Rob Wiblin

She pointed out that the longtime AGI skeptics like Gary Marcus and Jan LeCun, who previously thought an AI that could replicate a human worker was decades away, if it was going to come at all, they now think it's probably about 10 years away.

And that's pretty typical as well of moderates within the leading AI companies, as well as medium timelines AI safety folks like, for instance, Toby Ord, who I've been talking about.

But the idea that in 10 years we'll have this revolutionary technology, a machine that can do all of the intellectual work that humans can do, which continues getting smarter, faster, and cheaper every year at the rate that computers do.

that is still shocking and incredibly consequential if it's the case.

Two years is clearly nowhere near enough time to prepare the world for the social, political, economic, military, and epistemic upheavals that that would bring.

But 10 years?

10 years isn't comfortable either.

And on that cheerful note, I'll speak with you next time.

Hey listeners, Rob here, Head of Research at 80,000 Hours.

Today we have not a normal episode, but rather a recording of the 80,000 Hours Career Guide, which has just been updated for this year, 2023, and this week is getting a re-release on the website, and as a physical book, and also as this audiobook.

From 2016 through about 2019, this Career Guide was the core content on the website.

It was by far the most prominent thing that you would find if you went to 80,000hours.org.

Many of us helped contribute to it here and there, but it's first and foremost the brainchild of our founder and repeat guest on the show, Benjamin Todd.

The aim of the guide was to help people find a fulfilling career that does good.

And indeed, that's the subtitle of the guide, Find a Fulfilling Career That Does Good.

It was really quite popular and people regularly told us it was useful for helping them find a career that they thought was having substantially more impact.

But in 2019, we decided to deprioritize it in favor of what we called our Key Ideas series, but have now renamed the Advanced series.

That one kind of struck a more philosophical and rigorous tone and was preferred by some people.

It put theory and philosophy and long-termism more front and center than discussion of careers per se.

And that certainly had its advantages.