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What’s the biggest and most urgent problem in the world? | The 80,000 Hours career guide (2023)

80,000 Hours
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  • Future populations could reach 1 million generations over 100 million years, meaning problems affecting future generations may impact up to 1 million times more people than present-focused ones.
  • Biosecurity is considered potentially more pressing than climate change due to a higher probability of existential risk from bioweapons, with a pandemic killing over 100 million people in the next century estimated as likely as or greater than nuclear war or runaway climate change.
  • Artificial intelligence is viewed as an even more neglected and rapidly developing existential threat than bioengineering, with 50% of experts predicting a 50% chance of human-level AI by 2050.
  • Surveys of top AI researchers project a median of 2032 for a 10% chance of human-level machine intelligence and a median of 2052 for a 50% chance, with extreme variance in long-term estimates.
  • The alignment problem is estimated to be over 10 times more neglected than biosecurity, with only around 300 full-time researchers working directly on it.
  • Reducing AI risks is predicted to be among the most high-impact problems of the coming decades, though AI policy remains currently focused on short-term issues.
  • Global priorities research and indirect strategies are prioritized over direct intervention due to the difficulty in identifying the single best problem and the potential for career choices to multiply impact by over 100 times.
  • Early career stages should focus on skill acquisition and exploration rather than immediately tackling the most pressing known problems, as personal fit can yield over 10 times more impact in less obvious areas.
  • Organizations like Giving What We Can and 80,000 Hours aim to achieve multiplicative impact by directing donations and career advice to high-impact areas, with every $1 invested in the former leading to over $9 in donations.
  • Broad interventions such as US governance are identified as highly uncertain areas where more research is needed, while political action at local levels may influence higher decision-making bodies.
  • Views on the most pressing issues may change in coming years, potentially revealing new problems that offer greater impact than current focuses on AI or biosecurity.
  • Saving money or building career capital is recommended to enable better-informed altruistic actions when future information becomes available.