80,000 Hours Podcast

The US is building the smartest AI. China is running a different race | Luisa Rodriguez

China’s best models are only six months behind America’s, despite having far less computing power. How is that possible? Luisa Rodriguez investigates, and finds that muc

Your AI crash course starts here: Our best episodes to get up to speed on transformative AI

We make a lot of episodes about AI these days. We recently picked out the best 10 episodes of the show to really help deepen your understanding of AI and AGI and superint

An AI disaster hits. The president calls Xi. Then what? | Jeremie Harris (crosspost from NonZero)

This is an (unpaid) cross-post of an episode from the podcast NonZero, which Rob Wiblin thought you might be interested in. The originals are on the NonZero website: Part

3 new scandals show being a pain in the ass for AI labs is a legit job now | Rob Wiblin

The big 3 AI companies all had serious scandals last month. Anthropic pushed a federal AI bill that would make it harder to stop dangerous model training. OpenAI fired th

#258 – Luke Muehlhauser on the most important AI safety work nobody is doing

The US government spends 25 times more on military marching bands than on its AI safety institute. And that’s just one of the many institutions we’re missing as AI become

Why Silicon Valley can’t slow down AI on its own | Luisa Rodriguez

Two-thirds of Americans think AI is moving too fast. So do the people building it. So why the hell isn’t anyone slowing down? We can’t tell when models are too dangerous

#257 – 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

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 listenin

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

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 advi

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

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 independe

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

#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

#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 h

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 t

#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. Coeffic

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 aut

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

#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