80,000 Hours Podcast
Episodes
#32 - Bryan Caplan on whether his Case Against Education holds up, totalitarianism, & open borders
22 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Bryan Caplan’s claim in *The Case Against Education* is striking: education doesn’t teach people much, we use little of what we learn, and college...
#31 - Allan Dafoe on defusing the political & economic risks posed by existing AI capabilities
18 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The debate around the impacts of artificial intelligence often centres on ‘superintelligence’ - a general intellect that is much smarter than the ...
#30 - Eva Vivalt on how little social science findings generalize from one study to another
15 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
If we have a study on the impact of a social program in a particular place and time, how confident can we be that we’ll get a similar result if we s...
#29 - Anders Sandberg on 3 new resolutions for the Fermi paradox & how to colonise the universe
08 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Part 2 out now: #33 - Dr Anders Sandberg on what if we ended ageing, solar flares & the annual risk of nuclear war The universe is so vast, yet we...
#28 - Owen Cotton-Barratt on why scientists should need insurance, PhD strategy & fast AI progresses
27 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A researcher is working on creating a new virus – one more dangerous than any that exist naturally. They believe they’re being as careful as possi...
#27 - Dr Tom Inglesby on careers and policies that reduce global catastrophic biological risks
18 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How about this for a movie idea: a main character has to prevent a new contagious strain of Ebola spreading around the world. She’s the best of the ...
#26 - Marie Gibbons on how exactly clean meat is made & what's needed to get it in every supermarket
10 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
First, decide on the type of animal. Next, pick the cell type. Then take a small, painless biopsy, and put the cells in a solution that makes them fee...
#25 - Robin Hanson on why we have to lie to ourselves about why we do what we do
28 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On February 2, 1685, England’s King Charles II was struck by a sudden illness. Fortunately his physicians were the best of the best. To reassure the...
#24 - Stefan Schubert on why it’s a bad idea to break the rules, even if it’s for a good cause
20 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How honest should we be? How helpful? How friendly? If our society claims to value honesty, for instance, but in reality accepts an awful lot of lying...
#23 - How to actually become an AI alignment researcher, according to Dr Jan Leike
16 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Want to help steer the 21st century’s most transformative technology? First complete an undergrad degree in computer science and mathematics. Priori...
#22 - Leah Utyasheva on the non-profit that figured out how to massively cut suicide rates
07 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How people kill themselves varies enormously depending on which means are most easily available. In the United States, suicide by firearm stands out. ...
#21 - Holden Karnofsky on times philanthropy transformed the world & Open Phil’s plan to do the same
27 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Green Revolution averted mass famine during the 20th century. The contraceptive pill gave women unprecedented freedom in planning their own lives....
#20 - Bruce Friedrich on inventing outstanding meat substitutes to end speciesism & factory farming
19 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Before the US Civil War, it was easier for the North to morally oppose slavery. Why? Because unlike the South they weren’t profiting much from its e...
#19 - Samantha Pitts-Kiefer on working next to the White House trying to prevent nuclear war
14 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Rogue elements within a state’s security forces enrich dozens of kilograms of uranium. It’s then assembled into a crude nuclear bomb. The bomb is ...
#18 - Ofir Reich on using data science to end poverty & the spurious action-inaction distinction
31 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Ofir Reich started out doing math in the military, before spending 8 years in tech startups - but then made a sharp turn to become a data scientist fo...
#17 - Will MacAskill on moral uncertainty, utilitarianism & how to avoid being a moral monster
19 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Immanuel Kant is a profoundly influential figure in modern philosophy, and was one of the earliest proponents for universal democracy and internationa...
#16 - Michelle Hutchinson on global priorities research & shaping the ideas of intellectuals
22 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In the 40s and 50s neoliberalism was a fringe movement within economics. But by the 80s it had become a dominant school of thought in public policy, a...
#15 - Phil Tetlock on how chimps beat Berkeley undergrads and when it’s wise to defer to the wise
20 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Prof Philip Tetlock is a social science legend. Over forty years he has researched whose predictions we can trust, whose we can’t and why - and deve...
#14 - Sharon Nunez & Jose Valle on going undercover to expose animal abuse
13 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What if you knew that ducks were being killed with pitchforks? Rabbits dumped alive into containers? Or pigs being strangled with forklifts? Would you...
#13 - Claire Walsh on testing which policies work & how to get governments to listen to the results
31 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In both rich and poor countries, government policy is often based on no evidence at all and many programs don’t work. This has particularly harsh ef...
#12 - Beth Cameron works to stop you dying in a pandemic. Here’s what keeps her up at night.
25 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
“When you're in the middle of a crisis and you have to ask for money, you're already too late.” That’s Dr Beth Cameron, who leads Global Biologi...
#11 - Spencer Greenberg on speeding up social science 10-fold & why plenty of startups cause harm
17 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Do most meat eaters think it’s wrong to hurt animals? Do Americans think climate change is likely to cause human extinction? What is the best, state...
#10 - Nick Beckstead on how to spend billions of dollars preventing human extinction
11 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What if you were in a position to give away billions of dollars to improve the world? What would you do with it? This is the problem facing Program Of...
#9 - Christine Peterson on how insecure computers could lead to global disaster, and how to fix it
04 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Take a trip to Silicon Valley in the 70s and 80s, when going to space sounded like a good way to get around environmental limits, people started cryog...
#8 - Lewis Bollard on how to end factory farming in our lifetimes
27 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Every year tens of billions of animals are raised in terrible conditions in factory farms before being killed for human consumption. Over the last two...
#7 - Julia Galef on making humanity more rational, what EA does wrong, and why Twitter isn’t all bad
13 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The scientific revolution in the 16th century was one of the biggest societal shifts in human history, driven by the discovery of new and better metho...
#6 - Toby Ord on why the long-term future matters more than anything else & what to do about it
06 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Of all the people whose well-being we should care about, only a small fraction are alive today. The rest are members of future generations who are yet...
#5 - Alex Gordon-Brown on how to donate millions in your 20s working in quantitative trading
28 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Quantitative financial trading is one of the highest paying parts of the world’s highest paying industry. 25 to 30 year olds with outstanding maths ...
#4 - Howie Lempel on pandemics that kill hundreds of millions and how to stop them
23 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What disaster is most likely to kill more than 10 million human beings in the next 20 years? Terrorism? Famine? An asteroid? Actually it’s probably...
#3 - Dario Amodei on OpenAI and how AI will change the world for good and ill
21 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Just two years ago OpenAI didn’t exist. It’s now among the most elite groups of machine learning researchers. They’re trying to make an AI that’...
#2 - David Spiegelhalter on risk, stats and improving understanding of science
21 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Recorded in 2015 by Robert Wiblin with colleague Jess Whittlestone at the Centre for Effective Altruism, and recovered from the dusty 80,000 Hours arc...
#1 - Miles Brundage on the world's desperate need for AI strategists and policy experts
05 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Wiblin, Director of Research at 80,000 Hours speaks with Miles Brundage, research fellow at the University of Oxford's Future of Humanity Insti...
#0 – Introducing the 80,000 Hours Podcast
01 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
80,000 Hours is a non-profit that provides research and other support to help people switch into careers that effectively tackle the world's most pres...