80,000 Hours Podcast
348 episodes - English - Latest episode: 17 days ago - ★★★★★ - 236 ratingsUnusually in-depth conversations about the world's most pressing problems and what you can do to solve them.
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Produced by Keiran Harris. Hosted by Rob Wiblin and Luisa Rodriguez.
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Episodes
#77 - Marc Lipsitch on whether we're winning or losing against COVID-19
May 18, 2020 23:32 - 1 hour - 89.6 MBIn March Professor Marc Lipsitch — Director of Harvard's Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics — abruptly found himself a global celebrity, his social media following growing 40-fold and journalists knocking down his door, as everyone turned to him for information they could trust. Here he lays out where the fight against COVID-19 stands today, why he's open to deliberately giving people COVID-19 to speed up vaccine development, and how we could do better next time. As Marc t...
#77 - Professor Marc Lipsitch on whether we're winning or losing against COVID-19
May 18, 2020 23:32 - 1 hour - 88.9 MBIn March Professor Marc Lipsitch — Director of Harvard's Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics — abruptly found himself a global celebrity, his social media following growing 40-fold and journalists knocking down his door, as everyone turned to him for information they could trust. Here he lays out where the fight against COVID-19 stands today, why he's open to deliberately giving people COVID-19 to speed up vaccine development, and how we could do better next time. As Marc tells us, isl...
Article: Ways people trying to do good accidentally make things worse, and how to avoid them
May 12, 2020 19:45 - 26 minutes - 25.3 MBToday’s release is the second experiment in making audio versions of our articles. The first was a narration of Greg Lewis’ terrific problem profile on ‘Reducing global catastrophic biological risks’, which you can find on the podcast feed just before episode #74 - that is, our interview with Greg about the piece. If you want to check out the links in today’s article, you can find those here. And if you have feedback on these, positive or negative, it’d be great if you could em...
#76 - Prof Tara Kirk Sell on misinformation, who's done well and badly, & what to reopen first
May 08, 2020 23:43 - 1 hour - 103 MBAmid a rising COVID-19 death toll, and looming economic disaster, we’ve been looking for good news — and one thing we're especially thankful for is the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (CHS). CHS focuses on protecting us from major biological, chemical or nuclear disasters, through research that informs governments around the world. While this pandemic surprised many, just last October the Center ran a simulation of a 'new coronavirus' scenario to identify weaknesses in our ability ...
#76 - Tara Kirk Sell on misinformation, who's done well and badly, & what to reopen first
May 08, 2020 23:43 - 1 hour - 104 MBAmid a rising COVID-19 death toll, and looming economic disaster, we’ve been looking for good news — and one thing we're especially thankful for is the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (CHS). CHS focuses on protecting us from major biological, chemical or nuclear disasters, through research that informs governments around the world. While this pandemic surprised many, just last October the Center ran a simulation of a 'new coronavirus' scenario to identify weaknesses in o...
#76 - Tara Kirk Sell on misinformation, who's done well and badly, & what we should reopen first
May 08, 2020 23:43Amid a rising COVID-19 death toll, and looming economic disaster, we’ve been looking for good news — and one thing we're especially thankful for is the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (CHS). CHS focuses on protecting us from major biological, chemical or nuclear disasters, through research that informs governments around the world. While this pandemic surprised many, just last October the Center ran a simulation of a 'new coronavirus' scenario to identify weaknesses in our ability ...
#75 - Michelle Hutchinson on what people most often ask 80,000 Hours
April 28, 2020 14:45 - 2 hours - 122 MBSince it was founded, 80,000 Hours has done one-on-one calls to supplement our online content and offer more personalised advice. We try to help people get clear on their most plausible paths, the key uncertainties they face in choosing between them, and provide resources, pointers, and introductions to help them in those paths. I (Michelle Hutchinson) joined the team a couple of years ago after working at Oxford's Global Priorities Institute, and these days I'm 80,000 Hours' Head of Advisi...
#75 – Michelle Hutchinson on what people most often ask 80,000 Hours
April 28, 2020 14:45 - 2 hours - 123 MBSince it was founded, 80,000 Hours has done one-on-one calls to supplement our online content and offer more personalised advice. We try to help people get clear on their most plausible paths, the key uncertainties they face in choosing between them, and provide resources, pointers, and introductions to help them in those paths. I (Michelle Hutchinson) joined the team a couple of years ago after working at Oxford's Global Priorities Institute, and these days I'm 80,000 Hours' Head ...
