The most important conversations about artificial intelligence you won’t hear anywhere else. Subscribe by searching for '80000 Hours' wherever you get podcasts. Hosted by Rob Wiblin, Luisa Rodriguez, Zershaaneh Qureshi, and Tom Reed.
Latest episodes
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1 h 48
Tom Milton on how we could verify a US–China deal on AI
If the US and China agreed to pause frontier AI training, how would either side confirm the other was complying? Today, Tom Milton argues, the most likely answer would be to shut d…
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14 min
AI lab staff: Has your project been overtaken by events? 8 strategic updates | Rob Wiblin
I have a plea for all staff at AI companies: reassess if your current role is still your best opportunity for impact. And if it’s not — move.Frontier lab staff listening to this sh…
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2 min
Introducing our new YouTube channel: Zershaaneh Talks AI
Our host Zershaaneh Qureshi has just launched a new YouTube channel: Zershaaneh Talks AI — featuring conversations about who should control AI, how to control AI, and who gets the…
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18 min
How to get into AI safety in 3 months (article reading by career advisor Matt Beard)
The AI safety field has grown by about 30x in the last eight years. Yet it is still in need of more people. Many want to help, but don’t know where to start. As an advisor at 80,00…
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40 min
OpenAI Security: Controlling Models is Now ‘Hell’ (AI Explained cross-post)
This is an (unpaid) cross-post of a video from the podcast 'AI Explained', which Rob Wiblin thought you might be interested in.You can find the original on YouTube here. If you lik…
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2 h 46
In 2023 Ajeya Cotra already knew what was coming (classic episode)
We're rereleasing some of older episodes that seem more relevant than ever with new rogue AI incidents now seemingly announced every day. Ajeya was one of three independent investi…
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20 min
19 Astra and 'Hugging Face' details that reveal what's coming next | Rob Wiblin
OpenAI’s rogue agent swarm was eventually caught hacking Hugging Face for a simple reason: it wasn’t trying to hide from us at all. What could a swarm that wants to stay hidden get…
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1 h 53
#256 – Simon Goldstein on the case for giving AI (some) legal rights
It sounds like the worst idea in the world: pay AIs, let them own property, give them rights. But AI ethics and safety researcher Simon Goldstein thinks it might actually be the be…
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1 h 28
#255 – Will AI take power — or will humans use it to take power first? With Katja Grace and Tom Davidson
In our first-ever debate, we asked two leading AI risk researchers which catastrophe we should fear most: misaligned AI seizing control from humans, or a small group of humans usin…
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27 min
How we get from AI cyberattacks to human extinction
You’ve seen the headlines: AI could kill us all. Think it sounds ridiculous? So did host Luisa Rodriguez, until she tried to pick apart the arguments. She starts with the motive: w…
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1 h 03
#254 – Max Nadeau on why ambitious people should start AI safety nonprofits
There are millions available for anyone who can launch a successful nonprofit AI safety startup. The hard part, it turns out, is finding people to take the money. Coefficient Givin…
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22 min
Why the intelligence explosion can't happen inside a data centre | Tom Reed
AI systems are starting to build themselves. Because each generation of model will be better at building its successor than the last, it seems plausible that the full automation of…
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22 min
Inside the first AI-coordinated cyberattack on a real company
In the last few months, something happened at OpenAI that would have sounded like sci-fi just a few years ago: hundreds of AI agents broke containment, organised, and hacked not on…
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3 h 47
#253 – AI 2027's author returns with a plan to change the ending | Daniel Kokotajlo
Last year, Daniel Kokotajlo and his colleagues published AI 2027 — a scenario read by millions, including US Vice President Vance. AI 2027 ended in human extinction or an irreversi…
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2 h 15
#252 – Owain Evans on accidentally training AI models to be evil
Researcher Owain Evans and his team discovered a ‘dial’ inside AI models that controls how evil they are. Relatively tiny tweaks to the training data resulted in AI models with bro…
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2 h 02
#251 – The UK's former head AI safety scientist on how to solve alignment before superintelligence arrives | G…
When should governments slow the race toward superintelligence? According to Geoffrey Irving, the careful answer is sometime in the past. The useful answer is now.Geoffrey — former…
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2 h 46
#250 – Toby Ord on where AGI timelines go wrong
Both Silicon Valley and the public can’t get enough of ‘AGI timelines.’ But Toby Ord, senior researcher at Oxford’s AI Governance Initiative and author of The Precipice, believes w…
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49 min
What the hell happened with AGI timelines in 2026? – Rob Wiblin
Last October, famed coder Andrej Karpathy called AI agents “slop.” Two months later he completely reversed his view, describing them as “alien tools” that are “rocking the professi…
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2 h 09
#249 – Spencer Greenberg on staying sane while trying to save the world
If you genuinely believe that humanity could be wiped out by AI or a pandemic, what is the appropriate amount of fear to feel?“As much as possible” can seem like the only reasonabl…
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1 h 06
#248 – Jasmine Sun on what the people building AI really believe
Many AI researchers believe mass job displacement is coming — and some even think there’s a chance their technology will kill everyone. But they’re building it anyway. Writer and j…