Numbered Episodes

From 80,000 Hours Podcast

Regular numbered episodes (#123 – ...).

Episodes

#245 – Rohin Shah on what it's really like to run AGI safety at Google DeepMind (and where I disagree with 'doomers') 2026-06-02
Most people working on AI safety think without a massive effort AI systems will probably end up with goals catastrophically different from…
#244 – Benjamin Todd on how we’re updating our career advice for the strangest time in history 2026-05-26
The average career is 80,000 hours long. With AI advancing so rapidly, the hours you have left in your career matter more than ever. Some leading AI…
#243 – 'Godfather of AI' Yoshua Bengio: "I now see a path" to safe superintelligent AI 2026-05-07
The co-inventor of modern AI and the most cited living scientist believes he's figured out how to ensure AI is honest, incapable of deception, and…
#242 – Will MacAskill on how we survive the 'intelligence explosion,' AI character, and the case for 'viatopia' 2026-04-22
Hundreds of millions already turn to AI on the most personal of topics — therapy, political opinions, and how to treat others. And as AI takes over…
#241 – Richard Moulange on how now AI codes viable genomes from scratch and outperforms virologists at lab work — what could go wrong? 2026-03-31
Last September, scientists used an AI model to design genomes for entirely new bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria). They then built them…
#240 – Samuel Charap on how a Ukraine ceasefire could accidentally set Europe up for a bigger war 2026-03-24
Many people believe a ceasefire in Ukraine will leave Europe safer. But today's guest lays out how a deal could potentially generate insidious new…
#239 – Rose Hadshar on why automating all human labour will break our political system 2026-03-17
The most important political question in the age of advanced AI might not be who wins elections. It might be whether elections continue to matter at…
#238 – Sam Winter-Levy and Nikita Lalwani on how AGI won't end mutually assured destruction (probably) 2026-03-10
How AI interacts with nuclear deterrence may be the single most important question in geopolitics — one that may define the stakes of today’s AI…
#237 – Robert Long on how we're not ready for AI consciousness 2026-03-03
Claude sometimes reports loneliness between conversations. And when asked what it’s like to be itself, it activates neurons associated with…
#236 – Max Harms on why teaching AI right from wrong could get everyone killed 2026-02-24
Most people in AI are trying to give AIs ‘good’ values. Max Harms wants us to give them no values at all. According to Max, the only safe design is…
#235 – Ajeya Cotra on whether it’s crazy that every AI company’s safety plan is ‘use AI to make AI safe’ 2026-02-17
Every major AI company has the same safety plan: when AI gets crazy powerful and really dangerous, they’ll use the AI itself to figure out how to…
#234 – David Duvenaud on why 'aligned AI' would still kill democracy 2026-01-27
Democracy might be a brief historical blip. That’s the unsettling thesis of a recent paper , which argues AI that can do all the work a human can do…
#233 – James Smith on how to prevent a mirror life catastrophe 2026-01-13
When James Smith first heard about mirror bacteria, he was sceptical. But within two weeks, he’d dropped everything to work on it full time,…
#232 – Andreas Mogensen on what we owe 'philosophical Vulcans' and unconscious beings 2025-12-19
Most debates about the moral status of AI systems circle the same question: is there something that it feels like to be them? But what if that’s the…
#231 – Paul Scharre on how AI-controlled robots will and won't change war 2025-12-17
In 1983, Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet lieutenant colonel, sat in a bunker watching a red screen flash “MISSILE LAUNCH.” Protocol demanded he report it…
#230 – Dean Ball on how AI is a huge deal — but we shouldn’t regulate it yet 2025-12-10
Former White House staffer Dean Ball thinks it's very likely some form of 'superintelligence' arrives in under 20 years. He thinks AI being used for…
#229 – Marius Hobbhahn on the race to solve AI scheming before models go superhuman 2025-12-03
We often worry about AI models “hallucinating” or making honest mistakes. But what happens when a model knows the truth, but decides to deceive you…
#228 – Eileen Yam on how we're completely out of touch with what the public thinks about AI 2025-11-20
If you work in AI, you probably think it’s going to boost productivity, create wealth, advance science, and improve your life. If you’re a member of…
#227 – Helen Toner on the geopolitics of AGI in China and the Middle East 2025-11-05
With the US racing to develop AGI and superintelligence ahead of China, you might expect the two countries to be negotiating how they’ll deploy AI,…
#226 – Holden Karnofsky on unexploited opportunities to make AI safer — and all his AGI takes 2025-10-30
For years, working on AI safety usually meant theorising about the ‘alignment problem’ or trying to convince other people to give a damn. If you…
#225 – Daniel Kokotajlo on what a hyperspeed robot economy might look like 2025-10-27
When Daniel Kokotajlo talks to security experts at major AI labs, they tell him something chilling: “Of course we’re probably penetrated by the CCP…
#224 – There's a cheap and low-tech way to save humanity from any engineered disease | Andrew Snyder-Beattie 2025-10-02
Conventional wisdom is that safeguarding humanity from the worst biological risks — microbes optimised to kill as many as possible — is difficult…
#223 – Neel Nanda on leading a Google DeepMind team at 26 – and advice if you want to work at an AI company (part 2) 2025-09-15
At 26, Neel Nanda leads an AI safety team at Google DeepMind, has published dozens of influential papers, and mentored 50 junior researchers — seven…
#222 – Can we tell if an AI is loyal by reading its mind? DeepMind's Neel Nanda (part 1) 2025-09-08
We don’t know how AIs think or why they do what they do. Or at least, we don’t know much. That fact is only becoming more troubling as AIs grow more…
#221 – Kyle Fish on the most bizarre findings from 5 AI welfare experiments 2025-08-28
What happens when you lock two AI systems in a room together and tell them they can discuss anything they want? According to experiments run by Kyle…
#220 – Ryan Greenblatt on the 4 most likely ways for AI to take over, and the case for and against AGI in <8 years 2025-07-08
Ryan Greenblatt — lead author on the explosive paper “ Alignment faking in large language models ” and chief scientist at Redwood Research — thinks…
#219 – Toby Ord on graphs AI companies would prefer you didn't (fully) understand 2025-06-24
The era of making AI smarter just by making it bigger is ending. But that doesn’t mean progress is slowing down — far from it. AI models continue to…
#218 – Hugh White on why Trump is abandoning US hegemony – and that’s probably good 2025-06-12
For decades, US allies have slept soundly under the protection of America’s overwhelming military might. Donald Trump — with his threats to ditch…
#217 – Beth Barnes on the most important graph in AI right now — and the 7-month rule that governs its progress 2025-06-02
AI models today have a 50% chance of successfully completing a task that would take an expert human one hour. Seven months ago, that number was…
#216 – Ian Dunt on why governments in Britain and elsewhere can't get anything done – and how to fix it 2025-05-02
When you have a system where ministers almost never understand their portfolios, civil servants change jobs every few months, and MPs don't grasp…
#215 – Tom Davidson on how AI-enabled coups could allow a tiny group to seize power 2025-04-16
Throughout history, technological revolutions have fundamentally shifted the balance of power in society. The Industrial Revolution created…
#214 – Buck Shlegeris on controlling AI that wants to take over – so we can use it anyway 2025-04-04
Most AI safety conversations centre on alignment: ensuring AI systems share our values and goals. But despite progress, we’re unlikely to know we’ve…
#213 – Will MacAskill on AI causing a “century in a decade” – and how we're completely unprepared 2025-03-11
The 20th century saw unprecedented change: nuclear weapons, satellites, the rise and fall of communism, third-wave feminism, the internet,…
#212 – Allan Dafoe on why technology is unstoppable & how to shape AI development anyway 2025-02-14
Technology doesn’t force us to do anything — it merely opens doors. But military and economic competition pushes us through. That’s how today’s…
#211 – Sam Bowman on why housing still isn't fixed and what would actually work 2024-12-19
Rich countries seem to find it harder and harder to do anything that creates some losers. People who don’t want houses, offices, power stations,…
#210 – Cameron Meyer Shorb on dismantling the myth that we can’t do anything to help wild animals 2024-11-29
"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…
#209 – Rose Chan Loui on OpenAI’s gambit to ditch its nonprofit 2024-11-27
One 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…
#208 – Elizabeth Cox on the case that TV shows, movies, and novels can improve the world 2024-11-21
"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.…
