Benjamin Todd

speaker

4,140 appearances 3 recordings 1 series first heard Sep 2023 last heard 28 May

Benjamin Todd’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 2.

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80,000 Hours Podcast · #244 – Benjamin Todd on how we’re updating our career advice for the strangest time in history · 26 May 2026 podcast

But yeah, at that point, I still thought building effective altruism would be more effective for me.

It's a better match for my skills.

And we were still very uncertain about AI and like a big advantage of building a community interested in generally doing good is the possibility that they can switch which cause depending on which one turns out to be most pressing in the future.

As well as you're getting a multiplayer, you're getting more people involved.

But then basically as AI timelines have shortened, I think the case for just working directly on AI gets stronger and stronger rather than effect altruism is kind of like a one step more indirect approach.

So, yeah, that's what I've been doing in my own career the last few years.

It's just been really thinking about the mechanics of AI scaling and

coming to appreciate that just like every step in the process works, the AI companies, so Anthropic and OpenAI mostly, have increased their revenue about five times.

And then that means that they can basically buy five times as many computer chips, or they can spend five times as much on computer chips.

Historically, the efficiency of those chips has roughly doubled every two years.

So roughly, they're then able to get the next generation of chips, and that means they get 10 times more computing power compared to before.

And then recently, having 10 times more compute has basically meant they've earned 10 times as much revenue.

But then if you now have 10 times more revenue, you can invest that back and now...

you can get another 10 times more computer chips.

So it's actually like not only working, but it's potentially accelerating.

And then I haven't even talked about AI R&D.

There's actually additional feedback loops here because if the AI model is also becoming better at doing AI research, then that...

that is also feeding back and accelerating the rate of improvement of AI on top of that.

And then also in addition, if you've made five times more revenue, you now have five times more money for salaries.

So you get a bigger research workforce, which would also accelerate the progress more.

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