#74 - Dr Greg Lewis on COVID-19 & catastrophic biological risks
April 17, 2020 17:20 - 2 hours - 144 MBOur lives currently revolve around the global emergency of COVID-19; you’re probably reading this while confined to your house, as the death toll from the worst pandemic since 1918 continues to rise. The question of how to tackle COVID-19 has been foremost in the minds of many, including here at 80,000 Hours. Today's guest, Dr Gregory Lewis, acting head of the Biosecurity Research Group at Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute, puts the crisis in context, explaining ho...
Article: Reducing global catastrophic biological risks
April 15, 2020 22:45 - 1 hour - 60 MBIn a few days we'll be putting out a conversation with Dr Greg Lewis, who studies how to prevent global catastrophic biological risks at Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute. Greg also wrote a new problem profile on that topic for our website, and reading that is a good lead-in to our interview with him. So in a bit of an experiment we decided to make this audio version of that article, narrated by the producer of the 80,000 Hours Podcast, Keiran Harris. We’re thinking about ha...
Emergency episode: Rob & Howie on the menace of COVID-19, and what both governments & individuals might do to help
March 19, 2020 23:43 - 1 hour - 103 MBFrom home isolation Rob and Howie just recorded an episode on: 1. How many could die in the crisis, and the risk to your health personally. 2. What individuals might be able to do help tackle the coronavirus crisis. 3. What we suspect governments should do in response to the coronavirus crisis. 4. The importance of personally not spreading the virus, the properties of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and how you can personally avoid it. 5. The many places society screwed up, how we can a...
#73 - Phil Trammell on patient philanthropy and waiting to do good
March 17, 2020 15:08 - 2 hours - 143 MBTo do good, most of us look to use our time and money to affect the world around us today. But perhaps that's all wrong. If you took $1,000 you were going to donate and instead put it in the stock market — where it grew on average 5% a year — in 100 years you'd have $125,000 to give away instead. And in 200 years you'd have $17 million. This astonishing fact has driven today's guest, economics researcher Philip Trammell at Oxford's Global Priorities Institute, to investigate the ...
#72 - Toby Ord on the precipice and humanity's potential futures
March 07, 2020 19:58 - 3 hours - 179 MBThis week Oxford academic and 80,000 Hours trustee Dr Toby Ord released his new book The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity. It's about how our long-term future could be better than almost anyone believes, but also how humanity's recklessness is putting that future at grave risk — in Toby's reckoning, a 1 in 6 chance of being extinguished this century. I loved the book and learned a great deal from it (buy it here, US and audiobook release March 24). While prepa...
#71 - Benjamin Todd on the key ideas of 80,000 Hours
March 02, 2020 23:50 - 2 hours - 163 MBThe 80,000 Hours Podcast is about “the world’s most pressing problems and how you can use your career to solve them”, and in this episode we tackle that question in the most direct way possible. Last year we published a summary of all our key ideas, which links to many of our other articles, and which we are aiming to keep updated as our opinions shift. All of us added something to it, but the single biggest contributor was our CEO and today's guest, Ben Todd, who founded 80,000 ...
#71 - Ben Todd on the key ideas of 80,000 Hours
March 02, 2020 23:50 - 162 MBThe 80,000 Hours Podcast is about “the world’s most pressing problems and how you can use your career to solve them”, and in this episode we tackle that question in the most direct way possible. Last year we published a summary of all our key ideas, which links to many of our other articles, and which we are aiming to keep updated as our opinions shift. All of us added something to it, but the single biggest contributor was our CEO and today's guest, Ben Todd, who founded 80,000 Hours alo...
Arden & Rob on demandingness, work-life balance & injustice (80k team chat #1)
February 25, 2020 22:17 - 44 minutes - 41.5 MBToday's bonus episode of the podcast is a quick conversation between me and my fellow 80,000 Hours researcher Arden Koehler about a few topics, including the demandingness of morality, work-life balance, and emotional reactions to injustice. Arden is about to graduate with a philosophy PhD from New York University, so naturally we dive right into some challenging implications of utilitarian philosophy and how it might be applied to real life. Issues we talk about include: • If yo...
Bonus episode - Arden & Rob on demandingness, work-life balance & injustice
February 25, 2020 22:17Today's bonus episode of the podcast is a quick conversation between me and my fellow 80,000 Hours researcher Arden Koehler about a few topics, including the demandingness of morality, work-life balance, and emotional reactions to injustice. Arden is about to graduate with a philosophy PhD from New York University, so naturally we dive right into some challenging implications of utilitarian philosophy and how it might be applied to real life. Issues we talk about include: • If you’re not ...