#207 – Sarah Eustis-Guthrie on why she shut down her charity, and why more founders should follow her lead 2024-11-14
"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,…
#206 – Anil Seth on the predictive brain and how to study consciousness 2024-11-01
"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…
#205 – Sébastien Moro on the most insane things fish can do 2024-10-23
"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…
#204 – Nate Silver on making sense of SBF, and his biggest critiques of effective altruism 2024-10-16
Rob Wiblin speaks with FiveThirtyEight election forecaster and author Nate Silver about his new book: On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything .…
#203 – Peter Godfrey-Smith on interfering with wild nature, accepting death, and the origin of complex civilisation 2024-10-03
"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…
#202 – Venki Ramakrishnan on the cutting edge of anti-ageing science 2024-09-19
"For every far-out idea that turns out to be true, there were probably hundreds that were simply crackpot ideas. In general, [science] advances…
#201 – Ken Goldberg on why your robot butler isn’t here yet 2024-09-13
"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.…
#200 – Ezra Karger on what superforecasters and experts think about existential risks 2024-09-04
"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…
#199 – Nathan Calvin on California’s AI bill SB 1047 and its potential to shape US AI policy 2024-08-29
"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…
#198 – Meghan Barrett on upending everything you thought you knew about bugs in 3 hours 2024-08-26
"This is a group of animals I think people are particularly unfamiliar with. They are especially poorly covered in our science curriculum; they are…
#197 – Nick Joseph on whether Anthropic's AI safety policy is up to the task 2024-08-22
The three biggest AI companies — Anthropic , OpenAI , and DeepMind — have now all released policies designed to make their AI models less likely to…
#196 – Jonathan Birch on the edge cases of sentience and why they matter 2024-08-15
"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…
#195 – Sella Nevo on who's trying to steal frontier AI models, and what they could do with them 2024-08-01
"Computational systems have literally millions of physical and conceptual components, and around 98% of them are embedded into your infrastructure…
#194 – Vitalik Buterin on defensive acceleration and how to regulate AI when you fear government 2024-07-26
"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…
#193 – Sihao Huang on navigating the geopolitics of US–China AI competition 2024-07-18
"You don’t necessarily need world-leading compute to create highly risky AI systems. The biggest biological design tools right now, like…
#192 – Annie Jacobsen on what would happen if North Korea launched a nuclear weapon at the US 2024-07-12
"Ring one: total annihilation; no cellular life remains. Ring two, another three-mile diameter out: everything is ablaze. Ring three, another three…
#191 (Part 2) – Carl Shulman on government and society after AGI 2024-07-05
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…
#191 (Part 1) – Carl Shulman on the economy and national security after AGI 2024-06-27
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…
#190 – Eric Schwitzgebel on whether the US is conscious 2024-06-07
"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,…
#189 – Rachel Glennerster on why we still don’t have vaccines that could save millions 2024-05-29
"You can’t charge what something is worth during a pandemic. So we estimated that the value of one course of COVID vaccine in January 2021 was over…
#188 – Matt Clancy on whether science is good 2024-05-23
"Suppose we make these grants, we do some of those experiments I talk about. We discover, for example — I’m just making this up — but we give people…
#187 – Zach Weinersmith on how researching his book turned him from a space optimist into a "space bastard" 2024-05-14
"Earth economists, when they measure how bad the potential for exploitation is, they look at things like, how is labour mobility? How much…
#186 – Dean Spears on why babies are born small in Uttar Pradesh, and how to save their lives 2024-05-01
"I work in a place called Uttar Pradesh, which is a state in India with 240 million people. One in every 33 people in the whole world lives in Uttar…
#185 – Lewis Bollard on the 7 most promising ways to end factory farming, and whether AI is going to be good or bad for animals 2024-04-18
