Latest Interviews
Showing 256–268 of 268 interview transcripts.
Clear all filters- 80,000 Hours1h 45m
#9 - Christine Peterson on how insecure computers could lead to global disaster, and how to fix it
Christine Peterson, Keiran Harris, Robert Wiblin
Christine Peterson, co-founder of the Foresight Institute, draws parallels between the evolving effective altruism movement and 1980s space settlement communities to advocate for prioritizing long-term, high-leverage existential risks over immediate, easily measurable causes. She highlights accelerating artificial intelligence timelines and software security vulnerabilities as critical threats requiring a global shift toward defensive technologies and fundamentally secure system design within a decade. Peterson further outlines a strategic framework for the movement that combines repair-focused longevity research with personal sustainability practices, urging practitioners to pursue careers in computer and physical sciences while establishing nimble nonprofit organizations to maximize civilization-scale impact.
- 80,000 Hours3h 17m
#8 - Lewis Bollard on how to end factory farming in our lifetimes
Lewis Bollard, Keiran Harris, Robert Wiblin
Open Philanthropy prioritizes farm animal welfare by targeting the massive scale of suffering among billions of chickens, land mammals, and fish through corporate campaigns, undercover investigations, and food technology grants. The organization deprioritized individual dietary advocacy and US legal battles due to low efficacy, instead focusing resources on neglected geographic regions like China and India and addressing the severe talent shortage in clean meat science. With global funding doubling to $50 million, the current strategic shift aims to resolve a talent gap while expanding into understudied areas such as fish, insect, and wild animal welfare.
- 80,000 Hours1h 14m
#7 - Julia Galef on making humanity more rational, and why Twitter isn’t all bad
Julia Galef is leading an independent research initiative funded by the Open Philanthropy Project to facilitate dialogues between experts and influential non-experts, aiming to identify specific "cruxes" that drive disagreements on high-impact global issues. Drawing on her background as the host of the *Rationally Speaking* podcast and author of a forthcoming book on judgment, she employs a less rigid "undebate" methodology designed to build epistemic norms rather than force mind changes. The project envisions a future network of approximately 100 key figures who, through structured inquiry, have revised their views on critical long-term risks and policy questions.
- 80,000 Hours2h 14m
#6 - Dr Toby Ord on why the long-term future matters more than anything else & what to do about it
Dr Toby Ord, Keiran Harris, Rob Wiblin
The presentation argues that the 21st century represents a pivotal era where humanity faces a roughly one-in-six probability of extinction from anthropogenic threats like artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and nuclear conflict. It posits that this existential risk is uniquely high because current technological power has outpaced civilizational wisdom, necessitating immediate global coordination and targeted interventions to preserve the potential value of a multi-million year future. By reframing long-term survival as a moral imperative, the argument advocates for specific career paths and institutional reforms that prioritize managing these catastrophic risks over short-term gains.
- 80,000 Hours1h 46m
#5 - Alex Gordon-Brown on how to donate millions in your 20s working in quantitative trading
Alex Gordon-Brown, Alexander Gordon-Brown, Robert Wiblin
Quantitative trading firms recruit STEM graduates through rigorous technical interviews to solve market inefficiencies, offering six-figure starting salaries that can escalate to millions for top performers within a decade. The industry operates with a partnership culture that emphasizes collaboration, risk management, and social responsibility, enabling successful employees to donate substantial portions of their high earnings to effective altruism causes. Beyond financial gain, these roles provide essential market liquidity while filtering candidates based on puzzle-solving aptitude and self-awareness rather than specific university credentials.
- 80,000 Hours2h 36m
#4 - Howie Lempel on pandemics that kill hundreds of millions and how to stop them
Identifying pandemics as the leading cause of future global catastrophic risk, the discussion highlights severe gaps in current disease surveillance and international coordination capabilities. It details specific philanthropic interventions, such as the Blue Ribbon Panel on Biodefense and educational grants for iGEM, aimed at bridging the divide between government inaction and the urgent need for proactive biodefense strategies. Furthermore, the analysis outlines critical policy recommendations for synthetic biology security, career pathways for interdisciplinary experts, and the necessity of shifting from reactive measures to developing rapid diagnostic platforms for unknown pathogens.
- 80,000 Hours1h 38m
#3 - Dr Dario Amodei on OpenAI and how AI will change the world for good and ill
Dr Dario Amodei, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Keiran Harris, Robert Wiblin
Founded by Elon Musk and Sam Altman, the nonprofit OpenAI employs approximately 55 researchers dedicated to ensuring Artificial General Intelligence benefits humanity through rigorous safety protocols and deep reinforcement learning. In the field's inaugural "Concrete Problems in AI Safety" paper, Amidey and colleagues identified actionable short-term risks such as reward hacking and adversarial examples, subsequently developing scalable supervision methods that allow agents to learn complex behaviors via human preferences rather than fixed reward functions. The organization advocates for high-impact technical careers focused on alignment and strategic coordination among major labs to prevent catastrophic outcomes while navigating geopolitical uncertainties in the race toward AGI.