Arden & Rob on demandingness, work-life balance & injustice (80k team chat)
February 25, 2020 22:17 - 40.5 MBToday's bonus episode of the podcast is a quick conversation between me and my fellow 80,000 Hours researcher Arden Koehler about a few topics, including the demandingness of morality, work-life balance, and emotional reactions to injustice. Arden is about to graduate with a philosophy PhD from New York University, so naturally we dive right into some challenging implications of utilitarian philosophy and how it might be applied to real life. Issues we talk about include: • If you’re not ...
#70 - Dr Cassidy Nelson on the 12 best ways to stop the next pandemic (and limit nCoV)
February 13, 2020 23:58 - 2 hours - 135 MBnCoV is alarming governments and citizens around the world. It has killed more than 1,000 people, brought the Chinese economy to a standstill, and continues to show up in more and more places. But bad though it is, it's much closer to a warning shot than a worst case scenario. The next emerging infectious disease could easily be more contagious, more fatal, or both. Despite improvements in the last few decades, humanity is still not nearly prepared enough to contain new diseases. We...
#69 - Jeff Ding on China, its AI dream, and what we get wrong about both
February 06, 2020 23:07 - 1 hour - 89.3 MBThe State Council of China's 2017 AI plan was the starting point of China’s AI planning; China’s approach to AI is defined by its top-down and monolithic nature; China is winning the AI arms race; and there is little to no discussion of issues of AI ethics and safety in China. How many of these ideas have you heard? In his paper Deciphering China's AI Dream, today's guest, PhD student Jeff Ding, outlines why he believes none of these claims are true. • Links to learn more, summar...
Rob & Howie on what we do and don't know about 2019-nCoV
February 03, 2020 17:42 - 1 hour - 72.5 MBTwo 80,000 Hours researchers, Robert Wiblin and Howie Lempel, record an experimental bonus episode about the new 2019-nCoV virus. See this list of resources, including many discussed in the episode, to learn more. In the 1h15m conversation we cover: • What is it? • How many people have it? • How contagious is it? • What fraction of people who contract it die? • How likely is it to spread out of control? • What's the range of plausible fatalities worldwide? • How does it compar...
#68 - Will MacAskill on the paralysis argument, whether we're at the hinge of history, & his new priorities
January 24, 2020 00:57 - 3 hours - 189 MBYou’re given a box with a set of dice in it. If you roll an even number, a person's life is saved. If you roll an odd number, someone else will die. Each time you shake the box you get $10. Should you do it? A committed consequentialist might say, "Sure! Free money!" But most will think it obvious that you should say no. You've only gotten a tiny benefit, in exchange for moral responsibility over whether other people live or die. And yet, according to today’s return guest, philos...
#44 Classic episode - Paul Christiano on finding real solutions to the AI alignment problem
January 15, 2020 00:44 - 3 hours - 213 MBRebroadcast: this episode was 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 the world. This is now the top resource I'm going to refer people to if th...
#33 Classic episode - Anders Sandberg on cryonics, solar flares, and the annual odds of nuclear war
January 08, 2020 06:27 - 1 hour - 78.6 MBRebroadcast: this episode was originally released in May 2018. Joseph Stalin had a life-extension program dedicated to making himself immortal. What if he had succeeded? According to Bryan Caplan in episode #32, there’s an 80% chance that Stalin would still be ruling Russia today. Today’s guest disagrees. Like Stalin he has eyes for his own immortality - including an insurance plan that will cover the cost of cryogenically freezing himself after he dies - and thinks the technol...
#17 Classic episode - Prof Will MacAskill on moral uncertainty, utilitarianism & how to avoid being a moral monster
December 31, 2019 16:28 - 1 hour - 103 MBRebroadcast: this episode was originally released in January 2018. Immanuel Kant is a profoundly influential figure in modern philosophy, and was one of the earliest proponents for universal democracy and international cooperation. He also thought that women have no place in civil society, that it was okay to kill illegitimate children, and that there was a ranking in the moral worth of different races. Throughout history we’ve consistently believed, as common sense, truly horrifying thing...
#17 Classic episode - Will MacAskill on moral uncertainty, utilitarianism & how to avoid being a moral monster
December 31, 2019 16:28 - 1 hour - 103 MBRebroadcast: this episode was originally released in January 2018. Immanuel Kant is a profoundly influential figure in modern philosophy, and was one of the earliest proponents for universal democracy and international cooperation. He also thought that women have no place in civil society, that it was okay to kill illegitimate children, and that there was a ranking in the moral worth of different races. Throughout history we’ve consistently believed, as common sense, truly horr...
#46 Classic episode - Hilary Greaves on moral cluelessness & tackling crucial questions in academia
December 23, 2019 22:24 - 155 MBRebroadcast: this episode was originally released in October 2018. The barista gives you your coffee and change, and you walk away from the busy line. But you suddenly realise she gave you $1 less than she should have. Do you brush your way past the people now waiting, or just accept this as a dollar you’re never getting back? According to philosophy Professor Hilary Greaves - Director of Oxford University's Global Priorities Institute, which is hiring - this simple decision will completel...
#67 - Prof David Chalmers on the nature and ethics of consciousness
December 16, 2019 21:00 - 4 hours - 258 MBWhat is it like to be you right now? You're seeing this text on the screen, smelling the coffee next to you, and feeling the warmth of the cup. There’s a lot going on in your head — your conscious experience. Now imagine beings that are identical to humans, but for one thing: they lack this conscious experience. If you spill your coffee on them, they’ll jump like anyone else, but inside they'll feel no pain and have no thoughts: the lights are off. The concept of these so-called 'philosop...
#67 - David Chalmers on the nature and ethics of consciousness
December 16, 2019 21:00 - 4 hours - 258 MBWhat is it like to be you right now? You're seeing this text on the screen, smelling the coffee next to you, and feeling the warmth of the cup. There’s a lot going on in your head — your conscious experience. Now imagine beings that are identical to humans, but for one thing: they lack this conscious experience. If you spill your coffee on them, they’ll jump like anyone else, but inside they'll feel no pain and have no thoughts: the lights are off. The concept of these so-call...
#66 - Peter Singer on being provocative, effective altruism, & how his moral views have changed
December 05, 2019 15:58 - 2 hours - 112 MBIn 1989, the professor of moral philosophy Peter Singer was all over the news for his inflammatory opinions about abortion. But the controversy stemmed from Practical Ethics — a book he’d actually released way back in 1979. It took a German translation ten years on for protests to kick off. According to Singer, he honestly didn’t expect this view to be as provocative as it became, and he certainly wasn’t aiming to stir up trouble and get attention. But after the protests and t...
#66 - Prof Peter Singer on being provocative, effective altruism, & how his moral views have changed
December 05, 2019 15:58 - 2 hours - 112 MBIn 1989, the professor of moral philosophy Peter Singer was all over the news for his inflammatory opinions about abortion. But the controversy stemmed from Practical Ethics — a book he’d actually released way back in 1979. It took a German translation ten years on for protests to kick off. According to Singer, he honestly didn’t expect this view to be as provocative as it became, and he certainly wasn’t aiming to stir up trouble and get attention. But after the protests and the increasin...
#65 - Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins on 8 years pursuing WMD arms control, & diversity in diplomacy
November 19, 2019 23:49 - 1 hour - 93 MB"…it started when the Soviet Union fell apart and there was a real desire to ensure security of nuclear materials and pathogens, and that scientists with [WMD-related] knowledge could get paid so that they wouldn't go to countries and sell that knowledge." Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins has had an incredible career in diplomacy and global security. Today she’s a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and president of Global Connections Empowering Global Change, where s...
#64 - Bruce Schneier on surveillance without tyranny, secrets, & the big risks in computer security
October 25, 2019 18:21 - 2 hours - 120 MBNovember 3 2020, 10:32PM: CNN, NBC, and FOX report that Donald Trump has narrowly won Florida, and with it, re-election. November 3 2020, 11:46PM: The NY Times and Wall Street Journal report that some group has successfully hacked electronic voting systems across the country, including Florida. The malware has spread to tens of thousands of machines and deletes any record of its activity, so the returning officer of Florida concedes they actually have no idea who won the state — a...
Rob Wiblin on plastic straws, nicotine, doping, & whether changing the long-term is really possible
September 25, 2019 23:23 - 3 hours - 179 MBToday's episode is a compilation of interviews I recently recorded for two other shows, Love Your Work and The Neoliberal Podcast. If you've listened to absolutely everything on this podcast feed, you'll have heard four interviews with me already, but fortunately I don't think these two include much repetition, and I've gotten a decent amount of positive feedback on both. First up, I speak with David Kadavy on his show, Love Your Work. This is a particularly personal and relaxe...
