80,000 Hours Podcast

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Episodes

3 new scandals show being a pain in the ass for AI labs is a legit job now | Rob Wiblin 2026-11-03
The big 3 AI companies all had serious scandals last month. Anthropic pushed a federal AI bill that would make it harder to stop dangerous model…
Luke Muehlhauser on the most important AI safety work nobody is doing 2026-10-29
The US government spends 25 times more on military marching bands than on its AI safety institute. And that’s just one of the many institutions…
Why Silicon Valley can’t slow down AI on its own | Luisa Rodriguez 2026-10-27
Two-thirds of Americans think AI is moving too fast. So do the people building it. So why the hell isn’t anyone slowing down? We can’t tell when…
AI lab staff: Has your project been overtaken by events? 8 strategic updates | Rob Wiblin 2026-10-21
I have a plea for all staff at AI companies: reassess if your current role is still your best opportunity for impact. And if it’s not — move.…
Introducing our new YouTube channel: Zershaaneh Talks AI 2026-10-20
Our host Zershaaneh Qureshi has just launched a new YouTube channel: Zershaaneh Talks AI — featuring conversations about who should control AI, how…
How to get into AI safety in 3 months (article reading by career advisor Matt Beard) 2026-10-15
The AI safety field has grown by about 30x in the last eight years. Yet it is still in need of more people. Many want to help, but don’t know where…
OpenAI Security: Controlling Models is Now ‘Hell’ (AI Explained cross-post) 2026-10-09
This is an (unpaid) cross-post of a video from the podcast 'AI Explained', which Rob Wiblin thought you might be interested in. You can find the…
19 Astra and 'Hugging Face' details that reveal what's coming next | Rob Wiblin 2026-10-02
OpenAI’s rogue agent swarm was eventually caught hacking Hugging Face for a simple reason: it wasn’t trying to hide from us at all. What could a…
How we get from AI cyberattacks to human extinction 2026-09-24
You’ve seen the headlines: AI could kill us all. Think it sounds ridiculous? So did host Luisa Rodriguez, until she tried to pick apart the…
Why the intelligence explosion can't happen inside a data centre | Tom Reed 2026-09-10
AI systems are starting to build themselves . Because each generation of model will be better at building its successor than the last, it seems…
Inside the first AI-coordinated cyberattack on a real company 2026-09-04
In the last few months, something happened at OpenAI that would have sounded like sci-fi just a few years ago: hundreds of AI agents broke…
What the hell happened with AGI timelines in 2026? – Rob Wiblin 2026-08-04
Last October, famed coder Andrej Karpathy called AI agents “slop.” Two months later he completely reversed his view , describing them as “alien…
We can guess what intergalactic war would look like. And strangely, it matters. 2026-06-18
Intergalactic war is probably billions of years away — yet physics can already tell us how it ends. And strangely that conclusion is relevant to…
How AI could create the world’s biggest problems (article by Zershaaneh Qureshi) 2026-06-11
Imagine you’re living 15,000 years ago. Your people are hunter-gatherers and you sleep under the stars. If someone told you humans would one day…
What makes for a dream job? | Benjamin Todd 2026-05-28
What actually makes a job fulfilling? It's not what most career advice tells you. "Follow your passion" sounds inspiring, but it's misleading — and…
Can AIs already start 'rogue deployments' inside AI companies? (Landmark new METR report) 2026-05-20
A red-teamer was embedded inside Anthropic for three weeks, told to imagine he was an evil Claude, and asked to figure out how to launch a ‘rogue AI…
'95% of AI Pilots Fail': The hidden agenda behind the viral stat that misled millions 2026-04-28
You might have heard that '95% of corporate AI pilots' are failing. It was one of the most widely cited AI statistics of 2025, parroted by media…
Risks from power-seeking AI systems (article narration by Zershaaneh Qureshi) 2026-04-16
Hundreds of prominent AI scientists and other notable figures signed a statement in 2023 saying that mitigating the risk of extinction from AI…
How scary is Claude Mythos? 303 pages in 21 minutes 2026-04-10
With Claude Mythos we have an AI that knows when it's being tested, can obscure its reasoning when it wants, and is better at breaking into (and out…
Village gossip, pesticide bans, and gene drives: 17 experts on the future of global health 2026-04-07
What does it really take to lift millions out of poverty and prevent needless deaths? In this special compilation episode, 17 past guests —…
What everyone is missing about Anthropic vs the Pentagon. And: The Meta leaks are worse than you think. 2026-04-03
When the Pentagon tried to strong-arm Anthropic into dropping its ban on AI-only kill decisions and mass domestic surveillance, the company refused.…
Using AI to enhance societal decision making (article by Zershaaneh Qureshi) 2026-03-06
The arrival of AGI could “compress a century of progress in a decade,” forcing humanity to make decisions with higher stakes than we’ve ever seen…
What the hell happened with AGI timelines in 2025? 2026-02-10
In early 2025, after OpenAI put out the first-ever reasoning models — o1 and o3 — short timelines to transformative artificial general intelligence…
