools right now, like AlphaFold’s, are orders of magnitude smaller in terms of compute requirements than the frontier large language models. And China has the compute to train these systems. And if you’re, for instance, building a cybe…

1
“Destabilization of the United States: The top X-factor EA neglects? ” by Yelnats T.J. 1:23:59

10d ago1:23:59

1:23:59

Highlights Destabilization could be the biggest setback for great power conflict, AI, bio-risk, and climate disruption. Polarization plays a role in nearly every causal pathway leading to destabilization of the United States, and there is no indication polarization will decrease. The United States fits the pattern of past democracies that have desc…

1
“Against Aschenbrenner: How ‘Situational Awareness’ constructs a narrative that undermines safety and threatens humanity” by GideonF 41:43

11d ago41:43

41:43

Summary/Introduction Aschenbrenner's ‘Situational Awareness’ (Aschenbrenner, 2024) promotes a dangerous narrative of national securitisation. This narrative is not, despite what Aschenbrenner suggests, descriptive, but rather, it is performative, constructing a particular notion of security that makes the dangerous world Aschenbrenner describes mor…

1
“The Precipice Revisited” by Toby_Ord 32:53

8d ago32:53

32:53

I'm often asked about how the existential risk landscape has changed in the years since I wrote The Precipice. Earlier this year, I gave a talk on exactly that, and I want to share it here. Here's a video of the talk and a full transcript. In the years since I wrote The Precipice, the question I’m asked most is how the risks have changed. It's now …

1
“Most smart and skilled people are outside of the EA/rationalist community: an analysis” by titotal 28:22

14d ago28:22

28:22

This is a link post. Introduction: The (highly interrelated) effective altruist and Rationalist communities are very small on a global scale. Therefore, in general, most intelligence, skill and expertise is outside of the community, not within it. I don’t think many people will disagree with this statement. But sometimes it's worth reminding people…

1
#192 – Annie Jacobsen on what would happen if North Korea launched a nuclear weapon at the US 1:54:24

21h ago1:54:24

1:54:24

"Ring one: total annihilation; no cellular life remains. Ring two, another three-mile diameter out: everything is ablaze. Ring three, another three or five miles out on every side: third-degree burns among almost everyone. You are talking about people who may have gone down into the secret tunnels beneath Washington, DC, escaped from the Capitol an…

1
“Reliable Sources: The Story of David Gerard” by TracingWoodgrains 1:30:21

1d ago1:30:21

1:30:21

This is a linkpost for https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wikipedia-admin, posted in full here given its relevance to this community. Gerard has been one of the longest-standing malicious critics of the rationalist and EA communities and has done remarkable amounts of work to shape their public images behind the scenes. Note: …

1
“80,000 hours should remove OpenAI from the Job Board (and similar EA orgs should do similarly)” by Raemon 12:45

17d ago12:45

12:45

I haven't shared this post with other relevant parties – my experience has been that private discussion of this sort of thing is more paralyzing than helpful. I might change my mind in the resulting discussion, but, I prefer that discussion to be public. I think 80,000 hours should remove OpenAI from its job board, and similar EA job placement serv…

1
“We’ve renamed the Giving What We Can Pledge” by Alana HF, Giving What We Can 8:00

17d ago8:00

8:00

This is a link post. The Giving What We Can Pledge is now the 🔸10% Pledge! We cover the why (along with our near-term plans and how you can help!) below. TL;DR: The name change will help us grow awareness of the pledge by reducing brand confusion and facilitating partnerships. We see it as an important part of reaching our goal of 10,000 pledgers b…

1
Highlights: #191 (Part 1) – Carl Shulman on the economy and national security after AGI 35:12

8d ago35:12

35:12

This is a selection of highlights from episode #191 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: Carl Shulman on the economy and national security after AGI And if you're finding these highlight…

1
“AMA: Beast Philanthropy’s Darren Margolias” by Beast Philanthropy, GiveDirectly 1:15

18d ago1:15

1:15

From Darren Margolias: I'm the Executive Director of Beast Philanthropy, the charity founded by the world's most popular YouTuber MrBeast. We recently collaborated with GiveDirectly on the video below. You can read background the project from our LinkedIn here and here (plus GiveDirectly's blog) On Thursday, July 18th I'll be recording a video AMA …

1
#191 (Part 2) – Carl Shulman on government and society after AGI 2:20:32

8d ago2:20:32

2:20:32

This is the second part of our marathon interview with Carl Shulman. The first episode is on the economy and national security after AGI. You can listen to them in either order! If we develop artificial general intelligence that's reasonably aligned with human goals, it could put a fast and near-free superhuman advisor in everyone's pocket. How wou…

