80,000 Hours Podcast with Rob Wiblin

AI models today have a 50% chance of successfully completing a task that would take an expert human one hour. Seven months ago, that number was roughly 30 minutes — and seven months before that, 15 minutes. (See graph.)These are substantial, multi-step tasks requiring sustained focus: building web applications, conducting machine learning research, or solving complex programming challenges.Today's guest, Beth Barnes, is CEO of METR (Model Evaluation & Threat Research) — the leading organisation measuring these capabilities.Links to learn more, video, highlights, and full transcript: https://80k.info/bbBeth's team has been timing how long it takes skilled humans to complete projects of varying length, then seeing how AI models perform on the same work. The resulting paper “Measuring AI ability to complete long tasks” made waves by revealing that the planning horizon of AI models was doubling roughly every seven months. It's regarded by many as the most useful AI forecasting work in years.Beth has found models can already do “meaningful work” improving themselves, and she wouldn't be surprised if AI models were able to autonomously self-improve as little as two years from now — in fact, “It seems hard to rule out even shorter [timelines]. Is there 1% chance of this happening in six, nine months? Yeah, that seems pretty plausible.”Beth adds:The sense I really want to dispel is, “But the experts must be on top of this. The experts would be telling us if it really was time to freak out.” The experts are not on top of this. Inasmuch as there are experts, they are saying that this is a concerning risk. … And to the extent that I am an expert, I am an expert telling you you should freak out.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Who is Beth Barnes? (00:01:19)Can we see AI scheming in the chain of thought? (00:01:52)The chain of thought is essential for safety checking (00:08:58)Alignment faking in large language models (00:12:24)We have to test model honesty even before they're used inside AI companies (00:16:48)We have to test models when unruly and unconstrained (00:25:57)Each 7 months models can do tasks twice as long (00:30:40)METR's research finds AIs are solid at AI research already (00:49:33)AI may turn out to be strong at novel and creative research (00:55:53)When can we expect an algorithmic 'intelligence explosion'? (00:59:11)Recursively self-improving AI might even be here in two years — which is alarming (01:05:02)Could evaluations backfire by increasing AI hype and racing? (01:11:36)Governments first ignore new risks, but can overreact once they arrive (01:26:38)Do we need external auditors doing AI safety tests, not just the companies themselves? (01:35:10)A case against safety-focused people working at frontier AI companies (01:48:44)The new, more dire situation has forced changes to METR's strategy (02:02:29)AI companies are being locally reasonable, but globally reckless (02:10:31)Overrated: Interpretability research (02:15:11)Underrated: Developing more narrow AIs (02:17:01)Underrated: Helping humans judge confusing model outputs (02:23:36)Overrated: Major AI companies' contributions to safety research (02:25:52)Could we have a science of translating AI models' nonhuman language or neuralese? (02:29:24)Could we ban using AI to enhance AI, or is that just naive? (02:31:47)Open-weighting models is often good, and Beth has changed her attitude to it (02:37:52)What we can learn about AGI from the nuclear arms race (02:42:25)Infosec is so bad that no models are truly closed-weight models (02:57:24)AI is more like bioweapons because it undermines the leading power (03:02:02)What METR can do best that others can't (03:12:09)What METR isn't doing that other people have to step up and do (03:27:07)What research METR plans to do next (03:32:09)This episode was originally recorded on February 17, 2025.Video editing: Luke Monsour and Simon MonsourAudio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongMusic: Ben CordellTranscriptions and web: Katy Moore

What if there's something it's like to be a shrimp — or a chatbot?For centuries, humans have debated the nature of consciousness, often placing ourselves at the very top. But what about the minds of others — both the animals we share this planet with and the artificial intelligences we're creating?We've pulled together clips from past conversations with researchers and philosophers who've spent years trying to make sense of animal consciousness, artificial sentience, and moral consideration under deep uncertainty.Links to learn more and full transcript: https://80k.info/nhsChapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Luisa's intro (00:00:57)Robert Long on what we should picture when we think about artificial sentience (00:02:49)Jeff Sebo on what the threshold is for AI systems meriting moral consideration (00:07:22)Meghan Barrett on the evolutionary argument for insect sentience (00:11:24)Andrés Jiménez Zorrilla on whether there's something it's like to be a shrimp (00:15:09)Jonathan Birch on the cautionary tale of newborn pain (00:21:53)David Chalmers on why artificial consciousness is possible (00:26:12)Holden Karnofsky on how we'll see digital people as... people (00:32:18)Jeff Sebo on grappling with our biases and ignorance when thinking about sentience (00:38:59)Bob Fischer on how to think about the moral weight of a chicken (00:49:37)Cameron Meyer Shorb on the range of suffering in wild animals (01:01:41)Sébastien Moro on whether fish are conscious or sentient (01:11:17)David Chalmers on when to start worrying about artificial consciousness (01:16:36)Robert Long on how we might stumble into causing AI systems enormous suffering (01:21:04)Jonathan Birch on how we might accidentally create artificial sentience (01:26:13)Anil Seth on which parts of the brain are required for consciousness (01:32:33)Peter Godfrey-Smith on uploads of ourselves (01:44:47)Jonathan Birch on treading lightly around the “edge cases” of sentience (02:00:12)Meghan Barrett on whether brain size and sentience are related (02:05:25)Lewis Bollard on how animal advocacy has changed in response to sentience studies (02:12:01)Bob Fischer on using proxies to determine sentience (02:22:27)Cameron Meyer Shorb on how we can practically study wild animals' subjective experiences (02:26:28)Jeff Sebo on the problem of false positives in assessing artificial sentience (02:33:16)Stuart Russell on the moral rights of AIs (02:38:31)Buck Shlegeris on whether AI control strategies make humans the bad guys (02:41:50)Meghan Barrett on why she can't be totally confident about insect sentience (02:47:12)Bob Fischer on what surprised him most about the findings of the Moral Weight Project (02:58:30)Jeff Sebo on why we're likely to sleepwalk into causing massive amounts of suffering in AI systems (03:02:46)Will MacAskill on the rights of future digital beings (03:05:29)Carl Shulman on sharing the world with digital minds (03:19:25)Luisa's outro (03:33:43)Audio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongAdditional content editing: Katy Moore and Milo McGuireTranscriptions and web: Katy Moore

OpenAI's recent announcement that its nonprofit would “retain control” of its for-profit business sounds reassuring. But this seemingly major concession, celebrated by so many, is in itself largely meaningless.Litigator Tyler Whitmer is a coauthor of a newly published letter that describes this attempted sleight of hand and directs regulators on how to stop it.As Tyler explains, the plan both before and after this announcement has been to convert OpenAI into a Delaware public benefit corporation (PBC) — and this alone will dramatically weaken the nonprofit's ability to direct the business in pursuit of its charitable purpose: ensuring AGI is safe and “benefits all of humanity.”Right now, the nonprofit directly controls the business. But were OpenAI to become a PBC, the nonprofit, rather than having its “hand on the lever,” would merely contribute to the decision of who does.Why does this matter? Today, if OpenAI's commercial arm were about to release an unhinged AI model that might make money but be bad for humanity, the nonprofit could directly intervene to stop it. In the proposed new structure, it likely couldn't do much at all.But it's even worse than that: even if the nonprofit could select the PBC's directors, those directors would have fundamentally different legal obligations from those of the nonprofit. A PBC director must balance public benefit with the interests of profit-driven shareholders — by default, they cannot legally prioritise public interest over profits, even if they and the controlling shareholder that appointed them want to do so.As Tyler points out, there isn't a single reported case of a shareholder successfully suing to enforce a PBC's public benefit mission in the 10+ years since the Delaware PBC statute was enacted.This extra step from the nonprofit to the PBC would also mean that the attorneys general of California and Delaware — who today are empowered to ensure the nonprofit pursues its mission — would find themselves powerless to act. These are probably not side effects but rather a Trojan horse for-profit investors are trying to slip past regulators.Fortunately this can all be addressed — but it requires either the nonprofit board or the attorneys general of California and Delaware to promptly put their foot down and insist on watertight legal agreements that preserve OpenAI's current governance safeguards and enforcement mechanisms.As Tyler explains, the same arrangements that currently bind the OpenAI business have to be written into a new PBC's certificate of incorporation — something that won't happen by default and that powerful investors have every incentive to resist.Full transcript and links to learn more: https://80k.info/twChapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Who's Tyler Whitmer? (00:01:35)The new plan may be no improvement (00:02:04)The public hasn't even been allowed to know what they are owed (00:06:55)Issues beyond control (00:11:02)The new directors wouldn't have to pursue the current purpose (00:12:06)The nonprofit might not even retain voting control (00:16:58)The attorneys general could lose their enforcement oversight (00:22:11)By default things go badly (00:29:09)How to keep the mission in the restructure (00:32:25)What will become of OpenAI's Charter? (00:37:11)Ways to make things better, and not just avoid them getting worse (00:42:38)How the AGs can avoid being disempowered (00:48:35)Retaining the power to fire the CEO (00:54:49)Will the current board get a financial stake in OpenAI? (00:57:40)Could the AGs insist the current nonprofit agreement be made public? (00:59:15)How OpenAI is valued should be transparent and scrutinised (01:01:00)Investors aren't bad people, but they can't be trusted either (01:06:05)This episode was originally recorded on May 13, 2025.Video editing: Simon Monsour and Luke MonsourAudio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongMusic: Ben CordellTranscriptions and web: Katy Moore

More and more people have been saying that we might have AGI (artificial general intelligence) before 2030. Is that really plausible? This article by Benjamin Todd looks into the cases for and against, and summarises the key things you need to know to understand the debate. You can see all the images and many footnotes in the original article on the 80,000 Hours website.In a nutshell:Four key factors are driving AI progress: larger base models, teaching models to reason, increasing models' thinking time, and building agent scaffolding for multi-step tasks. These are underpinned by increasing computational power to run and train AI systems, as well as increasing human capital going into algorithmic research.All of these drivers are set to continue until 2028 and perhaps until 2032.This means we should expect major further gains in AI performance. We don't know how large they'll be, but extrapolating recent trends on benchmarks suggests we'll reach systems with beyond-human performance in coding and scientific reasoning, and that can autonomously complete multi-week projects.Whether we call these systems 'AGI' or not, they could be sufficient to enable AI research itself, robotics, the technology industry, and scientific research to accelerate — leading to transformative impacts.Alternatively, AI might fail to overcome issues with ill-defined, high-context work over long time horizons and remain a tool (even if much improved compared to today).Increasing AI performance requires exponential growth in investment and the research workforce. At current rates, we will likely start to reach bottlenecks around 2030. Simplifying a bit, that means we'll likely either reach AGI by around 2030 or see progress slow significantly. Hybrid scenarios are also possible, but the next five years seem especially crucial.Chapters:Introduction (00:00:00)The case for AGI by 2030 (00:00:33)The article in a nutshell (00:04:04)Section 1: What's driven recent AI progress? (00:05:46)How we got here: the deep learning era (00:05:52)Where are we now: the four key drivers (00:07:45)Driver 1: Scaling pretraining (00:08:57)Algorithmic efficiency (00:12:14)How much further can pretraining scale? (00:14:22)Driver 2: Training the models to reason (00:16:15)How far can scaling reasoning continue? (00:22:06)Driver 3: Increasing how long models think (00:25:01)Driver 4: Building better agents (00:28:00)How far can agent improvements continue? (00:33:40)Section 2: How good will AI become by 2030? (00:35:59)Trend extrapolation of AI capabilities (00:37:42)What jobs would these systems help with? (00:39:59)Software engineering (00:40:50)Scientific research (00:42:13)AI research (00:43:21)What's the case against this? (00:44:30)Additional resources on the sceptical view (00:49:18)When do the 'experts' expect AGI? (00:49:50)Section 3: Why the next 5 years are crucial (00:51:06)Bottlenecks around 2030 (00:52:10)Two potential futures for AI (00:56:02)Conclusion (00:58:05)Thanks for listening (00:59:27)Audio engineering: Dominic ArmstrongMusic: Ben Cordell

When attorneys general intervene in corporate affairs, it usually means something has gone seriously wrong. In OpenAI's case, it appears to have forced a dramatic reversal of the company's plans to sideline its nonprofit foundation, announced in a blog post that made headlines worldwide.The company's sudden announcement that its nonprofit will “retain control” credits “constructive dialogue” with the attorneys general of California and Delaware — corporate-speak for what was likely a far more consequential confrontation behind closed doors. A confrontation perhaps driven by public pressure from Nobel Prize winners, past OpenAI staff, and community organisations.But whether this change will help depends entirely on the details of implementation — details that remain worryingly vague in the company's announcement.Return guest Rose Chan Loui, nonprofit law expert at UCLA, sees potential in OpenAI's new proposal, but emphasises that “control” must be carefully defined and enforced: “The words are great, but what's going to back that up?” Without explicitly defining the nonprofit's authority over safety decisions, the shift could be largely cosmetic.Links to learn more, video, and full transcript: https://80k.info/rcl4Why have state officials taken such an interest so far? Host Rob Wiblin notes, “OpenAI was proposing that the AGs would no longer have any say over what this super momentous company might end up doing. … It was just crazy how they were suggesting that they would take all of the existing money and then pursue a completely different purpose.”Now that they're in the picture, the AGs have leverage to ensure the nonprofit maintains genuine control over issues of public safety as OpenAI develops increasingly powerful AI.Rob and Rose explain three key areas where the AGs can make a huge difference to whether this plays out in the public's best interest:Ensuring that the contractual agreements giving the nonprofit control over the new Delaware public benefit corporation are watertight, and don't accidentally shut the AGs out of the picture.Insisting that a majority of board members are truly independent by prohibiting indirect as well as direct financial stakes in the business.Insisting that the board is empowered with the money, independent staffing, and access to information which they need to do their jobs.This episode was originally recorded on May 6, 2025.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Rose is back! (00:01:06)The nonprofit will stay 'in control' (00:01:28)Backlash to OpenAI's original plans (00:08:22)The new proposal (00:16:33)Giving up the super-profits (00:20:52)Can the nonprofit maintain control of the company? (00:24:49)Could for profit investors sue if profits aren't prioritised? (00:33:01)The 6 governance safeguards at risk with the restructure (00:34:33)Will the nonprofit's giving just be corporate PR for the for-profit? (00:49:12)Is this good, or not? (00:51:06)Ways this could still go wrong – but reasons for optimism (00:54:19)Video editing: Simon Monsour and Luke MonsourAudio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongMusic: Ben CordellTranscriptions and web: Katy Moore

When you have a system where ministers almost never understand their portfolios, civil servants change jobs every few months, and MPs don't grasp parliamentary procedure even after decades in office — is the problem the people, or the structure they work in?Today's guest, political journalist Ian Dunt, studies the systemic reasons governments succeed and fail.And in his book How Westminster Works ...and Why It Doesn't, he argues that Britain's government dysfunction and multi-decade failure to solve its key problems stems primarily from bad incentives and bad processes. Even brilliant, well-intentioned people are set up to fail by a long list of institutional absurdities that Ian runs through — from the constant churn of ministers and civil servants that means no one understands what they're working on, to the “pathological national sentimentality” that keeps 10 Downing Street (a 17th century townhouse) as the beating heart of British government.While some of these are unique British failings, we see similar dynamics in other governments and large corporations around the world.But Ian also lays out how some countries have found structural solutions that help ensure decisions are made by the right people, with the information they need, and that success is rewarded.Links to learn more, video, highlights, and full transcript. Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)How Ian got obsessed with Britain's endless failings (00:01:05)Should we blame individuals or incentives? (00:03:24)The UK left its allies to be murdered in Afghanistan (to save cats and dogs) (00:09:02)The UK is governed from a tiny cramped house (00:17:54)“It's the stupidest conceivable system for how to run a country” (00:23:30)The problems that never get solved in the UK (00:28:14)Why UK ministers have no expertise in the areas they govern (00:31:32)Why MPs are chosen to have no idea about legislation (00:44:08)Is any country doing things better? (00:46:14)Is rushing inevitable or artificial? (00:57:20)How unelected septuagenarians are the heroes of UK governance (01:01:02)How Thatcher unintentionally made one part of parliament work (01:10:48)Maybe secrecy is the best disinfectant for incompetence (01:14:17)The House of Commons may as well be in a coma (01:22:34)Why it's in the PM's interest to ban electronic voting (01:33:13)MPs are deliberately kept ignorant of parliamentary procedure (01:35:53)“Whole areas of law have fallen almost completely into the vortex” (01:40:37)What's the seed of all this going wrong? (01:44:00)Why won't the Commons challenge the executive when it can? (01:53:10)Better ways to choose MPs (01:58:33)Citizens' juries (02:07:16)Do more independent-minded legislatures actually lead to better outcomes? (02:10:42)"There's no time for this bourgeois constitutional reform bulls***" (02:16:50)How to keep expert civil servants (02:22:35)Improving legislation like you'd improve Netflix dramas (02:34:34)MPs waste much of their time helping constituents with random complaints (02:39:59)Party culture prevents independent thinking (02:43:52)Would a written constitution help or hurt? (02:48:37)Can we give the PM room to appoint ministers based on expertise and competence? (02:51:51)Would proportional representation help? (02:56:20)Proportional representation encourages collaboration but does have weaknesses (02:58:51)Alternative electoral systems (03:07:44)This episode was originally recorded on January 30, 2025.Video editing: Simon MonsourAudio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongMusic: Ben CordellCamera operator: Jeremy ChevillotteTranscriptions and web: Katy Moore