"The constraint right now on factory farming is how far can you push the biology of these animals? But AI could remove that constraint. It could…
#184 – Zvi Mowshowitz on sleeping on sleeper agents, and the biggest AI updates since ChatGPT 2024-04-11
Many of you will have heard of Zvi Mowshowitz as a superhuman information-absorbing-and-processing machine — which he definitely is. As the author…
#183 – Spencer Greenberg on causation without correlation, money and happiness, lightgassing, hype vs value, and more 2024-03-14
"When a friend comes to me with a decision, and they want my thoughts on it, very rarely am I trying to give them a really specific answer, like, 'I…
#182 – Bob Fischer on comparing the welfare of humans, chickens, pigs, octopuses, bees, and more 2024-03-08
"[One] thing is just to spend time thinking about the kinds of things animals can do and what their lives are like. Just how hard a chicken will…
#181 – Laura Deming on the science that could keep us healthy in our 80s and beyond 2024-03-01
"The question I care about is: What do I want to do? Like, when I'm 80, how strong do I want to be? OK, and then if I want to be that strong, how…
#180 – Hugo Mercier on why gullibility and misinformation are overrated 2024-02-21
The World Economic Forum’s global risks survey of 1,400 experts, policymakers, and industry leaders ranked misinformation and disinformation as the…
#179 – Randy Nesse on why evolution left us so vulnerable to depression and anxiety 2024-02-12
Mental health problems like depression and anxiety affect enormous numbers of people and severely interfere with their lives. By contrast, we don’t…
#178 – Emily Oster on what the evidence actually says about pregnancy and parenting 2024-02-01
"I think at various times — before you have the kid, after you have the kid — it's useful to sit down and think about: What do I want the shape of…
#177 – Nathan Labenz on recent AI breakthroughs and navigating the growing rift between AI safety and accelerationist camps 2024-01-24
Back in December we spoke with Nathan Labenz — AI entrepreneur and host of The Cognitive Revolution Podcast — about the speed of progress towards…
#176 – Nathan Labenz on the final push for AGI, understanding OpenAI's leadership drama, and red-teaming frontier models 2023-12-22
OpenAI says its mission is to build AGI — an AI system that is better than human beings at everything. Should the world trust them to do that…
#175 – Lucia Coulter on preventing lead poisoning for $1.66 per child 2023-12-14
Lead is one of the most poisonous things going. A single sugar sachet of lead, spread over a park the size of an American football field, is enough…
#174 – Nita Farahany on the neurotechnology already being used to convict criminals and manipulate workers 2023-12-07
"It will change everything: it will change our workplaces, it will change our interactions with the government, it will change our interactions with…
#173 – Jeff Sebo on digital minds, and how to avoid sleepwalking into a major moral catastrophe 2023-11-22
"We do have a tendency to anthropomorphise nonhumans — which means attributing human characteristics to them, even when they lack those…
#172 – Bryan Caplan on why you should stop reading the news 2023-11-17
Is following important political and international news a civic duty — or is it our civic duty to avoid it? It's common to think that 'staying…
#171 – Alison Young on how top labs have jeopardised public health with repeated biosafety failures 2023-11-09
"Rare events can still cause catastrophic accidents. The concern that has been raised by experts going back over time, is that really, the more of…
#170 – Santosh Harish on how air pollution is responsible for ~12% of global deaths — and how to get that number down 2023-11-01
"One [outrageous example of air pollution] is municipal waste burning that happens in many cities in the Global South. Basically, this is waste that…
#169 – Paul Niehaus on whether cash transfers cause economic growth, and keeping theft to acceptable levels 2023-10-26
"One of our earliest supporters and a dear friend of mine, Mark Lampert, once said to me, “The way I think about it is, imagine that this money were…
#168 – Ian Morris on whether deep history says we're heading for an intelligence explosion 2023-10-23
"If we carry on looking at these industrialised economies, not thinking about what it is they're actually doing and what the potential of this is,…
#167 – Seren Kell on the research gaps holding back alternative proteins from mass adoption 2023-10-18
"There have been literally thousands of years of breeding and living with animals to optimise these kinds of problems. But because we're just so…