1
“Do What You Can (A Poem)” by ElliotTep 6:12

24d ago6:12

6:12

Audio is here if you prefer. Hope you like it. I got something to offer, all I ask is your time. And forgiveness for the form: a cheesy rhyme. You’re skeptical? Makes sense. But I know your type's vice. You strike me as a purveyor, of do-gooder advice. And it's pretty damn good, I don't mean to boast, This advice always fits. Well…sort of. Almost! …

1
“Center for Effective Aid Policy has shut down” by MathiasKB🔸 17:23

25d ago17:23

17:23

May 2024 marked the last month of the Center for Effective Aid Policy. This post serves as the public post-mortem. I have strived for it to be interesting to the average forum reader, who may not know much about the cause area. For professionals in development, we have a few internal private write ups which we may be more interesting, such as an ov…

1
“How can we get the world to talk about factory farming?” by LewisBollard 13:37

25d ago13:37

13:37

This is a link post. Note: This post was crossposted from the Open Philanthropy Farm Animal Welfare Research Newsletter by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post. Silence favors the status quo, which doesn’t favor animals It's easy to ignore factory farming. Inflation sparks public d…

1
“Animal Welfare Fund: Payout recommendations from May 2022 to March 2024” by Linch, kierangreig, KarolinaSarek, Zoë Sigle, Neil_Dullaghan 21:41

28d ago21:41

21:41

This payout report covers the Animal Welfare Fund's grantmaking from May 1 2022 to March 31st 2024 (23 months). It follows the previous March-April 2022 payout report. Since the previous report was written, the Animal Welfare Fund made a conscious decision to deprioritize public reports so that fund managers can have more time and capacity to work …

1
“Detecting Genetically Engineered Viruses With Metagenomic Sequencing” by Jeff Kaufman 14:15

28d ago14:15

14:15

This is a link post. This represents work from several people at the NAO. Thanks especially to Dan Rice for implementing the duplicate junction detection, and to @Will Bradshaw and @mike_mclaren for editorial feedback. Summary If someone were to intentionally cause a stealth pandemic today, one of the ways they might do it is by modifying an existi…

1
“Announcing The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why” by jeffsebo 1:46

13d ago1:46

1:46

Hi all, just a short post to let you know that my next book, The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why, is now available for preorder! This is the publisher's description: "Today, human exceptionalism is the norm. Despite occasional nods to animal welfare, we focus on humanity, often neglecting the welfare of a vast number of beings. In …

1
“Distancing EA from rationality is foolish” by Jan_Kulveit 4:29

15d ago4:29

4:29

Recently, I've noticed a growing tendency within EA to dissociate from Rationality. Good Ventures have stopped funding efforts connected with the rationality community and rationality, and there are increasing calls for EAs to distance themselves. This trend concerns me, and I believe it's good to make a distinction when considering this split. We …

1
#191 (Part 1) – Carl Shulman on the economy and national security after AGI 4:14:58

28d ago4:14:58

4:14:58

This is the first part of our marathon interview with Carl Shulman. The second episode is on government and society after AGI. You can listen to them in either order! The human brain does what it does with a shockingly low energy supply: just 20 watts — a fraction of a cent worth of electricity per hour. What would happen if AI technology merely ma…

1
“Ten minutes to speak up for ~4.5 million caged chickens” by Ben Stevenson 5:41

1M ago5:41

5:41

(You can read this post as a Google Doc. You might find this easier to share with animal-sympathetic non-EAs. Also: I work at Rethink Priorities, but I'm writing in a personal capacity.) A few weeks ago, I shared some suggested responses for a Defra consultation on welfare labelling. I was really pleased to hear that many EAs and animal rights advo…

1
“Kaya Guides Pilot Results” by RachelAbbott 32:50

19d ago32:50

32:50

Summary. Who We Are: Kaya Guides runs a self-help course on WhatsApp to reduce depression at scale in low and middle-income countries. We help young adults with moderate to severe depression. Kaya currently operates in India. We are the world's first nonprofit implementer of Step-by-Step, the World Health Organization's digital guided self-help pro…

1
“Are our Top Charities saving the same lives each year?” by GiveWell 51:14

1M ago51:14

51:14

This is a link post. Author: Adam Salisbury, Senior Research Associate In a nutshell We’ve had a longstanding concern that some of our top charity programs, including insecticide-treated nets, seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC), and vitamin A supplementation (VAS), may have less impact than we've estimated due to “repetitive saving.” These prog…

1
Highlights: #190 – Eric Schwitzgebel on whether the US is conscious 22:22

23d ago22:22

22:22

This is a selection of highlights from episode #190 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: Eric Schwitzgebel on whether the US is conscious And if you're finding these highlights episodes …

1
“Why so many ‘racists’ at Manifest?” by Austin 10:50

1M ago10:50

10:50

Manifest 2024 is a festival that we organized last weekend in Berkeley. By most accounts, it was a great success. On our feedback form, the average response to “would you recommend to a friend” was a 9.0/10. Reviewers said nice things like “one of the best weekends of my life” and “dinners and meetings and conversations with people building local c…