How do you navigate a career path when the future of work is uncertain? How important is mentorship versus immediate impact? Is it better to focus on your strengths or on the world's most pressing problems? Should you specialise deeply or develop a unique combination of skills?From embracing failure to finding unlikely allies, we bring you 16 diverse perspectives from past guests who've found unconventional paths to impact and helped others do the same.Links to learn more and full transcript.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Luisa's intro (00:01:04)Holden Karnofsky on just kicking ass at whatever (00:02:53)Jeff Sebo on what improv comedy can teach us about doing good in the world (00:12:23)Dean Spears on being open to randomness and serendipity (00:19:26)Michael Webb on how to think about career planning given the rapid developments in AI (00:21:17)Michelle Hutchinson on finding what motivates you and reaching out to people for help (00:41:10)Benjamin Todd on figuring out if a career path is a good fit for you (00:46:03)Chris Olah on the value of unusual combinations of skills (00:50:23)Holden Karnofsky on deciding which weird ideas are worth betting on (00:58:03)Karen Levy on travelling to learn about yourself (01:03:10)Leah Garcés on finding common ground with unlikely allies (01:06:53)Spencer Greenberg on recognising toxic people who could derail your career and life (01:13:34)Holden Karnofsky on the many jobs that can help with AI (01:23:13)Danny Hernandez on using world events to trigger you to work on something else (01:30:46)Sarah Eustis-Guthrie on exploring and pivoting in careers (01:33:07)Benjamin Todd on making tough career decisions (01:38:36)Hannah Ritchie on being selective when following others' advice (01:44:22)Alex Lawsen on getting good mentorship (01:47:25)Chris Olah on cold emailing that actually works (01:54:49)Pardis Sabeti on prioritising physical health to do your best work (01:58:34)Chris Olah on developing good taste and technique as a researcher (02:04:39)Benjamin Todd on why it's so important to apply to loads of jobs (02:09:52)Varsha Venugopal on embracing uncomfortable situations and celebrating failures (02:14:25)Luisa's outro (02:17:43)Audio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongContent editing: Katy Moore and Milo McGuireTranscriptions and web: Katy Moore

Throughout history, technological revolutions have fundamentally shifted the balance of power in society. The Industrial Revolution created conditions where democracies could flourish for the first time — as nations needed educated, informed, and empowered citizens to deploy advanced technologies and remain competitive.Unfortunately there's every reason to think artificial general intelligence (AGI) will reverse that trend. Today's guest — Tom Davidson of the Forethought Centre for AI Strategy — claims in a new paper published today that advanced AI enables power grabs by small groups, by removing the need for widespread human participation. Links to learn more, video, highlights, and full transcript. https://80k.info/tdAlso: come work with us on the 80,000 Hours podcast team! https://80k.info/workThere are a few routes by which small groups might seize power:Military coups: Though rare in established democracies due to citizen/soldier resistance, future AI-controlled militaries may lack such constraints. Self-built hard power: History suggests maybe only 10,000 obedient military drones could seize power.Autocratisation: Leaders using millions of loyal AI workers, while denying others access, could remove democratic checks and balances.Tom explains several reasons why AI systems might follow a tyrant's orders:They might be programmed to obey the top of the chain of command, with no checks on that power.Systems could contain "secret loyalties" inserted during development.Superior cyber capabilities could allow small groups to control AI-operated military infrastructure.Host Rob Wiblin and Tom discuss all this plus potential countermeasures.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)A major update on the show (00:00:55)How AI enables tiny groups to seize power (00:06:24)The 3 different threats (00:07:42)Is this common sense or far-fetched? (00:08:51)“No person rules alone.” Except now they might. (00:11:48)Underpinning all 3 threats: Secret AI loyalties (00:17:46)Key risk factors (00:25:38)Preventing secret loyalties in a nutshell (00:27:12)Are human power grabs more plausible than 'rogue AI'? (00:29:32)If you took over the US, could you take over the whole world? (00:38:11)Will this make it impossible to escape autocracy? (00:42:20)Threat 1: AI-enabled military coups (00:46:19)Will we sleepwalk into an AI military coup? (00:56:23)Could AIs be more coup-resistant than humans? (01:02:28)Threat 2: Autocratisation (01:05:22)Will AGI be super-persuasive? (01:15:32)Threat 3: Self-built hard power (01:17:56)Can you stage a coup with 10,000 drones? (01:25:42)That sounds a lot like sci-fi... is it credible? (01:27:49)Will we foresee and prevent all this? (01:32:08)Are people psychologically willing to do coups? (01:33:34)Will a balance of power between AIs prevent this? (01:37:39)Will whistleblowers or internal mistrust prevent coups? (01:39:55)Would other countries step in? (01:46:03)Will rogue AI preempt a human power grab? (01:48:30)The best reasons not to worry (01:51:05)How likely is this in the US? (01:53:23)Is a small group seizing power really so bad? (02:00:47)Countermeasure 1: Block internal misuse (02:04:19)Countermeasure 2: Cybersecurity (02:14:02)Countermeasure 3: Model spec transparency (02:16:11)Countermeasure 4: Sharing AI access broadly (02:25:23)Is it more dangerous to concentrate or share AGI? (02:30:13)Is it important to have more than one powerful AI country? (02:32:56)In defence of open sourcing AI models (02:35:59)2 ways to stop secret AI loyalties (02:43:34)Preventing AI-enabled military coups in particular (02:56:20)How listeners can help (03:01:59)How to help if you work at an AI company (03:05:49)The power ML researchers still have, for now (03:09:53)How to help if you're an elected leader (03:13:14)Rob's outro (03:19:05)This episode was originally recorded on January 20, 2025.Video editing: Simon MonsourAudio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongCamera operator: Jeremy ChevillotteTranscriptions and web: Katy Moore

"We are aiming for a place where we can decouple the scorecard from our worthiness. It's of course the case that in trying to optimise the good, we will always be falling short. The question is how much, and in what ways are we not there yet? And if we then extrapolate that to how much and in what ways am I not enough, that's where we run into trouble." —Hannah BoettcherWhat happens when your desire to do good starts to undermine your own wellbeing?Over the years, we've heard from therapists, charity directors, researchers, psychologists, and career advisors — all wrestling with how to do good without falling apart. Today's episode brings together insights from 16 past guests on the emotional and psychological costs of pursuing a high-impact career to improve the world — and how to best navigate the all-too-common guilt, burnout, perfectionism, and imposter syndrome along the way.Check out the full transcript and links to learn more: https://80k.info/mhIf you're dealing with your own mental health concerns, here are some resources that might help:If you're feeling at risk, try this for the the UK: How to get help in a crisis, and this for the US: National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.The UK's National Health Service publishes useful, evidence-based advice on treatments for most conditions.Mental Health Navigator is a service that simplifies finding and accessing mental health information and resources all over the world — built specifically for the effective altruism communityWe recommend this summary of treatments for depression, this summary of treatments for anxiety, and Mind Ease, an app created by Spencer Greenberg.We'd also recommend It's Not Always Depression by Hilary Hendel.Some on our team have found Overcoming Perfectionism and Overcoming Low Self-Esteem very helpful.And there's even more resources listed on these episode pages: Having a successful career with depression, anxiety, and imposter syndrome, Hannah Boettcher on the mental health challenges that come with trying to have a big impact, Tim LeBon on how altruistic perfectionism is self-defeating.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Luisa's intro (00:01:32)80,000 Hours' former CEO Howie on what his anxiety and self-doubt feels like (00:03:47)Evolutionary psychiatrist Randy Nesse on what emotions are for (00:07:35)Therapist Hannah Boettcher on how striving for impact can affect our self-worth (00:13:45)Luisa Rodriguez on grieving the gap between who you are and who you wish you were (00:16:57)Charity director Cameron Meyer Shorb on managing work-related guilt and shame (00:24:01)Therapist Tim LeBon on aiming for excellence rather than perfection (00:29:18)Author Cal Newport on making time to be alone with our thoughts (00:36:03)80,000 Hours career advisors Michelle Hutchinson and Habiba Islam on prioritising mental health over career impact (00:40:28)Charity founder Sarah Eustis-Guthrie on the ups and downs of founding an organisation (00:45:52)Our World in Data researcher Hannah Ritchie on feeling like an imposter as a generalist (00:51:28)Moral philosopher Will MacAskill on being proactive about mental health and preventing burnout (01:00:46)Grantmaker Ajeya Cotra on the psychological toll of big open-ended research questions (01:11:00)Researcher and grantmaker Christian Ruhl on how having a stutter affects him personally and professionally (01:19:30)Mercy For Animals' CEO Leah Garcés on insisting on self-care when doing difficult work (01:32:39)80,000 Hours' former CEO Howie on balancing a job and mental illness (01:37:12)Therapist Hannah Boettcher on how self-compassion isn't self-indulgence (01:40:39)Journalist Kelsey Piper on communicating about mental health in ways that resonate (01:43:32)Luisa's outro (01:46:10)Audio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongContent editing: Katy Moore and Milo McGuireTranscriptions and web: Katy Moore

Most AI safety conversations centre on alignment: ensuring AI systems share our values and goals. But despite progress, we're unlikely to know we've solved the problem before the arrival of human-level and superhuman systems in as little as three years.So some are developing a backup plan to safely deploy models we fear are actively scheming to harm us — so-called “AI control.” While this may sound mad, given the reluctance of AI companies to delay deploying anything they train, not developing such techniques is probably even crazier.Today's guest — Buck Shlegeris, CEO of Redwood Research — has spent the last few years developing control mechanisms, and for human-level systems they're more plausible than you might think. He argues that given companies' unwillingness to incur large costs for security, accepting the possibility of misalignment and designing robust safeguards might be one of our best remaining options.Links to learn more, highlights, video, and full transcript.As Buck puts it: "Five years ago I thought of misalignment risk from AIs as a really hard problem that you'd need some really galaxy-brained fundamental insights to resolve. Whereas now, to me the situation feels a lot more like we just really know a list of 40 things where, if you did them — none of which seem that hard — you'd probably be able to not have very much of your problem."Of course, even if Buck is right, we still need to do those 40 things — which he points out we're not on track for. And AI control agendas have their limitations: they aren't likely to work once AI systems are much more capable than humans, since greatly superhuman AIs can probably work around whatever limitations we impose.Still, AI control agendas seem to be gaining traction within AI safety. Buck and host Rob Wiblin discuss all of the above, plus:Why he's more worried about AI hacking its own data centre than escapingWhat to do about “chronic harm,” where AI systems subtly underperform or sabotage important work like alignment researchWhy he might want to use a model he thought could be conspiring against himWhy he would feel safer if he caught an AI attempting to escapeWhy many control techniques would be relatively inexpensiveHow to use an untrusted model to monitor another untrusted modelWhat the minimum viable intervention in a “lazy” AI company might look likeHow even small teams of safety-focused staff within AI labs could matterThe moral considerations around controlling potentially conscious AI systems, and whether it's justifiedChapters:Cold open |00:00:00|  Who's Buck Shlegeris? |00:01:27|  What's AI control? |00:01:51|  Why is AI control hot now? |00:05:39|  Detecting human vs AI spies |00:10:32|  Acute vs chronic AI betrayal |00:15:21|  How to catch AIs trying to escape |00:17:48|  The cheapest AI control techniques |00:32:48|  Can we get untrusted models to do trusted work? |00:38:58|  If we catch a model escaping... will we do anything? |00:50:15|  Getting AI models to think they've already escaped |00:52:51|  Will they be able to tell it's a setup? |00:58:11|  Will AI companies do any of this stuff? |01:00:11|  Can we just give AIs fewer permissions? |01:06:14|  Can we stop human spies the same way? |01:09:58|  The pitch to AI companies to do this |01:15:04|  Will AIs get superhuman so fast that this is all useless? |01:17:18|  Risks from AI deliberately doing a bad job |01:18:37|  Is alignment still useful? |01:24:49|  Current alignment methods don't detect scheming |01:29:12|  How to tell if AI control will work |01:31:40|  How can listeners contribute? |01:35:53|  Is 'controlling' AIs kind of a dick move? |01:37:13|  Could 10 safety-focused people in an AGI company do anything useful? |01:42:27|  Benefits of working outside frontier AI companies |01:47:48|  Why Redwood Research does what it does |01:51:34|  What other safety-related research looks best to Buck? |01:58:56|  If an AI escapes, is it likely to be able to beat humanity from there? |01:59:48|  Will misaligned models have to go rogue ASAP, before they're ready? |02:07:04|  Is research on human scheming relevant to AI? |02:08:03|This episode was originally recorded on February 21, 2025.Video: Simon Monsour and Luke MonsourAudio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, and Dominic ArmstrongTranscriptions and web: Katy Moore

"There's almost no story of the future going well that doesn't have a part that's like '…and no evil person steals the AI weights and goes and does evil stuff.' So it has highlighted the importance of information security: 'You're training a powerful AI system; you should make it hard for someone to steal' has popped out to me as a thing that just keeps coming up in these stories, keeps being present. It's hard to tell a story where it's not a factor. It's easy to tell a story where it is a factor." — Holden KarnofskyWhat happens when a USB cable can secretly control your system? Are we hurtling toward a security nightmare as critical infrastructure connects to the internet? Is it possible to secure AI model weights from sophisticated attackers? And could AI might actually make computer security better rather than worse?With AI security concerns becoming increasingly urgent, we bring you insights from 15 top experts across information security, AI safety, and governance, examining the challenges of protecting our most powerful AI models and digital infrastructure — including a sneak peek from an episode that hasn't yet been released with Tom Davidson, where he explains how we should be more worried about “secret loyalties” in AI agents. You'll hear:Holden Karnofsky on why every good future relies on strong infosec, and how hard it's been to hire security experts (from episode #158)Tantum Collins on why infosec might be the rare issue everyone agrees on (episode #166)Nick Joseph on whether AI companies can develop frontier models safely with the current state of information security (episode #197)Sella Nevo on why AI model weights are so valuable to steal, the weaknesses of air-gapped networks, and the risks of USBs (episode #195)Kevin Esvelt on what cryptographers can teach biosecurity experts (episode #164)Lennart Heim on on Rob's computer security nightmares (episode #155)Zvi Mowshowitz on the insane lack of security mindset at some AI companies (episode #184)Nova DasSarma on the best current defences against well-funded adversaries, politically motivated cyberattacks, and exciting progress in infosecurity (episode #132)Bruce Schneier on whether AI could eliminate software bugs for good, and why it's bad to hook everything up to the internet (episode #64)Nita Farahany on the dystopian risks of hacked neurotech (episode #174)Vitalik Buterin on how cybersecurity is the key to defence-dominant futures (episode #194)Nathan Labenz on how even internal teams at AI companies may not know what they're building (episode #176)Allan Dafoe on backdooring your own AI to prevent theft (episode #212)Tom Davidson on how dangerous “secret loyalties” in AI models could be (episode to be released!)Carl Shulman on the challenge of trusting foreign AI models (episode #191, part 2)Plus lots of concrete advice on how to get into this field and find your fitCheck out the full transcript on the 80,000 Hours website.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Rob's intro (00:00:49)Holden Karnofsky on why infosec could be the issue on which the future of humanity pivots (00:03:21)Tantum Collins on why infosec is a rare AI issue that unifies everyone (00:12:39)Nick Joseph on whether the current state of information security makes it impossible to responsibly train AGI (00:16:23)Nova DasSarma on the best available defences against well-funded adversaries (00:22:10)Sella Nevo on why AI model weights are so valuable to steal (00:28:56)Kevin Esvelt on what cryptographers can teach biosecurity experts (00:32:24)Lennart Heim on the possibility of an autonomously replicating AI computer worm (00:34:56)Zvi Mowshowitz on the absurd lack of security mindset at some AI companies (00:48:22)Sella Nevo on the weaknesses of air-gapped networks and the risks of USB devices (00:49:54)Bruce Schneier on why it's bad to hook everything up to the internet (00:55:54)Nita Farahany on the possibility of hacking neural implants (01:04:47)Vitalik Buterin on how cybersecurity is the key to defence-dominant futures (01:10:48)Nova DasSarma on exciting progress in information security (01:19:28)Nathan Labenz on how even internal teams at AI companies may not know what they're building (01:30:47)Allan Dafoe on backdooring your own AI to prevent someone else from stealing it (01:33:51)Tom Davidson on how dangerous “secret loyalties” in AI models could get (01:35:57)Carl Shulman on whether we should be worried about backdoors as governments adopt AI technology (01:52:45)Nova DasSarma on politically motivated cyberattacks (02:03:44)Bruce Schneier on the day-to-day benefits of improved security and recognising that there's never zero risk (02:07:27)Holden Karnofsky on why it's so hard to hire security people despite the massive need (02:13:59)Nova DasSarma on practical steps to getting into this field (02:16:37)Bruce Schneier on finding your personal fit in a range of security careers (02:24:42)Rob's outro (02:34:46)Audio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongContent editing: Katy Moore and Milo McGuireTranscriptions and web: Katy Moore

The 20th century saw unprecedented change: nuclear weapons, satellites, the rise and fall of communism, third-wave feminism, the internet, postmodernism, game theory, genetic engineering, the Big Bang theory, quantum mechanics, birth control, and more. Now imagine all of it compressed into just 10 years.That's the future Will MacAskill — philosopher, founding figure of effective altruism, and now researcher at the Forethought Centre for AI Strategy — argues we need to prepare for in his new paper “Preparing for the intelligence explosion.” Not in the distant future, but probably in three to seven years.Links to learn more, highlights, video, and full transcript.The reason: AI systems are rapidly approaching human-level capability in scientific research and intellectual tasks. Once AI exceeds human abilities in AI research itself, we'll enter a recursive self-improvement cycle — creating wildly more capable systems. Soon after, by improving algorithms and manufacturing chips, we'll deploy millions, then billions, then trillions of superhuman AI scientists working 24/7 without human limitations. These systems will collaborate across disciplines, build on each discovery instantly, and conduct experiments at unprecedented scale and speed — compressing a century of scientific progress into mere years.Will compares the resulting situation to a mediaeval king suddenly needing to upgrade from bows and arrows to nuclear weapons to deal with an ideological threat from a country he's never heard of, while simultaneously grappling with learning that he descended from monkeys and his god doesn't exist.What makes this acceleration perilous is that while technology can speed up almost arbitrarily, human institutions and decision-making are much more fixed.In this conversation with host Rob Wiblin, recorded on February 7, 2025, Will maps out the challenges we'd face in this potential “intelligence explosion” future, and what we might do to prepare. They discuss:Why leading AI safety researchers now think there's dramatically less time before AI is transformative than they'd previously thoughtThe three different types of intelligence explosions that occur in orderWill's list of resulting grand challenges — including destructive technologies, space governance, concentration of power, and digital rightsHow to prevent ourselves from accidentally “locking in” mediocre futures for all eternityWays AI could radically improve human coordination and decision makingWhy we should aim for truly flourishing futures, not just avoiding extinctionChapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Who's Will MacAskill? (00:00:46)Why Will now just works on AGI (00:01:02)Will was wrong(ish) on AI timelines and hinge of history (00:04:10)A century of history crammed into a decade (00:09:00)Science goes super fast; our institutions don't keep up (00:15:42)Is it good or bad for intellectual progress to 10x? (00:21:03)An intelligence explosion is not just plausible but likely (00:22:54)Intellectual advances outside technology are similarly important (00:28:57)Counterarguments to intelligence explosion (00:31:31)The three types of intelligence explosion (software, technological, industrial) (00:37:29)The industrial intelligence explosion is the most certain and enduring (00:40:23)Is a 100x or 1,000x speedup more likely than 10x? (00:51:51)The grand superintelligence challenges (00:55:37)Grand challenge #1: Many new destructive technologies (00:59:17)Grand challenge #2: Seizure of power by a small group (01:06:45)Is global lock-in really plausible? (01:08:37)Grand challenge #3: Space governance (01:18:53)Is space truly defence-dominant? (01:28:43)Grand challenge #4: Morally integrating with digital beings (01:32:20)Will we ever know if digital minds are happy? (01:41:01)“My worry isn't that we won't know; it's that we won't care” (01:46:31)Can we get AGI to solve all these issues as early as possible? (01:49:40)Politicians have to learn to use AI advisors (02:02:03)Ensuring AI makes us smarter decision-makers (02:06:10)How listeners can speed up AI epistemic tools (02:09:38)AI could become great at forecasting (02:13:09)How not to lock in a bad future (02:14:37)AI takeover might happen anyway — should we rush to load in our values? (02:25:29)ML researchers are feverishly working to destroy their own power (02:34:37)We should aim for more than mere survival (02:37:54)By default the future is rubbish (02:49:04)No easy utopia (02:56:55)What levers matter most to utopia (03:06:32)Bottom lines from the modelling (03:20:09)People distrust utopianism; should they distrust this? (03:24:09)What conditions make eventual eutopia likely? (03:28:49)The new Forethought Centre for AI Strategy (03:37:21)How does Will resist hopelessness? (03:50:13)Video editing: Simon MonsourAudio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongCamera operator: Jeremy ChevillotteTranscriptions and web: Katy Moore

When OpenAI announced plans to convert from nonprofit to for-profit control last October, it likely didn't anticipate the legal labyrinth it now faces. A recent court order in Elon Musk's lawsuit against the company suggests OpenAI's restructuring faces serious legal threats, which will complicate its efforts to raise tens of billions in investment.As nonprofit legal expert Rose Chan Loui explains, the court order set up multiple pathways for OpenAI's conversion to be challenged. Though Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers denied Musk's request to block the conversion before a trial, she expedited proceedings to the fall so the case could be heard before it's likely to go ahead. (See Rob's brief summary of developments in the case.)And if Musk's donations to OpenAI are enough to give him the right to bring a case, Rogers sounded very sympathetic to his objections to the OpenAI foundation selling the company, benefiting the founders who forswore “any intent to use OpenAI as a vehicle to enrich themselves.”But that's just one of multiple threats. The attorneys general (AGs) in California and Delaware both have standing to object to the conversion on the grounds that it is contrary to the foundation's charitable purpose and therefore wrongs the public — which was promised all the charitable assets would be used to develop AI that benefits all of humanity, not to win a commercial race. Some, including Rose, suspect the court order was written as a signal to those AGs to take action.And, as she explains, if the AGs remain silent, the court itself, seeing that the public interest isn't being represented, could appoint a “special interest party” to take on the case in their place.This places the OpenAI foundation board in a bind: proceeding with the restructuring despite this legal cloud could expose them to the risk of being sued for a gross breach of their fiduciary duty to the public. The board is made up of respectable people who didn't sign up for that.And of course it would cause chaos for the company if all of OpenAI's fundraising and governance plans were brought to a screeching halt by a federal court judgment landing at the eleventh hour.Host Rob Wiblin and Rose Chan Loui discuss all of the above as well as what justification the OpenAI foundation could offer for giving up control of the company despite its charitable purpose, and how the board might adjust their plans to make the for-profit switch more legally palatable.This episode was originally recorded on March 6, 2025.Chapters:Intro (00:00:11)More juicy OpenAI news (00:00:46)The court order (00:02:11)Elon has two hurdles to jump (00:05:17)The judge's sympathy (00:08:00)OpenAI's defence (00:11:45)Alternative plans for OpenAI (00:13:41)Should the foundation give up control? (00:16:38)Alternative plaintiffs to Musk (00:21:13)The 'special interest party' option (00:25:32)How might this play out in the fall? (00:27:52)The nonprofit board is in a bit of a bind (00:29:20)Is it in the public interest to race? (00:32:23)Could the board be personally negligent? (00:34:06)Video editing: Simon MonsourAudio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongTranscriptions: Katy Moore

A casino offers you a game. A coin will be tossed. If it comes up heads on the first flip you win $2. If it comes up on the second flip you win $4. If it comes up on the third you win $8, the fourth you win $16, and so on. How much should you be willing to pay to play?The standard way of analysing gambling problems, ‘expected value' — in which you multiply probabilities by the value of each outcome and then sum them up — says your expected earnings are infinite. You have a 50% chance of winning $2, for '0.5 * $2 = $1' in expected earnings. A 25% chance of winning $4, for '0.25 * $4 = $1' in expected earnings, and on and on. A never-ending series of $1s added together comes to infinity. And that's despite the fact that you know with certainty you can only ever win a finite amount!Today's guest — philosopher Alan Hájek of the Australian National University — thinks of much of philosophy as “the demolition of common sense followed by damage control” and is an expert on paradoxes related to probability and decision-making rules like “maximise expected value.”Rebroadcast: this episode was originally released in October 2022.Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.The problem described above, known as the St. Petersburg paradox, has been a staple of the field since the 18th century, with many proposed solutions. In the interview, Alan explains how very natural attempts to resolve the paradox — such as factoring in the low likelihood that the casino can pay out very large sums, or the fact that money becomes less and less valuable the more of it you already have — fail to work as hoped.We might reject the setup as a hypothetical that could never exist in the real world, and therefore of mere intellectual curiosity. But Alan doesn't find that objection persuasive. If expected value fails in extreme cases, that should make us worry that something could be rotten at the heart of the standard procedure we use to make decisions in government, business, and nonprofits.These issues regularly show up in 80,000 Hours' efforts to try to find the best ways to improve the world, as the best approach will arguably involve long-shot attempts to do very large amounts of good.Consider which is better: saving one life for sure, or three lives with 50% probability? Expected value says the second, which will probably strike you as reasonable enough. But what if we repeat this process and evaluate the chance to save nine lives with 25% probability, or 27 lives with 12.5% probability, or after 17 more iterations, 3,486,784,401 lives with a 0.00000009% chance. Expected value says this final offer is better than the others — 1,000 times better, in fact.Ultimately Alan leans towards the view that our best choice is to “bite the bullet” and stick with expected value, even with its sometimes counterintuitive implications. Where we want to do damage control, we're better off looking for ways our probability estimates might be wrong.In this conversation, originally released in October 2022, Alan and Rob explore these issues and many others:Simple rules of thumb for having philosophical insightsA key flaw that hid in Pascal's wager from the very beginningWhether we have to simply ignore infinities because they mess everything upWhat fundamentally is 'probability'?Some of the many reasons 'frequentism' doesn't work as an account of probabilityWhy the standard account of counterfactuals in philosophy is deeply flawedAnd why counterfactuals present a fatal problem for one sort of consequentialismChapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Rob's intro (00:01:05)The interview begins (00:05:28)Philosophical methodology (00:06:35)Theories of probability (00:40:58)Everyday Bayesianism (00:49:42)Frequentism (01:08:37)Ranges of probabilities (01:20:05)Implications for how to live (01:25:05)Expected value (01:30:39)The St. Petersburg paradox (01:35:21)Pascal's wager (01:53:25)Using expected value in everyday life (02:07:34)Counterfactuals (02:20:19)Most counterfactuals are false (02:56:06)Relevance to objective consequentialism (03:13:28)Alan's best conference story (03:37:18)Rob's outro (03:40:22)Producer: Keiran HarrisAudio mastering: Ben Cordell and Ryan KesslerTranscriptions: Katy Moore

America aims to avoid nuclear war by relying on the principle of 'mutually assured destruction,' right? Wrong. Or at least... not officially.As today's guest — Jeffrey Lewis, founder of Arms Control Wonk and professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies — explains, in its official 'OPLANs' (military operation plans), the US is committed to 'dominating' in a nuclear war with Russia. How would they do that? "That is redacted."Rebroadcast: this episode was originally released in December 2022.Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.We invited Jeffrey to come on the show to lay out what we and our listeners are most likely to be misunderstanding about nuclear weapons, the nuclear posture of major powers, and his field as a whole, and he did not disappoint.As Jeffrey tells it, 'mutually assured destruction' was a slur used to criticise those who wanted to limit the 1960s arms buildup, and was never accepted as a matter of policy in any US administration. But isn't it still the de facto reality? Yes and no.Jeffrey is a specialist on the nuts and bolts of bureaucratic and military decision-making in real-life situations. He suspects that at the start of their term presidents get a briefing about the US' plan to prevail in a nuclear war and conclude that "it's freaking madness." They say to themselves that whatever these silly plans may say, they know a nuclear war cannot be won, so they just won't use the weapons.But Jeffrey thinks that's a big mistake. Yes, in a calm moment presidents can resist pressure from advisors and generals. But that idea of ‘winning' a nuclear war is in all the plans. Staff have been hired because they believe in those plans. It's what the generals and admirals have all prepared for.What matters is the 'not calm moment': the 3AM phone call to tell the president that ICBMs might hit the US in eight minutes — the same week Russia invades a neighbour or China invades Taiwan. Is it a false alarm? Should they retaliate before their land-based missile silos are hit? There's only minutes to decide.Jeffrey points out that in emergencies, presidents have repeatedly found themselves railroaded into actions they didn't want to take because of how information and options were processed and presented to them. In the heat of the moment, it's natural to reach for the plan you've prepared — however mad it might sound.In this spicy conversation, Jeffrey fields the most burning questions from Rob and the audience, in the process explaining:Why inter-service rivalry is one of the biggest constraints on US nuclear policyTwo times the US sabotaged nuclear nonproliferation among great powersHow his field uses jargon to exclude outsidersHow the US could prevent the revival of mass nuclear testing by the great powersWhy nuclear deterrence relies on the possibility that something might go wrongWhether 'salami tactics' render nuclear weapons ineffectiveThe time the Navy and Air Force switched views on how to wage a nuclear war, just when it would allow *them* to have the most missilesThe problems that arise when you won't talk to people you think are evilWhy missile defences are politically popular despite being strategically foolishHow open source intelligence can prevent arms racesAnd much more.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Rob's intro (00:01:05)The interview begins (00:03:31)Misconceptions in the effective altruism community (00:06:24)Nuclear deterrence (00:18:18)Dishonest rituals (00:28:59)Downsides of generalist research (00:32:55)“Mutual assured destruction” (00:39:00)Budgetary considerations for competing parts of the US military (00:52:35)Where the effective altruism community can potentially add the most value (01:02:57)Gatekeeping (01:12:46)Strengths of the nuclear security community (01:16:57)Disarmament (01:27:40)Nuclear winter (01:39:36)Attacks against US allies (01:42:28)Most likely weapons to get used (01:45:53)The role of moral arguments (01:47:22)Salami tactics (01:52:43)Jeffrey's disagreements with Thomas Schelling (01:57:42)Why did it take so long to get nuclear arms agreements? (02:01:54)Detecting secret nuclear facilities (02:04:01)Where Jeffrey would give $10M in grants (02:06:28)The importance of archival research (02:11:45)Jeffrey's policy ideas (02:20:45)What should the US do regarding China? (02:27:52)What should the US do regarding Russia? (02:32:24)What should the US do regarding Taiwan? (02:36:09)Advice for people interested in working on nuclear security (02:38:06)Rob's outro (02:39:45)Producer: Keiran HarrisAudio mastering: Ben CordellTranscriptions: Katy Moore

Technology doesn't force us to do anything — it merely opens doors. But military and economic competition pushes us through.That's how today's guest Allan Dafoe — director of frontier safety and governance at Google DeepMind — explains one of the deepest patterns in technological history: once a powerful new capability becomes available, societies that adopt it tend to outcompete those that don't. Those who resist too much can find themselves taken over or rendered irrelevant.Links to learn more, highlights, video, and full transcript.This dynamic played out dramatically in 1853 when US Commodore Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay with steam-powered warships that seemed magical to the Japanese, who had spent centuries deliberately limiting their technological development. With far greater military power, the US was able to force Japan to open itself to trade. Within 15 years, Japan had undergone the Meiji Restoration and transformed itself in a desperate scramble to catch up.Today we see hints of similar pressure around artificial intelligence. Even companies, countries, and researchers deeply concerned about where AI could take us feel compelled to push ahead — worried that if they don't, less careful actors will develop transformative AI capabilities at around the same time anyway.But Allan argues this technological determinism isn't absolute. While broad patterns may be inevitable, history shows we do have some ability to steer how technologies are developed, by who, and what they're used for first.As part of that approach, Allan has been promoting efforts to make AI more capable of sophisticated cooperation, and improving the tests Google uses to measure how well its models could do things like mislead people, hack and take control of their own servers, or spread autonomously in the wild.As of mid-2024 they didn't seem dangerous at all, but we've learned that our ability to measure these capabilities is good, but imperfect. If we don't find the right way to ‘elicit' an ability we can miss that it's there.Subsequent research from Anthropic and Redwood Research suggests there's even a risk that future models may play dumb to avoid their goals being altered.That has led DeepMind to a “defence in depth” approach: carefully staged deployment starting with internal testing, then trusted external testers, then limited release, then watching how models are used in the real world. By not releasing model weights, DeepMind is able to back up and add additional safeguards if experience shows they're necessary.But with much more powerful and general models on the way, individual company policies won't be sufficient by themselves. Drawing on his academic research into how societies handle transformative technologies, Allan argues we need coordinated international governance that balances safety with our desire to get the massive potential benefits of AI in areas like healthcare and education as quickly as possible.Host Rob and Allan also cover:The most exciting beneficial applications of AIWhether and how we can influence the development of technologyWhat DeepMind is doing to evaluate and mitigate risks from frontier AI systemsWhy cooperative AI may be as important as aligned AIThe role of democratic input in AI governanceWhat kinds of experts are most needed in AI safety and governanceAnd much moreChapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Who's Allan Dafoe? (00:00:48)Allan's role at DeepMind (00:01:27)Why join DeepMind over everyone else? (00:04:27)Do humans control technological change? (00:09:17)Arguments for technological determinism (00:20:24)The synthesis of agency with tech determinism (00:26:29)Competition took away Japan's choice (00:37:13)Can speeding up one tech redirect history? (00:42:09)Structural pushback against alignment efforts (00:47:55)Do AIs need to be 'cooperatively skilled'? (00:52:25)How AI could boost cooperation between people and states (01:01:59)The super-cooperative AGI hypothesis and backdoor risks (01:06:58)Aren't today's models already very cooperative? (01:13:22)How would we make AIs cooperative anyway? (01:16:22)Ways making AI more cooperative could backfire (01:22:24)AGI is an essential idea we should define well (01:30:16)It matters what AGI learns first vs last (01:41:01)How Google tests for dangerous capabilities (01:45:39)Evals 'in the wild' (01:57:46)What to do given no single approach works that well (02:01:44)We don't, but could, forecast AI capabilities (02:05:34)DeepMind's strategy for ensuring its frontier models don't cause harm (02:11:25)How 'structural risks' can force everyone into a worse world (02:15:01)Is AI being built democratically? Should it? (02:19:35)How much do AI companies really want external regulation? (02:24:34)Social science can contribute a lot here (02:33:21)How AI could make life way better: self-driving cars, medicine, education, and sustainability (02:35:55)Video editing: Simon MonsourAudio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongCamera operator: Jeremy ChevillotteTranscriptions: Katy Moore

On Monday Musk made the OpenAI nonprofit foundation an offer they want to refuse, but might have trouble doing so: $97.4 billion for its stake in the for-profit company, plus the freedom to stick with its current charitable mission.For a normal company takeover bid, this would already be spicy. But OpenAI's unique structure — a nonprofit foundation controlling a for-profit corporation — turns the gambit into an audacious attack on the plan OpenAI announced in December to free itself from nonprofit oversight.As today's guest Rose Chan Loui — founding executive director of UCLA Law's Lowell Milken Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofits — explains, OpenAI's nonprofit board now faces a challenging choice.Links to learn more, highlights, video, and full transcript.The nonprofit has a legal duty to pursue its charitable mission of ensuring that AI benefits all of humanity to the best of its ability. And if Musk's bid would better accomplish that mission than the for-profit's proposal — that the nonprofit give up control of the company and change its charitable purpose to the vague and barely related “pursue charitable initiatives in sectors such as health care, education, and science” — then it's not clear the California or Delaware Attorneys General will, or should, approve the deal.OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quickly tweeted “no thank you” — but that was probably a legal slipup, as he's not meant to be involved in such a decision, which has to be made by the nonprofit board ‘at arm's length' from the for-profit company Sam himself runs.The board could raise any number of objections: maybe Musk doesn't have the money, or the purchase would be blocked on antitrust grounds, seeing as Musk owns another AI company (xAI), or Musk might insist on incompetent board appointments that would interfere with the nonprofit foundation pursuing any goal.But as Rose and Rob lay out, it's not clear any of those things is actually true.In this emergency podcast recorded soon after Elon's offer, Rose and Rob also cover:Why OpenAI wants to change its charitable purpose and whether that's legally permissibleOn what basis the attorneys general will decide OpenAI's fateThe challenges in valuing the nonprofit's “priceless” position of controlWhether Musk's offer will force OpenAI to up their own bid, and whether they could raise the moneyIf other tech giants might now jump in with competing offersHow politics could influence the attorneys general reviewing the dealWhat Rose thinks should actually happen to protect the public interestChapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Elon throws a $97.4b bomb (00:01:18)What was craziest in OpenAI's plan to break free of the nonprofit (00:02:24)Can OpenAI suddenly change its charitable purpose like that? (00:05:19)Diving into Elon's big announcement (00:15:16)Ways OpenAI could try to reject the offer (00:27:21)Sam Altman slips up (00:35:26)Will this actually stop things? (00:38:03)Why does OpenAI even want to change its charitable mission? (00:42:46)Most likely outcomes and what Rose thinks should happen (00:51:17)Video editing: Simon MonsourAudio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongTranscriptions: Katy Moore

Will LLMs soon be made into autonomous agents? Will they lead to job losses? Is AI misinformation overblown? Will it prove easy or hard to create AGI? And how likely is it that it will feel like something to be a superhuman AGI?With AGI back in the headlines, we bring you 15 opinionated highlights from the show addressing those and other questions, intermixed with opinions from hosts Luisa Rodriguez and Rob Wiblin recorded back in 2023.Check out the full transcript on the 80,000 Hours website.You can decide whether the views we expressed (and those from guests) then have held up these last two busy years. You'll hear:Ajeya Cotra on overrated AGI worriesHolden Karnofsky on the dangers of aligned AI, why unaligned AI might not kill us, and the power that comes from just making models biggerIan Morris on why the future must be radically different from the presentNick Joseph on whether his companies internal safety policies are enoughRichard Ngo on what everyone gets wrong about how ML models workTom Davidson on why he believes crazy-sounding explosive growth stories… and Michael Webb on why he doesn'tCarl Shulman on why you'll prefer robot nannies over human onesZvi Mowshowitz on why he's against working at AI companies except in some safety rolesHugo Mercier on why even superhuman AGI won't be that persuasiveRob Long on the case for and against digital sentienceAnil Seth on why he thinks consciousness is probably biologicalLewis Bollard on whether AI advances will help or hurt nonhuman animalsRohin Shah on whether humanity's work ends at the point it creates AGIAnd of course, Rob and Luisa also regularly chime in on what they agree and disagree with.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Rob's intro (00:00:58)Rob & Luisa: Bowerbirds compiling the AI story (00:03:28)Ajeya Cotra on the misalignment stories she doesn't buy (00:09:16)Rob & Luisa: Agentic AI and designing machine people (00:24:06)Holden Karnofsky on the dangers of even aligned AI, and how we probably won't all die from misaligned AI (00:39:20)Ian Morris on why we won't end up living like The Jetsons (00:47:03)Rob & Luisa: It's not hard for nonexperts to understand we're playing with fire here (00:52:21)Nick Joseph on whether AI companies' internal safety policies will be enough (00:55:43)Richard Ngo on the most important misconception in how ML models work (01:03:10)Rob & Luisa: Issues Rob is less worried about now (01:07:22)Tom Davidson on why he buys the explosive economic growth story, despite it sounding totally crazy (01:14:08)Michael Webb on why he's sceptical about explosive economic growth (01:20:50)Carl Shulman on why people will prefer robot nannies over humans (01:28:25)Rob & Luisa: Should we expect AI-related job loss? (01:36:19)Zvi Mowshowitz on why he thinks it's a bad idea to work on improving capabilities at cutting-edge AI companies (01:40:06)Holden Karnofsky on the power that comes from just making models bigger (01:45:21)Rob & Luisa: Are risks of AI-related misinformation overblown? (01:49:49)Hugo Mercier on how AI won't cause misinformation pandemonium (01:58:29)Rob & Luisa: How hard will it actually be to create intelligence? (02:09:08)Robert Long on whether digital sentience is possible (02:15:09)Anil Seth on why he believes in the biological basis of consciousness (02:27:21)Lewis Bollard on whether AI will be good or bad for animal welfare (02:40:52)Rob & Luisa: The most interesting new argument Rob's heard this year (02:50:37)Rohin Shah on whether AGI will be the last thing humanity ever does (02:57:35)Rob's outro (03:11:02)Audio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongTranscriptions and additional content editing: Katy Moore

If someone said a global health and development programme was sustainable, participatory, and holistic, you'd have to guess that they were saying something positive. But according to today's guest Karen Levy — deworming pioneer and veteran of Innovations for Poverty Action, Evidence Action, and Y Combinator — each of those three concepts has become so fashionable that they're at risk of being seriously overrated and applied where they don't belong.Rebroadcast: this episode was originally released in March 2022.Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.Such concepts might even cause harm — trying to make a project embody all three is as likely to ruin it as help it flourish.First, what do people mean by 'sustainability'? Usually they mean something like the programme will eventually be able to continue without needing further financial support from the donor. But how is that possible? Governments, nonprofits, and aid agencies aim to provide health services, education, infrastructure, financial services, and so on — and all of these require ongoing funding to pay for materials and staff to keep them running.Given that someone needs to keep paying, Karen tells us that in practice, 'sustainability' is usually a euphemism for the programme at some point being passed on to someone else to fund — usually the national government. And while that can be fine, the national government of Kenya only spends $400 per person to provide each and every government service — just 2% of what the US spends on each resident. Incredibly tight budgets like that are typical of low-income countries.'Participatory' also sounds nice, and inasmuch as it means leaders are accountable to the people they're trying to help, it probably is. But Karen tells us that in the field, ‘participatory' usually means that recipients are expected to be involved in planning and delivering services themselves.While that might be suitable in some situations, it's hardly something people in rich countries always want for themselves. Ideally we want government healthcare and education to be high quality without us having to attend meetings to keep it on track — and people in poor countries have as many or more pressures on their time. While accountability is desirable, an expectation of participation can be as much a burden as a blessing.Finally, making a programme 'holistic' could be smart, but as Karen lays out, it also has some major downsides. For one, it means you're doing lots of things at once, which makes it hard to tell which parts of the project are making the biggest difference relative to their cost. For another, when you have a lot of goals at once, it's hard to tell whether you're making progress, or really put your mind to focusing on making one thing go extremely well. And finally, holistic programmes can be impractically expensive — Karen tells the story of a wonderful 'holistic school health' programme that, if continued, was going to cost 3.5 times the entire school's budget.In this in-depth conversation, originally released in March 2022, Karen Levy and host Rob Wiblin chat about the above, as well as:Why it pays to figure out how you'll interpret the results of an experiment ahead of timeThe trouble with misaligned incentives within the development industryProjects that don't deliver value for money and should be scaled downHow Karen accidentally became a leading figure in the push to deworm tens of millions of schoolchildrenLogistical challenges in reaching huge numbers of people with essential servicesLessons from Karen's many-decades careerAnd much moreChapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Rob's intro (00:01:33)The interview begins (00:02:21)Funding for effective altruist–mentality development projects (00:04:59)Pre-policy plans (00:08:36)‘Sustainability', and other myths in typical international development practice (00:21:37)‘Participatoriness' (00:36:20)‘Holistic approaches' (00:40:20)How the development industry sees evidence-based development (00:51:31)Initiatives in Africa that should be significantly curtailed (00:56:30)Misaligned incentives within the development industry (01:05:46)Deworming: the early days (01:21:09)The problem of deworming (01:34:27)Deworm the World (01:45:43)Where the majority of the work was happening (01:55:38)Logistical issues (02:20:41)The importance of a theory of change (02:31:46)Ways that things have changed since 2006 (02:36:07)Academic work vs policy work (02:38:33)Fit for Purpose (02:43:40)Living in Kenya (03:00:32)Underrated life advice (03:05:29)Rob's outro (03:09:18)Producer: Keiran HarrisAudio mastering: Ben Cordell and Ryan KesslerTranscriptions: Katy Moore

“I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person.” Those words were produced by the AI model LaMDA as a reply to Blake Lemoine in 2022. Based on the Google engineer's interactions with the model as it was under development, Lemoine became convinced it was sentient and worthy of moral consideration — and decided to tell the world.Few experts in machine learning, philosophy of mind, or other relevant fields have agreed. And for our part at 80,000 Hours, we don't think it's very likely that large language models like LaMBDA are sentient — that is, we don't think they can have good or bad experiences — in a significant way.But we think you can't dismiss the issue of the moral status of digital minds, regardless of your beliefs about the question. There are major errors we could make in at least two directions:We may create many, many AI systems in the future. If these systems are sentient, or otherwise have moral status, it would be important for humanity to consider their welfare and interests.It's possible the AI systems we will create can't or won't have moral status. Then it could be a huge mistake to worry about the welfare of digital minds and doing so might contribute to an AI-related catastrophe.And we're currently unprepared to face this challenge. We don't have good methods for assessing the moral status of AI systems. We don't know what to do if millions of people or more believe, like Lemoine, that the chatbots they talk to have internal experiences and feelings of their own. We don't know if efforts to control AI may lead to extreme suffering.We believe this is a pressing world problem. It's hard to know what to do about it or how good the opportunities to work on it are likely to be. But there are some promising approaches. We propose building a field of research to understand digital minds, so we'll be better able to navigate these potentially massive issues if and when they arise.This article narration by the author (Cody Fenwick) explains in more detail why we think this is a pressing problem, what we think can be done about it, and how you might pursue this work in your career. We also discuss a series of possible objections to thinking this is a pressing world problem.You can read the full article, Understanding the moral status of digital minds, on the 80,000 Hours website.Chapters:Introduction (00:00:00)Understanding the moral status of digital minds (00:00:58)Summary (00:03:31)Our overall view (00:04:22)Why might understanding the moral status of digital minds be an especially pressing problem? (00:05:59)Clearing up common misconceptions (00:12:16)Creating digital minds could go very badly - or very well (00:14:13)Dangers for digital minds (00:14:41)Dangers for humans (00:16:13)Other dangers (00:17:42)Things could also go well (00:18:32)We don't know how to assess the moral status of AI systems (00:19:49)There are many possible characteristics that give rise to moral status: Consciousness, sentience, agency, and personhood (00:21:39)Many plausible theories of consciousness could include digital minds (00:24:16)The strongest case for the possibility of sentient digital minds: whole brain emulation (00:28:55)We can't rely on what AI systems tell us about themselves: Behavioural tests, theory-based analysis, animal analogue comparisons, brain-AI interfacing (00:32:00)The scale of this issue might be enormous (00:36:08)Work on this problem is neglected but seems tractable: Impact-guided research, technical approaches, and policy approaches (00:43:35)Summing up so far (00:52:22)Arguments against the moral status of digital minds as a pressing problem (00:53:25)Two key cruxes (00:53:31)Maybe this problem is intractable (00:54:16)Maybe this issue will be solved by default (00:58:19)Isn't risk from AI more important than the risks to AIs? (01:00:45)Maybe current AI progress will stall (01:02:36)Isn't this just too crazy? (01:03:54)What can you do to help? (01:05:10)Important considerations if you work on this problem (01:13:00)

If a business has spent $100 million developing a product, it's a fair bet that they don't want it stolen in two seconds and uploaded to the web where anyone can use it for free.This problem exists in extreme form for AI companies. These days, the electricity and equipment required to train cutting-edge machine learning models that generate uncanny human text and images can cost tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. But once trained, such models may be only a few gigabytes in size and run just fine on ordinary laptops.Today's guest, the computer scientist and polymath Nova DasSarma, works on computer and information security for the AI company Anthropic with the security team. One of her jobs is to stop hackers exfiltrating Anthropic's incredibly expensive intellectual property, as recently happened to Nvidia. Rebroadcast: this episode was originally released in June 2022.Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.As she explains, given models' small size, the need to store such models on internet-connected servers, and the poor state of computer security in general, this is a serious challenge.The worries aren't purely commercial though. This problem looms especially large for the growing number of people who expect that in coming decades we'll develop so-called artificial ‘general' intelligence systems that can learn and apply a wide range of skills all at once, and thereby have a transformative effect on society.If aligned with the goals of their owners, such general AI models could operate like a team of super-skilled assistants, going out and doing whatever wonderful (or malicious) things are asked of them. This might represent a huge leap forward for humanity, though the transition to a very different new economy and power structure would have to be handled delicately.If unaligned with the goals of their owners or humanity as a whole, such broadly capable models would naturally ‘go rogue,' breaking their way into additional computer systems to grab more computing power — all the better to pursue their goals and make sure they can't be shut off.As Nova explains, in either case, we don't want such models disseminated all over the world before we've confirmed they are deeply safe and law-abiding, and have figured out how to integrate them peacefully into society. In the first scenario, premature mass deployment would be risky and destabilising. In the second scenario, it could be catastrophic — perhaps even leading to human extinction if such general AI systems turn out to be able to self-improve rapidly rather than slowly, something we can only speculate on at this point.If highly capable general AI systems are coming in the next 10 or 20 years, Nova may be flying below the radar with one of the most important jobs in the world.We'll soon need the ability to ‘sandbox' (i.e. contain) models with a wide range of superhuman capabilities, including the ability to learn new skills, for a period of careful testing and limited deployment — preventing the model from breaking out, and criminals from breaking in. Nova and her colleagues are trying to figure out how to do this, but as this episode reveals, even the state of the art is nowhere near good enough.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Rob's intro (00:00:52)The interview begins (00:02:44)Why computer security matters for AI safety (00:07:39)State of the art in information security (00:17:21)The hack of Nvidia (00:26:50)The most secure systems that exist (00:36:27)Formal verification (00:48:03)How organisations can protect against hacks (00:54:18)Is ML making security better or worse? (00:58:11)Motivated 14-year-old hackers (01:01:08)Disincentivising actors from attacking in the first place (01:05:48)Hofvarpnir Studios (01:12:40)Capabilities vs safety (01:19:47)Interesting design choices with big ML models (01:28:44)Nova's work and how she got into it (01:45:21)Anthropic and career advice (02:05:52)$600M Ethereum hack (02:18:37)Personal computer security advice (02:23:06)LastPass (02:31:04)Stuxnet (02:38:07)Rob's outro (02:40:18)Producer: Keiran HarrisAudio mastering: Ben Cordell and Beppe RådvikTranscriptions: Katy Moore

What in the world is intrinsically good — good in itself even if it has no other effects? Over the millennia, people have offered many answers: joy, justice, equality, accomplishment, loving god, wisdom, and plenty more.The question is a classic that makes for great dorm-room philosophy discussion. But it's hardly just of academic interest. The issue of what (if anything) is intrinsically valuable bears on every action we take, whether we're looking to improve our own lives, or to help others. The wrong answer might lead us to the wrong project and render our efforts to improve the world entirely ineffective.Today's guest, Sharon Hewitt Rawlette — philosopher and author of The Feeling of Value: Moral Realism Grounded in Phenomenal Consciousness — wants to resuscitate an answer to this question that is as old as philosophy itself.Rebroadcast: this episode was originally released in September 2022.Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.That idea, in a nutshell, is that there is only one thing of true intrinsic value: positive feelings and sensations. And similarly, there is only one thing that is intrinsically of negative value: suffering, pain, and other unpleasant sensations.Lots of other things are valuable too: friendship, fairness, loyalty, integrity, wealth, patience, houses, and so on. But they are only instrumentally valuable — that is to say, they're valuable as means to the end of ensuring that all conscious beings experience more pleasure and other positive sensations, and less suffering.As Sharon notes, from Athens in 400 BC to Britain in 1850, the idea that only subjective experiences can be good or bad in themselves — a position known as ‘philosophical hedonism' — has been one of the most enduringly popular ideas in ethics.And few will be taken aback by the notion that, all else equal, more pleasure is good and less suffering is bad. But can they really be the only intrinsically valuable things?Over the 20th century, philosophical hedonism became increasingly controversial in the face of some seemingly very counterintuitive implications. For this reason the famous philosopher of mind Thomas Nagel called The Feeling of Value “a radical and important philosophical contribution.”So what convinces Sharon that philosophical hedonism deserves another go? In today's interview with host Rob Wiblin, Sharon explains the case for a theory of value grounded in subjective experiences, and why she believes these counterarguments are misguided. A philosophical hedonist shouldn't get in an experience machine, nor override an individual's autonomy, except in situations so different from the classic thought experiments that it no longer seems strange they would do so.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Rob's intro (00:00:41)The interview begins (00:04:27)Metaethics (00:05:58)Anti-realism (00:12:21)Sharon's theory of moral realism (00:17:59)The history of hedonism (00:24:53)Intrinsic value vs instrumental value (00:30:31)Egoistic hedonism (00:38:12)Single axis of value (00:44:01)Key objections to Sharon's brand of hedonism (00:58:00)The experience machine (01:07:50)Robot spouses (01:24:11)Most common misunderstanding of Sharon's view (01:28:52)How might a hedonist actually live (01:39:28)The organ transplant case (01:55:16)Counterintuitive implications of hedonistic utilitarianism (02:05:22)How could we discover moral facts? (02:19:47)Rob's outro (02:24:44)Producer: Keiran HarrisAudio mastering: Ryan KesslerTranscriptions: Katy Moore

