80,000 Hours Podcast

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 hac

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

#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 model

#251 – The UK's former head AI safety scientist on how to solve alignment before superintelligence arrives | Geoffrey Irving

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. Geoff

#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,

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 th

#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 on

#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. Wr

#247 – Anton Leicht on how middle powers avoid losing everything in a post-AI world

In a post-AGI world, can a country without access to frontier AI even be considered sovereign anymore? Anton Leicht says once frontier AI becomes a core economic input,

#246 – Sneha Revanur on how a small team of activists helped pass America's landmark AI safety laws

Six years ago, aged just 15, Sneha Revanur founded the AI advocacy nonprofit Encode AI — back when AI felt like a niche issue. Now the world’s caught up with her, and she

We can guess what intergalactic war would look like. And strangely, it matters.

Intergalactic war is probably billions of years away — yet physics can already tell us how it ends. And strangely that conclusion is relevant to decisions people have to

How AI could create the world’s biggest problems (article by Zershaaneh Qureshi)

Imagine you’re living 15,000 years ago. Your people are hunter-gatherers and you sleep under the stars. If someone told you humans would one day build cities with million

#245 – Rohin Shah on what it's really like to run AGI safety at Google DeepMind (and where I disagree with 'doomers')

Most people working on AI safety think without a massive effort AI systems will probably end up with goals catastrophically different from humanity’s. Today’s guest, Rohi

What makes for a dream job? | Benjamin Todd

What actually makes a job fulfilling? It's not what most career advice tells you. "Follow your passion" sounds inspiring, but it's misleading — and the research backs tha

#244 – Benjamin Todd on how we’re updating our career advice for the strangest time in history

The average career is 80,000 hours long. With AI advancing so rapidly, the hours you have left in your career matter more than ever. Some leading AI researchers think th

Can AIs already start 'rogue deployments' inside AI companies? (Landmark new METR report)

A red-teamer was embedded inside Anthropic for three weeks, told to imagine he was an evil Claude, and asked to figure out how to launch a ‘rogue AI deployment’ without g

#243 – 'Godfather of AI' Yoshua Bengio: "I now see a path" to safe superintelligent AI

The co-inventor of modern AI and the most cited living scientist believes he's figured out how to ensure AI is honest, incapable of deception, and never goes rogue. Yoshu

'95% of AI Pilots Fail': The hidden agenda behind the viral stat that misled millions

You might have heard that '95% of corporate AI pilots' are failing. It was one of the most widely cited AI statistics of 2025, parroted by media outlets everywhere. It he

#242 – Will MacAskill on how we survive the 'intelligence explosion,' AI character, and the case for 'viatopia'

Hundreds of millions already turn to AI on the most personal of topics — therapy, political opinions, and how to treat others. And as AI takes over more of the economy, t

Risks from power-seeking AI systems (article narration by Zershaaneh Qureshi)

Hundreds of prominent AI scientists and other notable figures signed a statement in 2023 saying that mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority