The 80000 Hours Podcast on Artificial Intelligence

Sep 01 2023 14 ep. 146 mins 81

The 80000 Hours Podcast on Artificial Intelligence artwork

A compilation of ten key episodes on artificial intelligence and related topics from 80,000 Hours. Together they'll help you learn about how AI looks from a broadly longtermist, existential risk, or effective altruism flavoured point of view.

Science Society & Culture

Copy RSS

Subscribe on Podcast Addict

Zero: What to expect in this series

Sep 01 2023 2 mins

A short introduction to what you'll get out of these episodes!

One: Brian Christian on the alignment problem

Sep 01 2023 175 mins

Originally released in March 2021. Brian Christian is a bestselling author with a particular knack for accurately communicating difficult or technical ideas from both mathematics and computer science. Listeners loved our episode about his book Algorithms to Live By — so when the team read his new book, The Alignment Problem, and found it to be an insightful and comprehensive revi

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

Sep 01 2023 169 mins

Originally released in May 2023. Imagine you are an orphaned eight-year-old whose parents left you a $1 trillion company, and no trusted adult to serve as your guide to the world. You have to hire a smart adult to run that company, guide your life the way that a parent would, and administer your vast wealth. You have to hire that adult based on a work trial or interview you come up

Three: Paul Christiano on finding real solutions to the AI alignment problem

Sep 01 2023 231 mins

Originally released in October 2018. Paul Christiano is one of the smartest people I know. After our first session produced such great material, we decided to do a second recording, resulting in our longest interview so far. While challenging at times I can strongly recommend listening - Paul works on AI himself and has a very unusually thought through view of how it will change th

Four: Rohin Shah on DeepMind and trying to fairly hear out both AI doomers and doubters

Sep 01 2023 189 mins

Can there be a more exciting and strange place to work today than a leading AI lab? Your CEO has said they're worried your research could cause human extinction. The government is setting up meetings to discuss how this outcome can be avoided. Some of your colleagues think this is all overblown; others are more anxious still.Today's guest — machine learning researcher Rohin Shah

Five: Chris Olah on what the hell is going on inside neural networks

Sep 01 2023 189 mins

Originally released in August 2021. Chris Olah has had a fascinating and unconventional career path. Most people who want to pursue a research career feel they need a degree to get taken seriously. But Chris not only doesn't have a PhD, but doesn’t even have an undergraduate degree. After dropping out of university to help defend an acquaintance who was facing bogus criminal char

Six: Richard Ngo on large language models, OpenAI, and striving to make the future go well

Sep 01 2023 164 mins

Originally released in December 2022. Large language models like GPT-3, and now ChatGPT, are neural networks trained on a large fraction of all text available on the internet to do one thing: predict the next word in a passage. This simple technique has led to something extraordinary — black boxes able to write TV scripts, explain jokes, produce satirical poetry, answer common fa

Seven: Ben Garfinkel on scrutinising classic AI risk arguments

Sep 01 2023 158 mins

Originally released in July 2020. 80,000 Hours, along with many other members of the effective altruism movement, has argued that helping to positively shape the development of artificial intelligence may be one of the best ways to have a lasting, positive impact on the long-term future. Millions of dollars in philanthropic spending, as well as lots of career changes, have been mot

Eight: Tom Davidson on how quickly AI could transform the world

Sep 01 2023 181 mins

Originally released in May 2023. It’s easy to dismiss alarming AI-related predictions when you don’t know where the numbers came from. For example: what if we told you that within 15 years, it’s likely that we’ll see a 1,000x improvement in AI capabilities in a single year? And what if we then told you that those improvements would lead to explosive economic growth unlike a

Nine: Helen Toner on emerging technology, national security, and China

Sep 01 2023 114 mins

Originally released in July 2019. From 1870 to 1950, the introduction of electricity transformed life in the US and UK, as people gained access to lighting, radio and a wide range of household appliances for the first time. Electricity turned out to be a general purpose technology that could help with almost everything people did. Some think this is the best historical analogy we h