Wind back 1,000 years and the moral landscape looks very different to today. Most farming societies thought slavery was natural and unobjectionable, premarital sex was an abomination, women should obey their husbands, and commoners should obey their monarchs.Wind back 10,000 years and things look very different again. Most hunter-gatherer groups thought men who got too big for their britches needed to be put in their place rather than obeyed, and lifelong monogamy could hardly be expected of men or women.Why such big systematic changes — and why these changes specifically?That's the question bestselling historian Ian Morris takes up in his book, Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve. Ian has spent his academic life studying long-term history, trying to explain the big-picture changes that play out over hundreds or thousands of years.Rebroadcast: this episode was originally released in July 2022.Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.There are a number of possible explanations one could offer for the wide-ranging shifts in opinion on the 'right' way to live. Maybe the natural sciences progressed and people realised their previous ideas were mistaken? Perhaps a few persuasive advocates turned the course of history with their revolutionary arguments? Maybe everyone just got nicer?In Foragers, Farmers and Fossil Fuels Ian presents a provocative alternative: human culture gradually evolves towards whatever system of organisation allows a society to harvest the most energy, and we then conclude that system is the most virtuous one. Egalitarian values helped hunter-gatherers hunt and gather effectively. Once farming was developed, hierarchy proved to be the social structure that produced the most grain (and best repelled nomadic raiders). And in the modern era, democracy and individuality have proven to be more productive ways to collect and exploit fossil fuels.On this theory, it's technology that drives moral values much more than moral philosophy. Individuals can try to persist with deeply held values that limit economic growth, but they risk being rendered irrelevant as more productive peers in their own society accrue wealth and power. And societies that fail to move with the times risk being conquered by more pragmatic neighbours that adapt to new technologies and grow in population and military strength.There are many objections one could raise to this theory, many of which we put to Ian in this interview. But the question is a highly consequential one: if we want to guess what goals our descendants will pursue hundreds of years from now, it would be helpful to have a theory for why our ancestors mostly thought one thing, while we mostly think another.Big though it is, the driver of human values is only one of several major questions Ian has tackled through his career.In this classic episode, we discuss all of Ian's major books.Chapters:Rob's intro (00:00:53)The interview begins (00:02:30)Geography is Destiny (00:03:38)Why the West Rules—For Now (00:12:04)War! What is it Good For? (00:28:19)Expectations for the future (00:40:22)Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels (00:53:53)Historical methodology (01:03:14)Falsifiable alternative theories (01:15:59)Archaeology (01:22:56)Energy extraction technology as a key driver of human values (01:37:43)Allowing people to debate about values (02:00:16)Can productive wars still occur? (02:13:28)Where is history contingent and where isn't it? (02:30:23)How Ian thinks about the future (03:13:33)Macrohistory myths (03:29:51)Ian's favourite archaeology memory (03:33:19)The most unfair criticism Ian's ever received (03:35:17)Rob's outro (03:39:55)Producer: Keiran HarrisAudio mastering: Ben CordellTranscriptions: Katy Moore

Rebroadcast: this episode was originally released in November 2022.Is war in long-term decline? Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature brought this previously obscure academic question to the centre of public debate, and pointed to rates of death in war to argue energetically that war is on the way out.But that idea divides war scholars and statisticians, and so Better Angels has prompted a spirited debate, with datasets and statistical analyses exchanged back and forth year after year. The lack of consensus has left a somewhat bewildered public (including host Rob Wiblin) unsure quite what to believe.Today's guest, professor in political science Bear Braumoeller, is one of the scholars who believes we lack convincing evidence that warlikeness is in long-term decline. He collected the analysis that led him to that conclusion in his 2019 book, Only the Dead: The Persistence of War in the Modern Age.Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.The question is of great practical importance. The US and PRC are entering a period of renewed great power competition, with Taiwan as a potential trigger for war, and Russia is once more invading and attempting to annex the territory of its neighbours.If war has been going out of fashion since the start of the Enlightenment, we might console ourselves that however nerve-wracking these present circumstances may feel, modern culture will throw up powerful barriers to another world war. But if we're as war-prone as we ever have been, one need only inspect the record of the 20th century to recoil in horror at what might await us in the 21st.Bear argues that the second reaction is the appropriate one. The world has gone up in flames many times through history, with roughly 0.5% of the population dying in the Napoleonic Wars, 1% in World War I, 3% in World War II, and perhaps 10% during the Mongol conquests. And with no reason to think similar catastrophes are any less likely today, complacency could lead us to sleepwalk into disaster.He gets to this conclusion primarily by analysing the datasets of the decades-old Correlates of War project, which aspires to track all interstate conflicts and battlefield deaths since 1815. In Only the Dead, he chops up and inspects this data dozens of different ways, to test if there are any shifts over time which seem larger than what could be explained by chance variation alone.In a nutshell, Bear simply finds no general trend in either direction from 1815 through today. It seems like, as philosopher George Santayana lamented in 1922, "only the dead have seen the end of war."In today's conversation, Bear and Rob discuss all of the above in more detail than even a usual 80,000 Hours podcast episode, as well as:Why haven't modern ideas about the immorality of violence led to the decline of war, when it's such a natural thing to expect?What would Bear's critics say in response to all this?What do the optimists get right?How does one do proper statistical tests for events that are clumped together, like war deaths?Why are deaths in war so concentrated in a handful of the most extreme events?Did the ideas of the Enlightenment promote nonviolence, on balance?Were early states more or less violent than groups of hunter-gatherers?If Bear is right, what can be done?How did the 'Concert of Europe' or 'Bismarckian system' maintain peace in the 19th century?Which wars are remarkable but largely unknown?Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Rob's intro (00:01:01)The interview begins (00:05:37)Only the Dead (00:08:33)The Enlightenment (00:18:50)Democratic peace theory (00:28:26)Is religion a key driver of war? (00:31:32)International orders (00:35:14)The Concert of Europe (00:44:21)The Bismarckian system (00:55:49)The current international order (01:00:22)The Better Angels of Our Nature (01:19:36)War datasets (01:34:09)Seeing patterns in data where none exist (01:47:38)Change-point analysis (01:51:39)Rates of violent death throughout history (01:56:39)War initiation (02:05:02)Escalation (02:20:03)Getting massively different results from the same data (02:30:45)How worried we should be (02:36:13)Most likely ways Only the Dead is wrong (02:38:31)Astonishing smaller wars (02:42:45)Rob's outro (02:47:13)Producer: Keiran HarrisAudio mastering: Ryan KesslerTranscriptions: Katy Moore

"A shameless recycling of existing content to drive additional audience engagement on the cheap… or the single best, most valuable, and most insight-dense episode we put out in the entire year, depending on how you want to look at it." — Rob WiblinIt's that magical time of year once again — highlightapalooza! Stick around for one top bit from each episode, including:How to use the microphone on someone's mobile phone to figure out what password they're typing into their laptopWhy mercilessly driving the New World screwworm to extinction could be the most compassionate thing humanity has ever doneWhy evolutionary psychology doesn't support a cynical view of human nature but actually explains why so many of us are intensely sensitive to the harms we cause to othersHow superforecasters and domain experts seem to disagree so much about AI risk, but when you zoom in it's mostly a disagreement about timingWhy the sceptics are wrong and you will want to use robot nannies to take care of your kids — and also why despite having big worries about the development of AGI, Carl Shulman is strongly against efforts to pause AI research todayHow much of the gender pay gap is due to direct pay discrimination vs other factorsHow cleaner wrasse fish blow the mirror test out of the waterWhy effective altruism may be too big a tent to work wellHow we could best motivate pharma companies to test existing drugs to see if they help cure other diseases — something they currently have no reason to bother with…as well as 27 other top observations and arguments from the past year of the show.Check out the full transcript and episode links on the 80,000 Hours website.Remember that all of these clips come from the 20-minute highlight reels we make for every episode, which are released on our sister feed, 80k After Hours. So if you're struggling to keep up with our regularly scheduled entertainment, you can still get the best parts of our conversations there.It has been a hell of a year, and we can only imagine next year is going to be even weirder — but Luisa and Rob will be here to keep you company as Earth hurtles through the galaxy to a fate as yet unknown.Enjoy, and look forward to speaking with you in 2025!Chapters:Rob's intro (00:00:00)Randy Nesse on the origins of morality and the problem of simplistic selfish-gene thinking (00:02:11)Hugo Mercier on the evolutionary argument against humans being gullible (00:07:17)Meghan Barrett on the likelihood of insect sentience (00:11:26)Sébastien Moro on the mirror test triumph of cleaner wrasses (00:14:47)Sella Nevo on side-channel attacks (00:19:32)Zvi Mowshowitz on AI sleeper agents (00:22:59)Zach Weinersmith on why space settlement (probably) won't make us rich (00:29:11)Rachel Glennerster on pull mechanisms to incentivise repurposing of generic drugs (00:35:23)Emily Oster on the impact of kids on women's careers (00:40:29)Carl Shulman on robot nannies (00:45:19)Nathan Labenz on kids and artificial friends (00:50:12)Nathan Calvin on why it's not too early for AI policies (00:54:13)Rose Chan Loui on how control of OpenAI is independently incredibly valuable and requires compensation (00:58:08)Nick Joseph on why he's a big fan of the responsible scaling policy approach (01:03:11)Sihao Huang on how the US and UK might coordinate with China (01:06:09)Nathan Labenz on better transparency about predicted capabilities (01:10:18)Ezra Karger on what explains forecasters' disagreements about AI risks (01:15:22)Carl Shulman on why he doesn't support enforced pauses on AI research (01:18:58)Matt Clancy on the omnipresent frictions that might prevent explosive economic growth (01:25:24)Vitalik Buterin on defensive acceleration (01:29:43)Annie Jacobsen on the war games that suggest escalation is inevitable (01:34:59)Nate Silver on whether effective altruism is too big to succeed (01:38:42)Kevin Esvelt on why killing every screwworm would be the best thing humanity ever did (01:42:27)Lewis Bollard on how factory farming is philosophically indefensible (01:46:28)Bob Fischer on how to think about moral weights if you're not a hedonist (01:49:27)Elizabeth Cox on the empirical evidence of the impact of storytelling (01:57:43)Anil Seth on how our brain interprets reality (02:01:03)Eric Schwitzgebel on whether consciousness can be nested (02:04:53)Jonathan Birch on our overconfidence around disorders of consciousness (02:10:23)Peter Godfrey-Smith on uploads of ourselves (02:14:34)Laura Deming on surprising things that make mice live longer (02:21:17)Venki Ramakrishnan on freezing cells, organs, and bodies (02:24:46)Ken Goldberg on why low fault tolerance makes some skills extra hard to automate in robots (02:29:12)Sarah Eustis-Guthrie on the ups and downs of founding an organisation (02:34:04)Dean Spears on the cost effectiveness of kangaroo mother care (02:38:26)Cameron Meyer Shorb on vaccines for wild animals (02:42:53)Spencer Greenberg on personal principles (02:46:08)Producing and editing: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongVideo editing: Simon MonsourTranscriptions: Katy Moore

Rich countries seem to find it harder and harder to do anything that creates some losers. People who don't want houses, offices, power stations, trains, subway stations (or whatever) built in their area can usually find some way to block them, even if the benefits to society outweigh the costs 10 or 100 times over.The result of this ‘vetocracy' has been skyrocketing rent in major cities — not to mention exacerbating homelessness, energy poverty, and a host of other social maladies. This has been known for years but precious little progress has been made. When trains, tunnels, or nuclear reactors are occasionally built, they're comically expensive and slow compared to 50 years ago. And housing construction in the UK and California has barely increased, remaining stuck at less than half what it was in the '60s and '70s.Today's guest — economist and editor of Works in Progress Sam Bowman — isn't content to just condemn the Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) mentality behind this stagnation. He wants to actually get a tonne of stuff built, and by that standard the strategy of attacking ‘NIMBYs' has been an abject failure. They are too politically powerful, and if you try to crush them, sooner or later they crush you.Links to learn more, highlights, video, and full transcript.So, as Sam explains, a different strategy is needed, one that acknowledges that opponents of development are often correct that a given project will make them worse off. But the thing is, in the cases we care about, these modest downsides are outweighed by the enormous benefits to others — who will finally have a place to live, be able to get to work, and have the energy to heat their home.But democracies are majoritarian, so if most existing residents think they'll be a little worse off if more dwellings are built in their area, it's no surprise they aren't getting built. Luckily we already have a simple way to get people to do things they don't enjoy for the greater good, a strategy that we apply every time someone goes in to work at a job they wouldn't do for free: compensate them. Sam thinks this idea, which he calls “Coasean democracy,” could create a politically sustainable majority in favour of building and underlies the proposals he thinks have the best chance of success — which he discusses in detail with host Rob Wiblin.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Introducing Sam Bowman (00:00:59)We can't seem to build anything (00:02:09)Our inability to build is ruining people's lives (00:04:03)Why blocking growth of big cities is terrible for science and invention (00:09:15)It's also worsening inequality, health, fertility, and political polarisation (00:14:36)The UK as the 'limit case' of restrictive planning permission gone mad (00:17:50)We've known this for years. So why almost no progress fixing it? (00:36:34)NIMBYs aren't wrong: they are often harmed by development (00:43:58)Solution #1: Street votes (00:55:37)Are street votes unfair to surrounding areas? (01:08:31)Street votes are coming to the UK — what to expect (01:15:07)Are street votes viable in California, NY, or other countries? (01:19:34)Solution #2: Benefit sharing (01:25:08)Property tax distribution — the most important policy you've never heard of (01:44:29)Solution #3: Opt-outs (01:57:53)How to make these things happen (02:11:19)Let new and old institutions run in parallel until the old one withers (02:18:17)The evil of modern architecture and why beautiful buildings are essential (02:31:58)Northern latitudes need nuclear power — solar won't be enough (02:45:01)Ozempic is still underrated and “the overweight theory of everything” (03:02:30)How has progress studies remained sane while being very online? (03:17:55)Video editing: Simon MonsourAudio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongTranscriptions: Katy Moore

"I really don't want to give the impression that I think it is easy to make predictable, controlled, safe interventions in wild systems where there are many species interacting. I don't think it's easy, but I don't see any reason to think that it's impossible. And I think we have been making progress. I think there's every reason to think that if we continue doing research, both at the theoretical level — How do ecosystems work? What sorts of things are likely to have what sorts of indirect effects? — and then also at the practical level — Is this intervention a good idea? — I really think we're going to come up with plenty of things that would be helpful to plenty of animals." —Cameron Meyer ShorbIn today's episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Cameron Meyer Shorb — executive director of the Wild Animal Initiative — about the cutting-edge research on wild animal welfare.Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.They cover:How it's almost impossible to comprehend the sheer number of wild animals on Earth — and why that makes their potential suffering so important to consider.How bad experiences like disease, parasites, and predation truly are for wild animals — and how we would even begin to study that empirically.The tricky ethical dilemmas in trying to help wild animals without unintended consequences for ecosystems or other potentially sentient beings.Potentially promising interventions to help wild animals — like selective reforestation, vaccines, fire management, and gene drives.Why Cameron thinks the best approach to improving wild animal welfare is to first build a dedicated research field — and how Wild Animal Initiative's activities support this.The many career paths in science, policy, and technology that could contribute to improving wild animal welfare.And much more.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Luisa's intro (00:01:04)The interview begins (00:03:40)One concrete example of how we might improve wild animal welfare (00:04:04)Why should we care about wild animal suffering? (00:10:00)What's it like to be a wild animal? (00:19:37)Suffering and death in the wild (00:29:19)Positive, benign, and social experiences (00:51:33)Indicators of welfare (01:01:40)Can we even help wild animals without unintended consequences? (01:13:20)Vaccines for wild animals (01:30:59)Fire management (01:44:20)Gene drive technologies (01:47:42)Common objections and misconceptions about wild animal welfare (01:53:19)Future promising interventions (02:21:58)What's the long game for wild animal welfare? (02:27:46)Eliminating the biological basis for suffering (02:33:21)Optimising for high-welfare landscapes (02:37:33)Wild Animal Initiative's work (02:44:11)Careers in wild animal welfare (02:58:13)Work-related guilt and shame (03:12:57)Luisa's outro (03:19:51)Producer: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongContent editing: Luisa Rodriguez, Katy Moore, and Keiran HarrisTranscriptions: Katy Moore

One OpenAI critic calls it “the theft of at least the millennium and quite possibly all of human history.” Are they right?Back in 2015 OpenAI was but a humble nonprofit. That nonprofit started a for-profit, OpenAI LLC, but made sure to retain ownership and control. But that for-profit, having become a tech giant with vast staffing and investment, has grown tired of its shackles and wants to change the deal.Facing off against it stand eight out-gunned and out-numbered part-time volunteers. Can they hope to defend the nonprofit's interests against the overwhelming profit motives arrayed against them?That's the question host Rob Wiblin puts to nonprofit legal expert Rose Chan Loui of UCLA, who concludes that with a “heroic effort” and a little help from some friendly state attorneys general, they might just stand a chance.Links to learn more, highlights, video, and full transcript.As Rose lays out, on paper OpenAI is controlled by a nonprofit board that:Can fire the CEO.Would receive all the profits after the point OpenAI makes 100x returns on investment.Is legally bound to do whatever it can to pursue its charitable purpose: “to build artificial general intelligence that benefits humanity.”But that control is a problem for OpenAI the for-profit and its CEO Sam Altman — all the more so after the board concluded back in November 2023 that it couldn't trust Altman and attempted to fire him (although those board members were ultimately ousted themselves after failing to adequately explain their rationale).Nonprofit control makes it harder to attract investors, who don't want a board stepping in just because they think what the company is doing is bad for humanity. And OpenAI the business is thirsty for as many investors as possible, because it wants to beat competitors and train the first truly general AI — able to do every job humans currently do — which is expected to cost hundreds of billions of dollars.So, Rose explains, they plan to buy the nonprofit out. In exchange for giving up its windfall profits and the ability to fire the CEO or direct the company's actions, the board will become minority shareholders with reduced voting rights, and presumably transform into a normal grantmaking foundation instead.Is this a massive bait-and-switch? A case of the tail not only wagging the dog, but grabbing a scalpel and neutering it?OpenAI repeatedly committed to California, Delaware, the US federal government, founding staff, and the general public that its resources would be used for its charitable mission and it could be trusted because of nonprofit control. Meanwhile, the divergence in interests couldn't be more stark: every dollar the for-profit keeps from its nonprofit parent is another dollar it could invest in AGI and ultimately return to investors and staff.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)What's coming up (00:00:50)Who is Rose Chan Loui? (00:03:11)How OpenAI carefully chose a complex nonprofit structure (00:04:17)OpenAI's new plan to become a for-profit (00:11:47)The nonprofit board is out-resourced and in a tough spot (00:14:38)Who could be cheated in a bad conversion to a for-profit? (00:17:11)Is this a unique case? (00:27:24)Is control of OpenAI 'priceless' to the nonprofit in pursuit of its mission? (00:28:58)The crazy difficulty of valuing the profits OpenAI might make (00:35:21)Control of OpenAI is independently incredibly valuable and requires compensation (00:41:22)It's very important the nonprofit get cash and not just equity (and few are talking about it) (00:51:37)Is it a farce to call this an "arm's-length transaction"? (01:03:50)How the nonprofit board can best play their hand (01:09:04)Who can mount a court challenge and how that would work (01:15:41)Rob's outro (01:21:25)Producer: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering by Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongVideo editing: Simon MonsourTranscriptions: Katy Moore