AI might let a few people control everything — permanently (article by Rose Hadshar) 2025-12-12
Power is already concentrated today: over 800 million people live on less than $3 a day, the three richest men in the world are worth over $1…
Rob & Luisa chat kids, the 2016 fertility crash, and how the 50s invented parenting that makes us miserable 2025-11-25
Global fertility rates aren’t just falling: the rate of decline is accelerating. From 2006 to 2016, fertility dropped gradually, but since 2016 the…
OpenAI: The nonprofit refuses to be killed (with Tyler Whitmer) 2025-11-11
Last December, the OpenAI business put forward a plan to completely sideline its nonprofit board. But two state attorneys general have now blocked…
Inside the Biden admin’s AI policy approach | Jake Sullivan, Biden’s NSA | via The Cognitive Revolution 2025-09-26
Jake Sullivan was the US National Security Advisor from 2021-2025. He joined our friends on The Cognitive Revolution podcast in August to discuss AI…
How not to lose your job to AI (article by Benjamin Todd) 2025-07-31
About half of people are worried they’ll lose their job to AI. They’re right to be concerned: AI can now complete real-world coding tasks on GitHub,…
Rebuilding after apocalypse: What 13 experts say about bouncing back 2025-07-15
What happens when civilisation faces its greatest tests? This compilation brings together insights from researchers, defence experts, philosophers,…
Beyond human minds: The bewildering frontier of consciousness in insects, AI, and more 2025-05-23
What if there’s something it’s like to be a shrimp — or a chatbot? For centuries, humans have debated the nature of consciousness, often placing…
Don’t believe OpenAI’s “nonprofit” spin (emergency pod with Tyler Whitmer) 2025-05-15
OpenAI’s recent announcement that its nonprofit would “retain control” of its for-profit business sounds reassuring. But this seemingly major…
The case for and against AGI by 2030 (article by Benjamin Todd) 2025-05-12
More and more people have been saying that we might have AGI (artificial general intelligence) before 2030. Is that really plausible? This article…
Serendipity, weird bets, & cold emails that actually work: Career advice from 16 former guests 2025-04-24
How do you navigate a career path when the future of work is uncertain? How important is mentorship versus immediate impact? Is it better to focus…
Guilt, imposter syndrome & doing good: 16 past guests share their mental health journeys 2025-04-11
"We are aiming for a place where we can decouple the scorecard from our worthiness. It’s of course the case that in trying to optimise the good, we…
15 expert takes on infosec in the age of AI 2025-03-28
"There’s almost no story of the future going well that doesn’t have a part that’s like '…and no evil person steals the AI weights and goes and does…
AGI disagreements and misconceptions: Rob, Luisa, & past guests hash it out 2025-02-10
Will 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…
If digital minds could suffer, how would we ever know? (Article) 2025-02-04
“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.…
Parenting insights from Rob and 8 past guests 2024-11-08
With 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…
How much does a vote matter? (Article) 2024-10-28
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…
Luisa and Keiran on free will, and the consequences of never feeling enduring guilt or shame 2024-09-27
In this episode from our second show, 80k After Hours , Luisa Rodriguez and Keiran Harris chat about the consequences of letting go of enduring…
AI governance and policy (Article) 2024-03-28
Today’s release is a reading of our career review of AI governance and policy , written and narrated by Cody Fenwick. Advanced AI systems could have…
Great power conflict (Article) 2023-09-22
Today’s release is a reading of our Great power conflict problem profile, written and narrated by Stephen Clare. If you want to check out the links,…
The 80,000 Hours Career Guide (2023) 2023-09-04
An audio version of the 2023 80,000 Hours career guide, also available on our website , on Amazon , and on Audible . If you know someone who might…
Bonus: The Worst Ideas in the History of the World 2023-06-30
Today’s bonus release is a pilot for a new podcast called ‘The Worst Ideas in the History of the World’, created by Keiran Harris — producer of the…
Andrés Jiménez Zorrilla on the Shrimp Welfare Project (80k After Hours) 2023-04-22
In this episode from our second show, 80k After Hours , Rob Wiblin interviews Andrés Jiménez Zorrilla about the Shrimp Welfare Project , which he…
My experience with imposter syndrome — and how to (partly) overcome it (Article) 2022-12-08
Today’s release is a reading of our article called My experience with imposter syndrome — and how to (partly) overcome it , written and narrated by…
Rob's thoughts on the FTX bankruptcy 2022-11-23
In this episode, usual host of the show Rob Wiblin gives his thoughts on the recent collapse of FTX. Click here for an official 80,000 Hours…
Preventing an AI-related catastrophe (Article) 2022-10-14
Today’s release is a professional reading of our new problem profile on preventing an AI-related catastrophe , written by Benjamin Hilton. We expect…