The 80,000 Hours Podcast on Artificial Intelligence

10 experts, 10 episodes: a crash course on transformative AI and what you can do to help shape its trajectory.This compilation features 10 key episodes of The 80,000 Hours Podcast to help listeners — particularly those new to the topic — get to grips with the potential upsides and downsides of powerful, transformative AI.

The 80,000 Hours Podcast on Artificial Intelligence is a science podcast hosted by 80,000 Hours, with 14 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

80,000 Hours hosts The 80,000 Hours Podcast on Artificial Intelligence, a science show with 14 episodes published.

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  The 80,000 Hours Podcast on Artificial Intelligence

  One: Will MacAskill on AI causing a “century in a decade” — and how we’re completely unprepared

  Jun 5, 20263h 58mS0

  <p>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, widespread birth control, and more. Now imagine all of it compressed into just 10 years.</p><p>That’s the future Will MacAskill — philosopher, founding figure of effective altruism, and now researcher at Forethought Research — argues we need to prepare for in his paper “Preparing for the intelligence explosion.” Not in the distant future, but probably in 3–7 years.</p><p>The reason: AI systems are rapidly approaching human-level capability in scientific r...

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  The 80,000 Hours Podcast on Artificial Intelligence

  Two: Ajeya Cotra on accidentally teaching AI models to deceive us

  Jun 5, 20262h 50mS0

  <p>Imagine you’re an orphaned eight-year-old whose parents left you a $1 trillion company, with no trusted adult to guide you. You have to hire a smart adult to run that company, guide your life the way a parent would, and administer your vast wealth. You have to hire them based on a work trial or interview that you design. You don’t get to see any resumes or do reference checks. And because you’re so rich, tonnes of people apply — for all sorts of reasons.</p><p>Ajeya Cotra argues this peculiar setup resembles the situation humanity finds itself i...

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  The 80,000 Hours Podcast on Artificial Intelligence

  Three: Carl Shulman on the economy and national security after AGI

  Jun 5, 20264h 15mS0

  <p>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 already managed, and could accomplish the work of top human professionals given a 20-watt power supply?</p><p>Many people have sort of considered this hypothetical, but perhaps 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.</p><p>Ca...

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  The 80,000 Hours Podcast on Artificial Intelligence

  Four: Rose Hadshar on why automating human labour will break our political system

  Jun 5, 20262h 14mS0

  <p>The most important political question in the age of advanced AI might not be who wins elections. It might be whether elections continue to matter at all.</p><p>That’s the view of Rose Hadshar, researcher at Forethought Research, who believes we could see extreme, AI-enabled power concentration without a coup or dramatic ‘end of democracy’ moment.</p><p>She foresees something more insidious: an elite group with access to such powerful AI capabilities that the normal mechanisms for checking elite power — law, elections, public pressure, the threat of strikes — cease to have much effect. Those mechanisms could continue t...

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  The 80,000 Hours Podcast on Artificial Intelligence

  Five: Helen Toner on the geopolitics of AI in China and the Middle East

  Jun 5, 20262h 20mS0

  <p>With the US racing to develop AGI and superintelligence ahead of China, you might expect the two countries to be negotiating how they’ll deploy AI, including in the military, without coming to blows. But according to Helen Toner, director of the Center for Security and Emerging Technology in DC, “the US and Chinese governments are barely talking at all.”</p><p>In her role as a founder, and now leader, of DC’s top think tank focused on the geopolitical and military implications of AI, Helen has been closely tracking the US’s AI diplomacy since 2019.</p><p>“Over the las...

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