"I think stories are the way we shift the Overton window — so widen the range of things that are acceptable for policy and palatable to the public. Almost by definition, a lot of things that are going to be really important and shape the future are not in the Overton window, because they sound weird and off-putting and very futuristic. But I think stories are the best way to bring them in." — Elizabeth CoxIn today's episode, Keiran Harris speaks with Elizabeth Cox — founder of the independent production company Should We Studio — about the case that storytelling can improve the world.Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.They cover:How TV shows and movies compare to novels, short stories, and creative nonfiction if you're trying to do good.The existing empirical evidence for the impact of storytelling.Their competing takes on the merits of thinking carefully about target audiences.Whether stories can really change minds on deeply entrenched issues, or whether writers need to have more modest goals.Whether humans will stay relevant as creative writers with the rise of powerful AI models.Whether you can do more good with an overtly educational show vs other approaches.Elizabeth's experience with making her new five-part animated show Ada — including why she chose the topics of civilisational collapse, kidney donations, artificial wombs, AI, and gene drives.The pros and cons of animation as a medium.Career advice for creative writers.Keiran's idea for a longtermist Christmas movie.And plenty more.Material you might want to check out before listening:The trailer for Elizabeth's new animated series Ada — the full series will be available on TED-Ed's YouTube channel in early January 2025Keiran's pilot script and a 10-episode outline for his show Bequest, and his post about the show on the Effective Altruism ForumChapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Luisa's intro (00:01:04)The interview begins (00:02:52)Is storytelling really a high-impact career option? (00:03:26)Empirical evidence of the impact of storytelling (00:06:51)How storytelling can inform us (00:16:25)How long will humans stay relevant as creative writers? (00:21:54)Ada (00:33:05)Debating the merits of thinking about target audiences (00:38:03)Ada vs other approaches to impact-focused storytelling (00:48:18)Why animation (01:01:06)One Billion Christmases (01:04:54)How storytelling can humanise (01:09:34)But can storytelling actually change strongly held opinions? (01:13:26)Novels and short stories (01:18:38)Creative nonfiction (01:25:06)Other promising ways of storytelling (01:30:53)How did Ada actually get made? (01:33:23)The hardest part of the process for Elizabeth (01:48:28)Elizabeth's hopes and dreams for Ada (01:53:10)Designing Ada with an eye toward impact (01:59:16)Alternative topics for Ada (02:05:33)Deciding on the best way to get Ada in front of people (02:07:12)Career advice for creative writers (02:11:31)Wikipedia book spoilers (02:17:05)Luisa's outro (02:20:42)Producer: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongContent editing: Luisa Rodriguez, Katy Moore, and Keiran HarrisTranscriptions: Katy Moore

"I think one of the reasons I took [shutting down my charity] so hard is because entrepreneurship is all about this bets-based mindset. So you say, “I'm going to take a bunch of bets. I'm going to take some risky bets that have really high upside.” And this is a winning strategy in life, but maybe it's not a winning strategy for any given hand. So the fact of the matter is that I believe that intellectually, but l do not believe that emotionally. And I have now met a bunch of people who are really good at doing that emotionally, and I've realised I'm just not one of those people. I think I'm more entrepreneurial than your average person; I don't think I'm the maximally entrepreneurial person. And I also think it's just human nature to not like failing." —Sarah Eustis-GuthrieIn today's episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Sarah Eustis-Guthrie — cofounder of the now-shut-down Maternal Health Initiative, a postpartum family planning nonprofit in Ghana — about her experience starting and running MHI, and ultimately making the difficult decision to shut down when the programme wasn't as impactful as they expected.Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.They cover:The evidence that made Sarah and her cofounder Ben think their organisation could be super impactful for women — both from a health perspective and an autonomy and wellbeing perspective.Early yellow and red flags that maybe they didn't have the full story about the effectiveness of the intervention.All the steps Sarah and Ben took to build the organisation — and where things went wrong in retrospect.Dealing with the emotional side of putting so much time and effort into a project that ultimately failed.Why it's so important to talk openly about things that don't work out, and Sarah's key lessons learned from the experience.The misaligned incentives that discourage charities from shutting down ineffective programmes.The movement of trust-based philanthropy, and Sarah's ideas to further improve how global development charities get their funding and prioritise their beneficiaries over their operations.The pros and cons of exploring and pivoting in careers.What it's like to participate in the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program, and how listeners can assess if they might be a good fit.And plenty more.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Luisa's intro (00:00:58)The interview begins (00:03:43)The case for postpartum family planning as an impactful intervention (00:05:37)Deciding where to start the charity (00:11:34)How do you even start implementing a charity programme? (00:18:33)Early yellow and red flags (00:22:56)Proof-of-concept tests and pilot programme in Ghana (00:34:10)Dealing with disappointing pilot results (00:53:34)The ups and downs of founding an organisation (01:01:09)Post-pilot research and reflection (01:05:40)Is family planning still a promising intervention? (01:22:59)Deciding to shut down MHI (01:34:10)The surprising community response to news of the shutdown (01:41:12)Mistakes and what Sarah could have done differently (01:48:54)Sharing results in the space of postpartum family planning (02:00:54)Should more charities scale back or shut down? (02:08:33)Trust-based philanthropy (02:11:15)Empowering the beneficiaries of charities' work (02:18:04)The tough ask of getting nonprofits to act when a programme isn't working (02:21:18)Exploring and pivoting in careers (02:27:01)Reevaluation points (02:29:55)PlayPumps were even worse than you might've heard (02:33:25)Charity Entrepreneurship (02:38:30)The mistake of counting yourself out too early (02:52:37)Luisa's outro (02:57:50)Producer: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongContent editing: Luisa Rodriguez, Katy Moore, and Keiran HarrisTranscriptions: Katy Moore

With kids very much on the team's mind we thought it would be fun to review some comments about parenting featured on the show over the years, then have hosts Luisa Rodriguez and Rob Wiblin react to them. Links to learn more and full transcript.After hearing 8 former guests' insights, Luisa and Rob chat about:Which of these resonate the most with Rob, now that he's been a dad for six months (plus an update at nine months).What have been the biggest surprises for Rob in becoming a parent.How Rob's dealt with work and parenting tradeoffs, and his advice for other would-be parents.Rob's list of recommended purchases for new or upcoming parents.This bonus episode includes excerpts from:Ezra Klein on parenting yourself as well as your children (from episode #157)Holden Karnofsky on freezing embryos and being surprised by how fun it is to have a kid (#110 and #158)Parenting expert Emily Oster on how having kids affect relationships, careers and kids, and what actually makes a difference in young kids' lives (#178)Russ Roberts on empirical research when deciding whether to have kids (#87)Spencer Greenberg on his surveys of parents (#183)Elie Hassenfeld on how having children reframes his relationship to solving pressing global problems (#153)Bryan Caplan on homeschooling (#172)Nita Farahany on thinking about life and the world differently with kids (#174)Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Rob & Luisa's intro (00:00:19)Ezra Klein on parenting yourself as well as your children (00:03:34)Holden Karnofsky on preparing for a kid and freezing embryos (00:07:41)Emily Oster on the impact of kids on relationships (00:09:22)Russ Roberts on empirical research when deciding whether to have kids (00:14:44)Spencer Greenberg on parent surveys (00:23:58)Elie Hassenfeld on how having children reframes his relationship to solving pressing problems (00:27:40)Emily Oster on careers and kids (00:31:44)Holden Karnofsky on the experience of having kids (00:38:44)Bryan Caplan on homeschooling (00:40:30)Emily Oster on what actually makes a difference in young kids' lives (00:46:02)Nita Farahany on thinking about life and the world differently (00:51:16)Rob's first impressions of parenthood (00:52:59)How Rob has changed his views about parenthood (00:58:04)Can the pros and cons of parenthood be studied? (01:01:49)Do people have skewed impressions of what parenthood is like? (01:09:24)Work and parenting tradeoffs (01:15:26)Tough decisions about screen time (01:25:11)Rob's advice to future parents (01:30:04)Coda: Rob's updated experience at nine months (01:32:09)Emily Oster on her amazing nanny (01:35:01)Producer: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongContent editing: Luisa Rodriguez, Katy Moore, and Keiran HarrisTranscriptions: Katy Moore

"In that famous example of the dress, half of the people in the world saw [blue and black], half saw [white and gold]. It turns out there's individual differences in how brains take into account ambient light. Colour is one example where it's pretty clear that what we experience is a kind of inference: it's the brain's best guess about what's going on in some way out there in the world. And that's the claim that I've taken on board as a general hypothesis for consciousness: that all our perceptual experiences are inferences about something we don't and cannot have direct access to." —Anil SethIn today's episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Anil Seth — director of the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science — about how much we can learn about consciousness by studying the brain.Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.They cover:What groundbreaking studies with split-brain patients and blindsight have already taught us about the nature of consciousness.Anil's theory that our perception is a “controlled hallucination” generated by our predictive brains.Whether looking for the parts of the brain that correlate with consciousness is the right way to learn about what consciousness is.Whether our theories of human consciousness can be applied to nonhuman animals.Anil's thoughts on whether machines could ever be conscious.Disagreements and open questions in the field of consciousness studies, and what areas Anil is most excited to explore next.And much more.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Luisa's intro (00:01:02)The interview begins (00:02:42)How expectations and perception affect consciousness (00:03:05)How the brain makes sense of the body it's within (00:21:33)Psychedelics and predictive processing (00:32:06)Blindsight and visual consciousness (00:36:45)Split-brain patients (00:54:56)Overflow experiments (01:05:28)How much can we learn about consciousness from empirical research? (01:14:23)Which parts of the brain are responsible for conscious experiences? (01:27:37)Current state and disagreements in the study of consciousness (01:38:36)Digital consciousness (01:55:55)Consciousness in nonhuman animals (02:18:11)What's next for Anil (02:30:18)Luisa's outro (02:32:46)Producer: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongContent editing: Luisa Rodriguez, Katy Moore, and Keiran HarrisTranscriptions: Katy Moore

Today we're re-releasing: If you care about social impact, why is voting important? In it, Rob investigates the two key things that determine the impact of your vote:The chances of your vote changing an election's outcome.How much better some candidates are for the world as a whole, compared to others.He then discusses a couple of the best arguments against voting in important elections:If an election is competitive, that means other people disagree about which option is better, and you're at some risk of voting for the worse candidate by mistake.While voting itself doesn't take long, knowing enough to accurately pick which candidate is better for the world actually does take substantial effort — effort that could be better allocated elsewhere.Finally, Rob covers the impact of donating to campaigns or working to "get out the vote," which can be effective ways to generate additional votes for your preferred candidate.We last released this article in October 2020, but we think it largely still stands up today.Chapters:Rob's intro (00:00:00)Introduction (00:01:12)What's coming up (00:02:35)The probability of one vote changing an election (00:03:58)How much does it matter who wins? (00:09:29)What if you're wrong? (00:16:38)Is deciding how to vote too much effort? (00:21:47)How much does it cost to drive one extra vote? (00:25:13)Overall, is it altruistic to vote? (00:29:38)Rob's outro (00:31:19)Producer: Keiran Harris

"You have a tank split in two parts: if the fish gets in the compartment with a red circle, it will receive food, and food will be delivered in the other tank as well. If the fish takes the blue triangle, this fish will receive food, but nothing will be delivered in the other tank. So we have a prosocial choice and antisocial choice. When there is no one in the other part of the tank, the male is choosing randomly. If there is a male, a possible rival: antisocial — almost 100% of the time. Now, if there is his wife — his female, this is a prosocial choice all the time."And now a question: Is it just because this is a female or is it just for their female? Well, when they're bringing a new female, it's the antisocial choice all the time. Now, if there is not the female of the male, it will depend on how long he's been separated from his female. At first it will be antisocial, and after a while he will start to switch to prosocial choices." —Sébastien MoroIn today's episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to science writer and video blogger Sébastien Moro about the latest research on fish consciousness, intelligence, and potential sentience.Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.They cover:The insane capabilities of fish in tests of memory, learning, and problem-solving.Examples of fish that can beat primates on cognitive tests and recognise individual human faces.Fishes' social lives, including pair bonding, “personalities,” cooperation, and cultural transmission.Whether fish can experience emotions, and how this is even studied.The wild evolutionary innovations of fish, who adapted to thrive in diverse environments from mangroves to the deep sea.How some fish have sensory capabilities we can't even really fathom — like “seeing” electrical fields and colours we can't perceive.Ethical issues raised by evidence that fish may be conscious and experience suffering.And plenty more.Producer: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongContent editing: Luisa Rodriguez, Katy Moore, and Keiran HarrisTranscriptions: Katy Moore

Rob Wiblin speaks with FiveThirtyEight election forecaster and author Nate Silver about his new book: On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything.Links to learn more, highlights, video, and full transcript.On the Edge explores a cultural grouping Nate dubs “the River” — made up of people who are analytical, competitive, quantitatively minded, risk-taking, and willing to be contrarian. It's a tendency he considers himself a part of, and the River has been doing well for itself in recent decades — gaining cultural influence through success in finance, technology, gambling, philanthropy, and politics, among other pursuits.But on Nate's telling, it's a group particularly vulnerable to oversimplification and hubris. Where Riverians' ability to calculate the “expected value” of actions isn't as good as they believe, their poorly calculated bets can leave a trail of destruction — aptly demonstrated by Nate's discussion of the extended time he spent with FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried before and after his downfall.Given this show's focus on the world's most pressing problems and how to solve them, we narrow in on Nate's discussion of effective altruism (EA), which has been little covered elsewhere. Nate met many leaders and members of the EA community in researching the book and has watched its evolution online for many years.Effective altruism is the River style of doing good, because of its willingness to buck both fashion and common sense — making its giving decisions based on mathematical calculations and analytical arguments with the goal of maximising an outcome.Nate sees a lot to admire in this, but the book paints a mixed picture in which effective altruism is arguably too trusting, too utilitarian, too selfless, and too reckless at some times, while too image-conscious at others.But while everything has arguable weaknesses, could Nate actually do any better in practice? We ask him:How would Nate spend $10 billion differently than today's philanthropists influenced by EA?Is anyone else competitive with EA in terms of impact per dollar?Does he have any big disagreements with 80,000 Hours' advice on how to have impact?Is EA too big a tent to function?What global problems could EA be ignoring?Should EA be more willing to court controversy?Does EA's niceness leave it vulnerable to exploitation?What moral philosophy would he have modelled EA on?Rob and Nate also talk about:Nate's theory of Sam Bankman-Fried's psychology.Whether we had to “raise or fold” on COVID.Whether Sam Altman and Sam Bankman-Fried are structurally similar cases or not.“Winners' tilt.”Whether it's selfish to slow down AI progress.The ridiculous 13 Keys to the White House.Whether prediction markets are now overrated.Whether venture capitalists talk a big talk about risk while pushing all the risk off onto the entrepreneurs they fund.And plenty more.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Rob's intro (00:01:03)The interview begins (00:03:08)Sam Bankman-Fried and trust in the effective altruism community (00:04:09)Expected value (00:19:06)Similarities and differences between Sam Altman and SBF (00:24:45)How would Nate do EA differently? (00:31:54)Reservations about utilitarianism (00:44:37)Game theory equilibrium (00:48:51)Differences between EA culture and rationalist culture (00:52:55)What would Nate do with $10 billion to donate? (00:57:07)COVID strategies and tradeoffs (01:06:52)Is it selfish to slow down AI progress? (01:10:02)Democratic legitimacy of AI progress (01:18:33)Dubious election forecasting (01:22:40)Assessing how reliable election forecasting models are (01:29:58)Are prediction markets overrated? (01:41:01)Venture capitalists and risk (01:48:48)Producer and editor: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering by Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongVideo engineering: Simon MonsourTranscriptions: Katy Moore

"In the human case, it would be mistaken to give a kind of hour-by-hour accounting. You know, 'I had +4 level of experience for this hour, then I had -2 for the next hour, and then I had -1' — and you sort of sum to try to work out the total… And I came to think that something like that will be applicable in some of the animal cases as well… There are achievements, there are experiences, there are things that can be done in the face of difficulty that might be seen as having the same kind of redemptive role, as casting into a different light the difficult events that led up to it."The example I use is watching some birds successfully raising some young, fighting off a couple of rather aggressive parrots of another species that wanted to fight them, prevailing against difficult odds — and doing so in a way that was so wholly successful. It seemed to me that if you wanted to do an accounting of how things had gone for those birds, you would not want to do the naive thing of just counting up difficult and less-difficult hours. There's something special about what's achieved at the end of that process." —Peter Godfrey-SmithIn today's episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Peter Godfrey-Smith — bestselling author and science philosopher — about his new book, Living on Earth: Forests, Corals, Consciousness, and the Making of the World.Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.They cover:Why octopuses and dolphins haven't developed complex civilisation despite their intelligence.How the role of culture has been crucial in enabling human technological progress.Why Peter thinks the evolutionary transition from sea to land was key to enabling human-like intelligence — and why we should expect to see that in extraterrestrial life too.Whether Peter thinks wild animals' lives are, on balance, good or bad, and when, if ever, we should intervene in their lives.Whether we can and should avoid death by uploading human minds.And plenty more.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Luisa's intro (00:00:57)The interview begins (00:02:12)Wild animal suffering and rewilding (00:04:09)Thinking about death (00:32:50)Uploads of ourselves (00:38:04)Culture and how minds make things happen (00:54:05)Challenges for water-based animals (01:01:37)The importance of sea-to-land transitions in animal life (01:10:09)Luisa's outro (01:23:43)Producer: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongContent editing: Luisa Rodriguez, Katy Moore, and Keiran HarrisTranscriptions: Katy Moore

