“Untitled Retrospective and Learnings from AI in Context’s First Two VideosDraft” by ChanaMessinger

Note: I used LLMs to draft different parts of this. I've checked almost everything, but there might be some mistakes remaining. Apologies for posting this on Christmas Eve. I wanted to get this out the door before the end of the year. Questions welcome, and if it's easy to pull metrics to answer them, I will.Summary 80,000 Hours launched a video program in 2025 focused on longform, cinematic, personality-driven content about AI risks. Our first two longform releases were: We're Not Ready for Superintelligence (the "AI 2027" video): 8.9M views, ~1.4M watch hours If you remember one AI disaster, make it this one (the "MechaHitler" video): 2.7M views, ~419K watch hours Both videos significantly outperformed our expectations (we'd anticipated 15-50K views for the first). The cost per engagement hour ($0.11 and $0.39 respectively, including staff time) compares favorably to other 80,000 Hours programs. This post covers: what we spent, what we got, why we think it worked, and what we'd do differently.The numbersCostsCategoryAI 2027MechaHitlerDirect costs~$50K~$64KStaff hours~450 hrs~450 hrs (Note, I’m assuming it's about the same as for AI 2027, I didn't re-ask people how much time they spent.)Total cost (making some assumptions about we should incorporate staff [...] ---Outline:(00:34) Summary(01:33) The numbers(01:36) Costs(02:16) Timing(02:40) Results(03:46) How valuable is a video watch hour?(04:24) Qualitative Feedback(04:28) AI 2027(05:51) MechaHitler(06:12) YouTube commenters like:(06:52) What the comments don't like:(07:17) Qualitative Analysis(07:21) Why we think AI 2027 did well(09:56) Why MechaHitler did less well (but still well)(10:50) Lessons Learned(10:54) Overall what we think matters(11:25) Our guess at what's less important (though we're certainly unsure, maybe if we nailed these, we'd get more success)(12:24) How our production works(12:43) The timeline(13:32) Ideation(14:06) Scripting(14:57) Shooting(15:31) Reshoots / Voiceover(15:45) Editing(16:06) Launch(17:00) What we're still figuring out(17:36) Closing thoughts --- First published: December 24th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RCRaBYSqBaMzHzTjF/untitled-retrospective-and-learnings-from-ai-in-context-s --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

There are no comments yet.

Please log in to write the first comment.