1
“Help Fund Insect Welfare Science” by Bob Fischer, Daniela R. Waldhorn, abrahamrowe 4:00

1M ago4:00

4:00

The Arthropoda Foundation Tens of trillions of insects are used or killed by humans across dozens of industries. Despite being the most numerous animal species reared by animal industries, we know next to nothing about what's good or bad for these animals. And right now, funding for this work is scarce. Traditional science funders won’t pay for it;…

1
“Maybe let the non-EA world train you” by ElliotT 13:56

1M ago13:56

13:56

This post is for EAs at the start of their careers who are considering which organisations to apply to, and their next steps in general. Conclusion up front: It can be really hard to get that first job out of university. If you don’t get your top picks, your less exciting backup options can still be great for having a highly impactful career. If th…

1
“Maybe Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust is powerless” by Zach Stein-Perlman 5:15

1M ago5:15

5:15

Crossposted from AI Lab Watch. Subscribe on Substack. Introduction. Anthropic has an unconventional governance mechanism: an independent "Long-Term Benefit Trust" elects some of its board. Anthropic sometimes emphasizes that the Trust is an experiment, but mostly points to it to argue that Anthropic will be able to promote safety and benefit-sharin…

1
Highlights: #189 – Rachel Glennerster on how “market shaping” could help solve climate change, pandemics, and other global problems 26:27

1M ago26:27

26:27

This is a selection of highlights from episode #189 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: Rachel Glennerster on how “market shaping” could help solve climate change, pandemics, and other …

1
“Summary of Situational Awareness - The Decade Ahead” by OscarD🔸 37:17

2M ago37:17

37:17

Original by Leopold Aschenbrenner, this summary is not commissioned or endorsed by him. Short Summary Extrapolating existing trends in compute, spending, algorithmic progress, and energy needs implies AGI (remote jobs being completely automatable) by ~2027. AGI will greatly accelerate AI research itself, leading to vastly superhuman intelligences b…

1
“I doubled the world record cycling without hands for AMF” by Vincent van der Holst 8:40

2M ago8:40

8:40

A couple weeks ago I announced I was going to try and break the world record cycling without hands for AMF. That post also explains why I wanted to break that record. Last Friday we broke that record and raised nearly €10.000 for AMF. Here's what happened on friday. You can still donate here. What was the old record? Canadian Robert John Murray rod…

1
“Announcing a $6,000,000 endowment for NYU Mind, Ethics, and Policy” by Sofia_Fogel 1:34

2M ago1:34

1:34

The NYU Mind, Ethics, and Policy Program will soon become the NYU Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy (CMEP), our future secured by a generous $6,000,000 endowment. The CMEP Endowment Fund was established in May 2024 with a $5,000,000 gift from The Navigation Fund and a $1,000,000 gift from Polaris Ventures. We now welcome contributions from other …

1
#190 – Eric Schwitzgebel on whether the US is conscious 2:00:46

1M ago2:00:46

2:00:46

"One of the most amazing things about planet Earth is that there are complex bags of mostly water — you and me – and we can look up at the stars, and look into our brains, and try to grapple with the most complex, difficult questions that there are. And even if we can’t make great progress on them and don’t come to completely satisfying solutions, …

1
Highlights: #188 – Matt Clancy on whether science is good 26:28

1M ago26:28

26:28

This is a selection of highlights from episode #188 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: Matt Clancy on whether science is good And if you're finding these highlights episodes valuable, …

1
“I bet Greg Colbourn 10 k€ that AI will not kill us all by the end of 2027” by Vasco Grilo 5:57

2M ago5:57

5:57

Agreement 78 % of my donations so far have gone to the Long-Term Future Fund[1] (LTFF), which mainly supports AI safety interventions. However, I have become increasingly sceptical about the value of existential risk mitigation, and currently think the best interventions are in the area of animal welfare[2]. As a result, I realised it made sense fo…

1
“Review of Past Grants: The $100.000 Grant for a Video Game?” by Nicolae 4:29

2M ago4:29

4:29

Since 2017, EA Funds has been providing grants across four distinct cause areas. While there are payout reports available, there is a lack of reports detailing the outcomes of these grants, so I delved out of curiosity into the Grants Database to review some of the proposals that received funding and evaluate their outcomes. Some of the findings we…

1
Off the Clock #4 (fka Actually After Hours): One Boxing with Julian Hazell 1:15:52

1M ago1:15:52

1:15:52

You can check out the video version of this episode on YouTube at https://youtu.be/R9VGbY7CgOI Matt, Bella, and Cody sit down with Julian Hazell to discuss the UK recession, religion, higher education, and whether being an amateur swordfighter should give you the right to vote.By The 80000 Hours team

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