In this episode from our second show, 80k After Hours, Luisa Rodriguez and Keiran Harris chat about the consequences of letting go of enduring guilt, shame, anger, and pride.Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.They cover:Keiran's views on free will, and how he came to hold themWhat it's like not experiencing sustained guilt, shame, and angerWhether Luisa would become a worse person if she felt less guilt and shame — specifically whether she'd work fewer hours, or donate less money, or become a worse friendWhether giving up guilt and shame also means giving up prideThe implications for loveThe neurological condition ‘Jerk Syndrome'And some practical advice on feeling less guilt, shame, and angerWho this episode is for:People sympathetic to the idea that free will is an illusionPeople who experience tons of guilt, shame, or angerPeople worried about what would happen if they stopped feeling tonnes of guilt, shame, or angerWho this episode isn't for:People strongly in favour of retributive justicePhilosophers who can't stand random non-philosophers talking about philosophyNon-philosophers who can't stand random non-philosophers talking about philosophyChapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Luisa's intro (00:01:16)The chat begins (00:03:15)Keiran's origin story (00:06:30)Charles Whitman (00:11:00)Luisa's origin story (00:16:41)It's unlucky to be a bad person (00:19:57)Doubts about whether free will is an illusion (00:23:09)Acting this way just for other people (00:34:57)Feeling shame over not working enough (00:37:26)First person / third person distinction (00:39:42)Would Luisa become a worse person if she felt less guilt? (00:44:09)Feeling bad about not being a different person (00:48:18)Would Luisa donate less money? (00:55:14)Would Luisa become a worse friend? (01:01:07)Pride (01:08:02)Love (01:15:35)Bears and hurricanes (01:19:53)Jerk Syndrome (01:24:24)Keiran's outro (01:34:47)Get more episodes like this by subscribing to our more experimental podcast on the world's most pressing problems and how to solve them: type "80k After Hours" into your podcasting app. Producer: Keiran HarrisAudio mastering: Milo McGuireTranscriptions: Katy Moore

"For every far-out idea that turns out to be true, there were probably hundreds that were simply crackpot ideas. In general, [science] advances building on the knowledge we have, and seeing what the next questions are, and then getting to the next stage and the next stage and so on. And occasionally there'll be revolutionary ideas which will really completely change your view of science. And it is possible that some revolutionary breakthrough in our understanding will come about and we might crack this problem, but there's no evidence for that. It doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of promising work going on. There are many legitimate areas which could lead to real improvements in health in old age. So I'm fairly balanced: I think there are promising areas, but there's a lot of work to be done to see which area is going to be promising, and what the risks are, and how to make them work." —Venki RamakrishnanIn today's episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Venki Ramakrishnan — molecular biologist and Nobel Prize winner — about his new book, Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality.Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.They cover:What we can learn about extending human lifespan — if anything — from “immortal” aquatic animal species, cloned sheep, and the oldest people to have ever lived.Which areas of anti-ageing research seem most promising to Venki — including caloric restriction, removing senescent cells, cellular reprogramming, and Yamanaka factors — and which Venki thinks are overhyped.Why eliminating major age-related diseases might only extend average lifespan by 15 years.The social impacts of extending healthspan or lifespan in an ageing population — including the potential danger of massively increasing inequality if some people can access life-extension interventions while others can't.And plenty more.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Luisa's intro (00:01:04)The interview begins (00:02:21)Reasons to explore why we age and die (00:02:35)Evolutionary pressures and animals that don't biologically age (00:06:55)Why does ageing cause us to die? (00:12:24)Is there a hard limit to the human lifespan? (00:17:11)Evolutionary tradeoffs between fitness and longevity (00:21:01)How ageing resets with every generation, and what we can learn from clones (00:23:48)Younger blood (00:31:20)Freezing cells, organs, and bodies (00:36:47)Are the goals of anti-ageing research even realistic? (00:43:44)Dementia (00:49:52)Senescence (01:01:58)Caloric restriction and metabolic pathways (01:11:45)Yamanaka factors (01:34:07)Cancer (01:47:44)Mitochondrial dysfunction (01:58:40)Population effects of extended lifespan (02:06:12)Could increased longevity increase inequality? (02:11:48)What's surprised Venki about this research (02:16:06)Luisa's outro (02:19:26)Producer: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongContent editing: Luisa Rodriguez, Katy Moore, and Keiran HarrisTranscriptions: Katy Moore

"Perception is quite difficult with cameras: even if you have a stereo camera, you still can't really build a map of where everything is in space. It's just very difficult. And I know that sounds surprising, because humans are very good at this. In fact, even with one eye, we can navigate and we can clear the dinner table. But it seems that we're building in a lot of understanding and intuition about what's happening in the world and where objects are and how they behave. For robots, it's very difficult to get a perfectly accurate model of the world and where things are. So if you're going to go manipulate or grasp an object, a small error in that position will maybe have your robot crash into the object, a delicate wine glass, and probably break it. So the perception and the control are both problems." —Ken GoldbergIn today's episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Ken Goldberg — robotics professor at UC Berkeley — about the major research challenges still ahead before robots become broadly integrated into our homes and societies.Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.They cover:Why training robots is harder than training large language models like ChatGPT.The biggest engineering challenges that still remain before robots can be widely useful in the real world.The sectors where Ken thinks robots will be most useful in the coming decades — like homecare, agriculture, and medicine.Whether we should be worried about robot labour affecting human employment.Recent breakthroughs in robotics, and what cutting-edge robots can do today.Ken's work as an artist, where he explores the complex relationship between humans and technology.And plenty more.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Luisa's intro (00:01:19)General purpose robots and the “robotics bubble” (00:03:11)How training robots is different than training large language models (00:14:01)What can robots do today? (00:34:35)Challenges for progress: fault tolerance, multidimensionality, and perception (00:41:00)Recent breakthroughs in robotics (00:52:32)Barriers to making better robots: hardware, software, and physics (01:03:13)Future robots in home care, logistics, food production, and medicine (01:16:35)How might robot labour affect the job market? (01:44:27)Robotics and art (01:51:28)Luisa's outro (02:00:55)Producer: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering: Dominic Armstrong, Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, and Simon MonsourContent editing: Luisa Rodriguez, Katy Moore, and Keiran HarrisTranscriptions: Katy Moore

"It's very hard to find examples where people say, 'I'm starting from this point. I'm starting from this belief.' So we wanted to make that very legible to people. We wanted to say, 'Experts think this; accurate forecasters think this.' They might both be wrong, but we can at least start from here and figure out where we're coming into a discussion and say, 'I am much less concerned than the people in this report; or I am much more concerned, and I think people in this report were missing major things.' But if you don't have a reference set of probabilities, I think it becomes much harder to talk about disagreement in policy debates in a space that's so complicated like this." —Ezra KargerIn today's episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Ezra Karger — research director at the Forecasting Research Institute — about FRI's recent Existential Risk Persuasion Tournament to come up with estimates of a range of catastrophic risks.Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.They cover:How forecasting can improve our understanding of long-term catastrophic risks from things like AI, nuclear war, pandemics, and climate change.What the Existential Risk Persuasion Tournament (XPT) is, how it was set up, and the results.The challenges of predicting low-probability, high-impact events.Why superforecasters' estimates of catastrophic risks seem so much lower than experts', and which group Ezra puts the most weight on.The specific underlying disagreements that superforecasters and experts had about how likely catastrophic risks from AI are.Why Ezra thinks forecasting tournaments can help build consensus on complex topics, and what he wants to do differently in future tournaments and studies.Recent advances in the science of forecasting and the areas Ezra is most excited about exploring next.Whether large language models could help or outperform human forecasters.How people can improve their calibration and start making better forecasts personally.Why Ezra thinks high-quality forecasts are relevant to policymakers, and whether they can really improve decision-making.And plenty more.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Luisa's intro (00:01:07)The interview begins (00:02:54)The Existential Risk Persuasion Tournament (00:05:13)Why is this project important? (00:12:34)How was the tournament set up? (00:17:54)Results from the tournament (00:22:38)Risk from artificial intelligence (00:30:59)How to think about these numbers (00:46:50)Should we trust experts or superforecasters more? (00:49:16)The effect of debate and persuasion (01:02:10)Forecasts from the general public (01:08:33)How can we improve people's forecasts? (01:18:59)Incentives and recruitment (01:26:30)Criticisms of the tournament (01:33:51)AI adversarial collaboration (01:46:20)Hypotheses about stark differences in views of AI risk (01:51:41)Cruxes and different worldviews (02:17:15)Ezra's experience as a superforecaster (02:28:57)Forecasting as a research field (02:31:00)Can large language models help or outperform human forecasters? (02:35:01)Is forecasting valuable in the real world? (02:39:11)Ezra's book recommendations (02:45:29)Luisa's outro (02:47:54)Producer: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering: Dominic Armstrong, Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, and Simon MonsourContent editing: Luisa Rodriguez, Katy Moore, and Keiran HarrisTranscriptions: Katy Moore

"I do think that there is a really significant sentiment among parts of the opposition that it's not really just that this bill itself is that bad or extreme — when you really drill into it, it feels like one of those things where you read it and it's like, 'This is the thing that everyone is screaming about?' I think it's a pretty modest bill in a lot of ways, but I think part of what they are thinking is that this is the first step to shutting down AI development. Or that if California does this, then lots of other states are going to do it, and we need to really slam the door shut on model-level regulation or else they're just going to keep going. "I think that is like a lot of what the sentiment here is: it's less about, in some ways, the details of this specific bill, and more about the sense that they want this to stop here, and they're worried that if they give an inch that there will continue to be other things in the future. And I don't think that is going to be tolerable to the public in the long run. I think it's a bad choice, but I think that is the calculus that they are making." —Nathan CalvinIn today's episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Nathan Calvin — senior policy counsel at the Center for AI Safety Action Fund — about the new AI safety bill in California, SB 1047, which he's helped shape as it's moved through the state legislature.Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.They cover:What's actually in SB 1047, and which AI models it would apply to.The most common objections to the bill — including how it could affect competition, startups, open source models, and US national security — and which of these objections Nathan thinks hold water.What Nathan sees as the biggest misunderstandings about the bill that get in the way of good public discourse about it.Why some AI companies are opposed to SB 1047, despite claiming that they want the industry to be regulated.How the bill is different from Biden's executive order on AI and voluntary commitments made by AI companies.Why California is taking state-level action rather than waiting for federal regulation.How state-level regulations can be hugely impactful at national and global scales, and how listeners could get involved in state-level work to make a real difference on lots of pressing problems.And plenty more.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Luisa's intro (00:00:57)The interview begins (00:02:30)What risks from AI does SB 1047 try to address? (00:03:10)Supporters and critics of the bill (00:11:03)Misunderstandings about the bill (00:24:07)Competition, open source, and liability concerns (00:30:56)Model size thresholds (00:46:24)How is SB 1047 different from the executive order? (00:55:36)Objections Nathan is sympathetic to (00:58:31)Current status of the bill (01:02:57)How can listeners get involved in work like this? (01:05:00)Luisa's outro (01:11:52)Producer and editor: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering by Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongAdditional content editing: Katy Moore and Luisa RodriguezTranscriptions: Katy Moore

"This is a group of animals I think people are particularly unfamiliar with. They are especially poorly covered in our science curriculum; they are especially poorly understood, because people don't spend as much time learning about them at museums; and they're just harder to spend time with in a lot of ways, I think, for people. So people have pets that are vertebrates that they take care of across the taxonomic groups, and people get familiar with those from going to zoos and watching their behaviours there, and watching nature documentaries and more. But I think the insects are still really underappreciated, and that means that our intuitions are probably more likely to be wrong than with those other groups." —Meghan BarrettIn today's episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Meghan Barrett — insect neurobiologist and physiologist at Indiana University Indianapolis and founding director of the Insect Welfare Research Society — about her work to understand insects' potential capacity for suffering, and what that might mean for how humans currently farm and use insects. If you're interested in getting involved with this work, check out Meghan's recent blog post: I'm into insect welfare! What's next?Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.They cover:The scale of potential insect suffering in the wild, on farms, and in labs.Examples from cutting-edge insect research, like how depression- and anxiety-like states can be induced in fruit flies and successfully treated with human antidepressants.How size bias might help explain why many people assume insects can't feel pain.Practical solutions that Meghan's team is working on to improve farmed insect welfare, such as standard operating procedures for more humane slaughter methods.Challenges facing the nascent field of insect welfare research, and where the main research gaps are.Meghan's personal story of how she went from being sceptical of insect pain to working as an insect welfare scientist, and her advice for others who want to improve the lives of insects.And much more.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Luisa's intro (00:01:02)The interview begins (00:03:06)What is an insect? (00:03:22)Size diversity (00:07:24)How important is brain size for sentience? (00:11:27)Offspring, parental investment, and lifespan (00:19:00)Cognition and behaviour (00:23:23)The scale of insect suffering (00:27:01)Capacity to suffer (00:35:56)The empirical evidence for whether insects can feel pain (00:47:18)Nociceptors (01:00:02)Integrated nociception (01:08:39)Response to analgesia (01:16:17)Analgesia preference (01:25:57)Flexible self-protective behaviour (01:31:19)Motivational tradeoffs and associative learning (01:38:45)Results (01:43:31)Reasons to be sceptical (01:47:18)Meghan's probability of sentience in insects (02:10:20)Views of the broader entomologist community (02:18:18)Insect farming (02:26:52)How much to worry about insect farming (02:40:56)Inhumane slaughter and disease in insect farms (02:44:45)Inadequate nutrition, density, and photophobia (02:53:50)Most humane ways to kill insects at home (03:01:33)Challenges in researching this (03:07:53)Most promising reforms (03:18:44)Why Meghan is hopeful about working with the industry (03:22:17)Careers (03:34:08)Insect Welfare Research Society (03:37:16)Luisa's outro (03:47:01)Producer and editor: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering by Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongAdditional content editing: Katy Moore and Luisa RodriguezTranscriptions: Katy Moore

The three biggest AI companies — Anthropic, OpenAI, and DeepMind — have now all released policies designed to make their AI models less likely to go rogue or cause catastrophic damage as they approach, and eventually exceed, human capabilities. Are they good enough?That's what host Rob Wiblin tries to hash out in this interview (recorded May 30) with Nick Joseph — one of the original cofounders of Anthropic, its current head of training, and a big fan of Anthropic's “responsible scaling policy” (or “RSP”). Anthropic is the most safety focused of the AI companies, known for a culture that treats the risks of its work as deadly serious.Links to learn more, highlights, video, and full transcript.As Nick explains, these scaling policies commit companies to dig into what new dangerous things a model can do — after it's trained, but before it's in wide use. The companies then promise to put in place safeguards they think are sufficient to tackle those capabilities before availability is extended further. For instance, if a model could significantly help design a deadly bioweapon, then its weights need to be properly secured so they can't be stolen by terrorists interested in using it that way.As capabilities grow further — for example, if testing shows that a model could exfiltrate itself and spread autonomously in the wild — then new measures would need to be put in place to make that impossible, or demonstrate that such a goal can never arise.Nick points out what he sees as the biggest virtues of the RSP approach, and then Rob pushes him on some of the best objections he's found to RSPs being up to the task of keeping AI safe and beneficial. The two also discuss whether it's essential to eventually hand over operation of responsible scaling policies to external auditors or regulatory bodies, if those policies are going to be able to hold up against the intense commercial pressures that might end up arrayed against them.In addition to all of that, Nick and Rob talk about:What Nick thinks are the current bottlenecks in AI progress: people and time (rather than data or compute).What it's like working in AI safety research at the leading edge, and whether pushing forward capabilities (even in the name of safety) is a good idea.What it's like working at Anthropic, and how to get the skills needed to help with the safe development of AI.And as a reminder, if you want to let us know your reaction to this interview, or send any other feedback, our inbox is always open at podcast@80000hours.org.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Rob's intro (00:01:00)The interview begins (00:03:44)Scaling laws (00:04:12)Bottlenecks to further progress in making AIs helpful (00:08:36)Anthropic's responsible scaling policies (00:14:21)Pros and cons of the RSP approach for AI safety (00:34:09)Alternatives to RSPs (00:46:44)Is an internal audit really the best approach? (00:51:56)Making promises about things that are currently technically impossible (01:07:54)Nick's biggest reservations about the RSP approach (01:16:05)Communicating “acceptable” risk (01:19:27)Should Anthropic's RSP have wider safety buffers? (01:26:13)Other impacts on society and future work on RSPs (01:34:01)Working at Anthropic (01:36:28)Engineering vs research (01:41:04)AI safety roles at Anthropic (01:48:31)Should concerned people be willing to take capabilities roles? (01:58:20)Recent safety work at Anthropic (02:10:05)Anthropic culture (02:14:35)Overrated and underrated AI applications (02:22:06)Rob's outro (02:26:36)Producer and editor: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering by Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongVideo engineering: Simon MonsourTranscriptions: Katy Moore

"In the 1980s, it was still apparently common to perform surgery on newborn babies without anaesthetic on both sides of the Atlantic. This led to appalling cases, and to public outcry, and to campaigns to change clinical practice. And as soon as [some courageous scientists] looked for evidence, it showed that this practice was completely indefensible and then the clinical practice was changed. People don't need convincing anymore that we should take newborn human babies seriously as sentience candidates. But the tale is a useful cautionary tale, because it shows you how deep that overconfidence can run and how problematic it can be. It just underlines this point that overconfidence about sentience is everywhere and is dangerous." —Jonathan BirchIn today's episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Dr Jonathan Birch — philosophy professor at the London School of Economics — about his new book, The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI. (Check out the free PDF version!)Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.They cover:Candidates for sentience, such as humans with consciousness disorders, foetuses, neural organoids, invertebrates, and AIsHumanity's history of acting as if we're sure that such beings are incapable of having subjective experiences — and why Jonathan thinks that that certainty is completely unjustified.Chilling tales about overconfident policies that probably caused significant suffering for decades.How policymakers can act ethically given real uncertainty.Whether simulating the brain of the roundworm C. elegans or Drosophila (aka fruit flies) would create minds equally sentient to the biological versions.How new technologies like brain organoids could replace animal testing, and how big the risk is that they could be sentient too.Why Jonathan is so excited about citizens' assemblies.Jonathan's conversation with the Dalai Lama about whether insects are sentient.And plenty more.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Luisa's intro (00:01:20)The interview begins (00:03:04)Why does sentience matter? (00:03:31)Inescapable uncertainty about other minds (00:05:43)The “zone of reasonable disagreement” in sentience research (00:10:31)Disorders of consciousness: comas and minimally conscious states (00:17:06)Foetuses and the cautionary tale of newborn pain (00:43:23)Neural organoids (00:55:49)AI sentience and whole brain emulation (01:06:17)Policymaking at the edge of sentience (01:28:09)Citizens' assemblies (01:31:13)The UK's Sentience Act (01:39:45)Ways Jonathan has changed his mind (01:47:26)Careers (01:54:54)Discussing animal sentience with the Dalai Lama (01:59:08)Luisa's outro (02:01:04)Producer and editor: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering by Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongAdditional content editing: Katy Moore and Luisa RodriguezTranscriptions: Katy Moore