- 80,000 Hours34 min
#2 - Prof David Spiegelhalter on risk, stats and improving understanding of science
Prof David Spiegelhalter, Robert Wiblin, Jess Whittlestone, David Spiegelhalter, Keiran Harris
David Spiegelhalter, the Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge University, advocates for using accessible metrics like the "microlife" and "micromort" to correct public biases regarding everyday health risks versus sensationalized threats. He highlights the success of institutions like the UK's NICE in applying statistical frameworks such as Quality-Adjusted Life Years to prioritize healthcare interventions while warning against the pitfalls of over-reliance on narrow indicators. Furthermore, Spiegelhalter urges academics to embrace public engagement as a professional duty and promotes strategies of resilience and flexibility for navigating deep uncertainty in both personal careers and long-term global policies.
- 80,000 Hours55 min
#1 - Miles Brundage on the world's desperate need for AI strategists and policy experts
Miles Brundage, Robert Wiblin, Rob
Myles Brundage, a research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute, analyzes the escalating security risks posed by bad actors and the structural incentives driving dangerous AI arms races. He advocates for incentive-compatible international coordination and in-house government expertise to prevent states and corporations from skimping on safety for competitive advantage. By shifting the field from abstract principles to concrete policy frameworks, Brundage emphasizes the urgent need for interdisciplinary collaboration to manage the diffusion of powerful AI capabilities.
- 80,000 Hours2h 17m
#27 - Dr Tom Inglesby on careers and policies that reduce global catastrophic biological risks
Dr Tom Inglesby, Keiran Harris, Rob Wiblin
Dr. Thomas Inglesby of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security advocates for integrating catastrophic biological risk planning into existing public health and biosecurity frameworks rather than treating them as separate, siloed endeavors. He emphasizes that while natural pandemics currently pose the highest probability of threat, the rising accessibility of biotechnology necessitates a unified US Biodefense Strategy and sustained funding for initiatives like the Global Health Security Agenda to address both accidental and deliberate misuse. By promoting interdisciplinary training through programs like the Emerging Leaders Fellowship and urging legislative support for dedicated emergency response funds, Inglesby seeks to shift the system from reactive crisis management to proactive, resilient infrastructure.
- 80,000 Hours1h 45m
#26 - Marie Gibbons on how exactly clean meat is made & the advances needed to get it in every store
Marie Gibbons, Natalie Cargill, Keiran Harris, Rob Wiblin
In this 80,000 Hours episode, host Natalie Cargill interviews Marie Gibbons, a GFI research fellow and physiologist who transitioned from veterinary medicine to champion cellular agriculture as the most viable path for global animal protection. Gibbons details the technical progression from harvesting satellite cells to scaling production using suspension bioreactors and plant-based scaffolds, while noting that cost reductions will likely drive market entry within the current year. Although the field faces logistical hurdles regarding media costs and regulatory approval, the discussion emphasizes a strategic industry shift toward specialization and collaboration to achieve cost parity with conventional meat within a decade.
- 80,000 Hours2h 40m
#25 - Prof Robin Hanson on why we have to lie to ourselves about why we do what we do
Robin Hanson, Rob Wiblin, Kevin Simler
Robin Hanson argues that human behavior across education, religion, and charity is driven primarily by subconscious signaling motives to avoid violating social norms rather than by stated functional goals. This evolutionary framework explains why institutions prioritize credentialing and ritual over actual efficacy, creating a disconnect between conscious narratives and the real drivers of reproductive fitness and social status. To address these inefficiencies, Hanson proposes implementing decision markets and "marginal charity" strategies that align individual signaling incentives with tangible societal improvements while bypassing the political resistance of established elites.
- 80,000 Hours8 min
Piers Le Marchant Interview - 80000 Hours
This event outlines how global over-leverage and widening inequality necessitate urgent social cohesion strategies while positioning young professionals as key agents of change through strategic network building. It highlights "80,000 Hours" as a pivotal platform designed to evolve beyond simple networking into a global engine for cross-disciplinary problem-solving by connecting diverse experts with critical charity challenges. The discussion concludes that these interconnected efforts will mobilize resources and redirect skilled professionals toward high-impact areas, from poverty alleviation to resource distribution, to address unsustainable long-term economic trends.