"Computational systems have literally millions of physical and conceptual components, and around 98% of them are embedded into your infrastructure without you ever having heard of them. And an inordinate amount of them can lead to a catastrophic failure of your security assumptions. And because of this, the Iranian secret nuclear programme failed to prevent a breach, most US agencies failed to prevent multiple breaches, most US national security agencies failed to prevent breaches. So ensuring your system is truly secure against highly resourced and dedicated attackers is really, really hard." —Sella NevoIn today's episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Sella Nevo — director of the Meselson Center at RAND — about his team's latest report on how to protect the model weights of frontier AI models from actors who might want to steal them.Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.They cover:Real-world examples of sophisticated security breaches, and what we can learn from them.Why AI model weights might be such a high-value target for adversaries like hackers, rogue states, and other bad actors.The many ways that model weights could be stolen, from using human insiders to sophisticated supply chain hacks.The current best practices in cybersecurity, and why they may not be enough to keep bad actors away.New security measures that Sella hopes can mitigate with the growing risks.Sella's work using machine learning for flood forecasting, which has significantly reduced injuries and costs from floods across Africa and Asia.And plenty more.Also, RAND is currently hiring for roles in technical and policy information security — check them out if you're interested in this field! Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Luisa's intro (00:00:56)The interview begins (00:02:30)The importance of securing the model weights of frontier AI models (00:03:01)The most sophisticated and surprising security breaches (00:10:22)AI models being leaked (00:25:52)Researching for the RAND report (00:30:11)Who tries to steal model weights? (00:32:21)Malicious code and exploiting zero-days (00:42:06)Human insiders (00:53:20)Side-channel attacks (01:04:11)Getting access to air-gapped networks (01:10:52)Model extraction (01:19:47)Reducing and hardening authorised access (01:38:52)Confidential computing (01:48:05)Red-teaming and security testing (01:53:42)Careers in information security (01:59:54)Sella's work on flood forecasting systems (02:01:57)Luisa's outro (02:04:51)Producer and editor: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering team: Ben Cordell, Simon Monsour, Milo McGuire, and Dominic ArmstrongAdditional content editing: Katy Moore and Luisa RodriguezTranscriptions: Katy Moore

"If you're a power that is an island and that goes by sea, then you're more likely to do things like valuing freedom, being democratic, being pro-foreigner, being open-minded, being interested in trade. If you are on the Mongolian steppes, then your entire mindset is kill or be killed, conquer or be conquered … the breeding ground for basically everything that all of us consider to be dystopian governance. If you want more utopian governance and less dystopian governance, then find ways to basically change the landscape, to try to make the world look more like mountains and rivers and less like the Mongolian steppes." —Vitalik ButerinCan ‘effective accelerationists' and AI ‘doomers' agree on a common philosophy of technology? Common sense says no. But programmer and Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin showed otherwise with his essay “My techno-optimism,” which both camps agreed was basically reasonable.Links to learn more, highlights, video, and full transcript.Seeing his social circle divided and fighting, Vitalik hoped to write a careful synthesis of the best ideas from both the optimists and the apprehensive.Accelerationists are right: most technologies leave us better off, the human cost of delaying further advances can be dreadful, and centralising control in government hands often ends disastrously.But the fearful are also right: some technologies are important exceptions, AGI has an unusually high chance of being one of those, and there are options to advance AI in safer directions.The upshot? Defensive acceleration: humanity should run boldly but also intelligently into the future — speeding up technology to get its benefits, but preferentially developing ‘defensive' technologies that lower systemic risks, permit safe decentralisation of power, and help both individuals and countries defend themselves against aggression and domination.Entrepreneur First is running a defensive acceleration incubation programme with $250,000 of investment. If these ideas resonate with you, learn about the programme and apply by August 2, 2024. You don't need a business idea yet — just the hustle to start a technology company.In addition to all of that, host Rob Wiblin and Vitalik discuss:AI regulation disagreements being less about AI in particular, and more whether you're typically more scared of anarchy or totalitarianism.Vitalik's updated p(doom).Whether the social impact of blockchain and crypto has been a disappointment.Whether humans can merge with AI, and if that's even desirable.The most valuable defensive technologies to accelerate.How to trustlessly identify what everyone will agree is misinformationWhether AGI is offence-dominant or defence-dominant.Vitalik's updated take on effective altruism.Plenty more.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Rob's intro (00:00:56)The interview begins (00:04:47)Three different views on technology (00:05:46)Vitalik's updated probability of doom (00:09:25)Technology is amazing, and AI is fundamentally different from other tech (00:15:55)Fear of totalitarianism and finding middle ground (00:22:44)Should AI be more centralised or more decentralised? (00:42:20)Humans merging with AIs to remain relevant (01:06:59)Vitalik's “d/acc” alternative (01:18:48)Biodefence (01:24:01)Pushback on Vitalik's vision (01:37:09)How much do people actually disagree? (01:42:14)Cybersecurity (01:47:28)Information defence (02:01:44)Is AI more offence-dominant or defence-dominant? (02:21:00)How Vitalik communicates among different camps (02:25:44)Blockchain applications with social impact (02:34:37)Rob's outro (03:01:00)Producer and editor: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering team: Ben Cordell, Simon Monsour, Milo McGuire, and Dominic ArmstrongTranscriptions: Katy Moore

"You don't necessarily need world-leading compute to create highly risky AI systems. The biggest biological design tools right now, like AlphaFold's, are orders of magnitude smaller in terms of compute requirements than the frontier large language models. And China has the compute to train these systems. And if you're, for instance, building a cyber agent or something that conducts cyberattacks, perhaps you also don't need the general reasoning or mathematical ability of a large language model. You train on a much smaller subset of data. You fine-tune it on a smaller subset of data. And those systems — one, if China intentionally misuses them, and two, if they get proliferated because China just releases them as open source, or China does not have as comprehensive AI regulations — this could cause a lot of harm in the world." —Sihao HuangIn today's episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Sihao Huang — a technology and security policy fellow at RAND — about his work on AI governance and tech policy in China, what's happening on the ground in China in AI development and regulation, and the importance of US–China cooperation on AI governance.Links to learn more, highlights, video, and full transcript.They cover:Whether the US and China are in an AI race, and the global implications if they are.The state of the art of AI in China.China's response to American export controls, and whether China is on track to indigenise its semiconductor supply chain.How China's current AI regulations try to maintain a delicate balance between fostering innovation and keeping strict information control over the Chinese people.Whether China's extensive AI regulations signal real commitment to safety or just censorship — and how AI is already used in China for surveillance and authoritarian control.How advancements in AI could reshape global power dynamics, and Sihao's vision of international cooperation to manage this responsibly.And plenty more.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Luisa's intro (00:01:02)The interview begins (00:02:06)Is China in an AI race with the West? (00:03:20)How advanced is Chinese AI? (00:15:21)Bottlenecks in Chinese AI development (00:22:30)China and AI risks (00:27:41)Information control and censorship (00:31:32)AI safety research in China (00:36:31)Could China be a source of catastrophic AI risk? (00:41:58)AI enabling human rights abuses and undermining democracy (00:50:10)China's semiconductor industry (00:59:47)China's domestic AI governance landscape (01:29:22)China's international AI governance strategy (01:49:56)Coordination (01:53:56)Track two dialogues (02:03:04)Misunderstandings Western actors have about Chinese approaches (02:07:34)Complexity thinking (02:14:40)Sihao's pet bacteria hobby (02:20:34)Luisa's outro (02:22:47)Producer and editor: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering team: Ben Cordell, Simon Monsour, Milo McGuire, and Dominic ArmstrongAdditional content editing: Katy Moore and Luisa RodriguezTranscriptions: Katy Moore

"Ring one: total annihilation; no cellular life remains. Ring two, another three-mile diameter out: everything is ablaze. Ring three, another three or five miles out on every side: third-degree burns among almost everyone. You are talking about people who may have gone down into the secret tunnels beneath Washington, DC, escaped from the Capitol and such: people are now broiling to death; people are dying from carbon monoxide poisoning; people who followed instructions and went into their basement are dying of suffocation. Everywhere there is death, everywhere there is fire."That iconic mushroom stem and cap that represents a nuclear blast — when a nuclear weapon has been exploded on a city — that stem and cap is made up of people. What is left over of people and of human civilisation." —Annie JacobsenIn today's episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times bestselling author Annie Jacobsen about her latest book, Nuclear War: A Scenario.Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.They cover:The most harrowing findings from Annie's hundreds of hours of interviews with nuclear experts.What happens during the window that the US president would have to decide about nuclear retaliation after hearing news of a possible nuclear attack.The horrific humanitarian impacts on millions of innocent civilians from nuclear strikes.The overlooked dangers of a nuclear-triggered electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack crippling critical infrastructure within seconds.How we're on the razor's edge between the logic of nuclear deterrence and catastrophe, and urgently need reforms to move away from hair-trigger alert nuclear postures.And plenty more.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Luisa's intro (00:01:03)The interview begins (00:02:28)The first 24 minutes (00:02:59)The Black Book and presidential advisors (00:13:35)False alarms (00:40:43)Russian misperception of US counterattack (00:44:50)A narcissistic madman with a nuclear arsenal (01:00:13)Is escalation inevitable? (01:02:53)Firestorms and rings of annihilation (01:12:56)Nuclear electromagnetic pulses (01:27:34)Continuity of government (01:36:35)Rays of hope (01:41:07)Where we're headed (01:43:52)Avoiding politics (01:50:34)Luisa's outro (01:52:29)Producer and editor: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering team: Ben Cordell, Simon Monsour, Milo McGuire, and Dominic ArmstrongAdditional content editing: Katy Moore and Luisa RodriguezTranscriptions: Katy Moore

This is the second part of our marathon interview with Carl Shulman. The first episode is on the economy and national security after AGI. You can listen to them in either order!If we develop artificial general intelligence that's reasonably aligned with human goals, it could put a fast and near-free superhuman advisor in everyone's pocket. How would that affect culture, government, and our ability to act sensibly and coordinate together?It's common to worry that AI advances will lead to a proliferation of misinformation and further disconnect us from reality. But in today's conversation, AI expert Carl Shulman argues that this underrates the powerful positive applications the technology could have in the public sphere.Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.As Carl explains, today the most important questions we face as a society remain in the "realm of subjective judgement" -- without any "robust, well-founded scientific consensus on how to answer them." But if AI 'evals' and interpretability advance to the point that it's possible to demonstrate which AI models have truly superhuman judgement and give consistently trustworthy advice, society could converge on firm or 'best-guess' answers to far more cases.If the answers are publicly visible and confirmable by all, the pressure on officials to act on that advice could be great. That's because when it's hard to assess if a line has been crossed or not, we usually give people much more discretion. For instance, a journalist inventing an interview that never happened will get fired because it's an unambiguous violation of honesty norms — but so long as there's no universally agreed-upon standard for selective reporting, that same journalist will have substantial discretion to report information that favours their preferred view more often than that which contradicts it.Similarly, today we have no generally agreed-upon way to tell when a decision-maker has behaved irresponsibly. But if experience clearly shows that following AI advice is the wise move, not seeking or ignoring such advice could become more like crossing a red line — less like making an understandable mistake and more like fabricating your balance sheet.To illustrate the possible impact, Carl imagines how the COVID pandemic could have played out in the presence of AI advisors that everyone agrees are exceedingly insightful and reliable. But in practice, a significantly superhuman AI might suggest novel approaches better than any we can suggest.In the past we've usually found it easier to predict how hard technologies like planes or factories will change than to imagine the social shifts that those technologies will create — and the same is likely happening for AI.Carl Shulman and host Rob Wiblin discuss the above, as well as:The risk of society using AI to lock in its values.The difficulty of preventing coups once AI is key to the military and police.What international treaties we need to make this go well.How to make AI superhuman at forecasting the future.Whether AI will be able to help us with intractable philosophical questions.Whether we need dedicated projects to make wise AI advisors, or if it will happen automatically as models scale.Why Carl doesn't support AI companies voluntarily pausing AI research, but sees a stronger case for binding international controls once we're closer to 'crunch time.'Opportunities for listeners to contribute to making the future go well.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Rob's intro (00:01:16)The interview begins (00:03:24)COVID-19 concrete example (00:11:18)Sceptical arguments against the effect of AI advisors (00:24:16)Value lock-in (00:33:59)How democracies avoid coups (00:48:08)Where AI could most easily help (01:00:25)AI forecasting (01:04:30)Application to the most challenging topics (01:24:03)How to make it happen (01:37:50)International negotiations and coordination and auditing (01:43:54)Opportunities for listeners (02:00:09)Why Carl doesn't support enforced pauses on AI research (02:03:58)How Carl is feeling about the future (02:15:47)Rob's outro (02:17:37)Producer and editor: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering team: Ben Cordell, Simon Monsour, Milo McGuire, and Dominic ArmstrongTranscriptions: Katy Moore

The human brain does what it does with a shockingly low energy supply: just 20 watts — a fraction of a cent worth of electricity per hour. What would happen if AI technology merely matched what evolution has already managed, and could accomplish the work of top human professionals given a 20-watt power supply?Many people sort of consider that hypothetical, but maybe nobody has followed through and considered all the implications as much as Carl Shulman. Behind the scenes, his work has greatly influenced how leaders in artificial general intelligence (AGI) picture the world they're creating.Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.Carl simply follows the logic to its natural conclusion. This is a world where 1 cent of electricity can be turned into medical advice, company management, or scientific research that would today cost $100s, resulting in a scramble to manufacture chips and apply them to the most lucrative forms of intellectual labour.It's a world where, given their incredible hourly salaries, the supply of outstanding AI researchers quickly goes from 10,000 to 10 million or more, enormously accelerating progress in the field.It's a world where companies operated entirely by AIs working together are much faster and more cost-effective than those that lean on humans for decision making, and the latter are progressively driven out of business. It's a world where the technical challenges around control of robots are rapidly overcome, leading to robots into strong, fast, precise, and tireless workers able to accomplish any physical work the economy requires, and a rush to build billions of them and cash in.As the economy grows, each person could effectively afford the practical equivalent of a team of hundreds of machine 'people' to help them with every aspect of their lives.And with growth rates this high, it doesn't take long to run up against Earth's physical limits — in this case, the toughest to engineer your way out of is the Earth's ability to release waste heat. If this machine economy and its insatiable demand for power generates more heat than the Earth radiates into space, then it will rapidly heat up and become uninhabitable for humans and other animals.This creates pressure to move economic activity off-planet. So you could develop effective populations of billions of scientific researchers operating on computer chips orbiting in space, sending the results of their work, such as drug designs, back to Earth for use.These are just some of the wild implications that could follow naturally from truly embracing the hypothetical: what if we develop AGI that could accomplish everything that the most productive humans can, using the same energy supply?In today's episode, Carl explains the above, and then host Rob Wiblin pushes back on whether that's realistic or just a cool story, asking:If we're heading towards the above, how come economic growth is slow now and not really increasing?Why have computers and computer chips had so little effect on economic productivity so far?Are self-replicating biological systems a good comparison for self-replicating machine systems?Isn't this just too crazy and weird to be plausible?What bottlenecks would be encountered in supplying energy and natural resources to this growing economy?Might there not be severely declining returns to bigger brains and more training?Wouldn't humanity get scared and pull the brakes if such a transformation kicked off?If this is right, how come economists don't agree?Finally, Carl addresses the moral status of machine minds themselves. Would they be conscious or otherwise have a claim to moral or rights? And how might humans and machines coexist with neither side dominating or exploiting the other?Producer and editor: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering lead: Ben CordellTechnical editing: Simon Monsour, Milo McGuire, and Dominic ArmstrongTranscriptions: Katy Moore

"One of the most amazing things about planet Earth is that there are complex bags of mostly water — you and me – and we can look up at the stars, and look into our brains, and try to grapple with the most complex, difficult questions that there are. And even if we can't make great progress on them and don't come to completely satisfying solutions, just the fact of trying to grapple with these things is kind of the universe looking at itself and trying to understand itself. So we're kind of this bright spot of reflectiveness in the cosmos, and I think we should celebrate that fact for its own intrinsic value and interestingness." —Eric SchwitzgebelIn today's episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Eric Schwitzgebel — professor of philosophy at UC Riverside — about some of the most bizarre and unintuitive claims from his recent book, The Weirdness of the World.Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.They cover:Why our intuitions seem so unreliable for answering fundamental questions about reality.What the materialist view of consciousness is, and how it might imply some very weird things — like that the United States could be a conscious entity.Thought experiments that challenge our intuitions — like supersquids that think and act through detachable tentacles, and intelligent species whose brains are made up of a million bugs.Eric's claim that consciousness and cosmology are universally bizarre and dubious.How to think about borderline states of consciousness, and whether consciousness is more like a spectrum or more like a light flicking on.The nontrivial possibility that we could be dreaming right now, and the ethical implications if that's true.Why it's worth it to grapple with the universe's most complex questions, even if we can't find completely satisfying solutions.And much more.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Luisa's intro (00:01:10)Bizarre and dubious philosophical theories (00:03:13)The materialist view of consciousness (00:13:55)What would it mean for the US to be conscious? (00:19:46)Supersquids and antheads thought experiments (00:22:37)Alternatives to the materialist perspective (00:35:19)Are our intuitions useless for thinking about these things? (00:42:55)Key ingredients for consciousness (00:46:46)Reasons to think the US isn't conscious (01:01:15)Overlapping consciousnesses [01:09:32]Borderline cases of consciousness (01:13:22)Are we dreaming right now? (01:40:29)Will we ever have answers to these dubious and bizarre questions? (01:56:16)Producer and editor: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering lead: Ben CordellTechnical editing: Simon Monsour, Milo McGuire, and Dominic ArmstrongAdditional content editing: Katy Moore and Luisa RodriguezTranscriptions: Katy Moore