Have we helped you have a bigger social impact? Our annual survey, plus other ways we can help you.
September 16, 2019 19:22 - 3 minutes - 3.45 MB1. Fill out our annual impact survey here. 2. Find a great vacancy on our job board. 3. Learn about our key ideas, and get links to our top articles. 4. Join our newsletter for an email about what's new, every 2 weeks or so. 5. Or follow our pages on Facebook and Twitter. —— Once a year 80,000 Hours runs a survey to find out whether we've helped our users have a larger social impact with their life and career. We and our donors need to know whether our services, like t...
#63 - Vitalik Buterin on better ways to fund public goods, blockchain's failures, & effective giving
September 03, 2019 22:52 - 3 hours - 183 MBHistorically, progress in the field of cryptography has had major consequences. It has changed the course of major wars, made it possible to do business on the internet, and enabled private communication between both law-abiding citizens and dangerous criminals. Could it have similarly significant consequences in future? Today's guest — Vitalik Buterin — is world-famous as the lead developer of Ethereum, a successor to the cryptographic-currency Bitcoin, which added the capacity fo...
#62 - Paul Christiano on messaging the future, increasing compute, & how CO2 impacts your brain
August 05, 2019 15:07 - 2 hours - 121 MBImagine that – one day – humanity dies out. At some point, many millions of years later, intelligent life might well evolve again. Is there any message we could leave that would reliably help them out? In his second appearance on the 80,000 Hours Podcast, machine learning researcher and polymath Paul Christiano suggests we try to answer this question with a related thought experiment: are there any messages we might want to send back to our ancestors in the year 1700 that would have...
#61 - Helen Toner on emerging technology, national security, and China
July 17, 2019 17:08 - 1 hour - 106 MBFrom 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 have for how machine learning could alter life in the 21st century. In addition to massively changing everyday life, past general purpos...
#60 - Prof Tetlock on why accurate forecasting matters for everything, and how you can do it better
June 28, 2019 15:36 - 2 hours - 121 MBHave you ever been infuriated by a doctor's unwillingness to give you an honest, probabilistic estimate about what to expect? Or a lawyer who won't tell you the chances you'll win your case? Their behaviour is so frustrating because accurately predicting the future is central to every action we take. If we can't assess the likelihood of different outcomes we're in a complete bind, whether the decision concerns war and peace, work and study, or Black Mirror and RuPaul's Drag Race. Which is w...
#60 - Phil Tetlock on why accurate forecasting matters for everything, and how you can do it better
June 28, 2019 15:36 - 2 hours - 121 MBHave you ever been infuriated by a doctor's unwillingness to give you an honest, probabilistic estimate about what to expect? Or a lawyer who won't tell you the chances you'll win your case? Their behaviour is so frustrating because accurately predicting the future is central to every action we take. If we can't assess the likelihood of different outcomes we're in a complete bind, whether the decision concerns war and peace, work and study, or Black Mirror and RuPaul's Drag Race. ...
#59 - Cass Sunstein on how change happens, and why it's so often abrupt & unpredictable
June 17, 2019 22:45 - 1 hour - 95 MBIt can often feel hopeless to be an activist seeking social change on an obscure issue where most people seem opposed or at best indifferent to you. But according to a new book by Professor Cass Sunstein, they shouldn't despair. Large social changes are often abrupt and unexpected, arising in an environment of seeming public opposition. The Communist Revolution in Russia spread so swiftly it confounded even Lenin. Seventy years later the Soviet Union collapsed just as quickly and ...
#59 - Prof Cass Sunstein on how change happens, and why it's so often abrupt & unpredictable
June 17, 2019 22:45 - 1 hour - 94.7 MBIt can often feel hopeless to be an activist seeking social change on an obscure issue where most people seem opposed or at best indifferent to you. But according to a new book by Professor Cass Sunstein, they shouldn't despair. Large social changes are often abrupt and unexpected, arising in an environment of seeming public opposition. The Communist Revolution in Russia spread so swiftly it confounded even Lenin. Seventy years later the Soviet Union collapsed just as quickly and unpredicta...
#58 - Pushmeet Kohli of DeepMind on designing robust & reliable AI systems and how to succeed in AI
June 03, 2019 17:10 - 1 hour - 83.4 MBWhen you're building a bridge, responsibility for making sure it won't fall over isn't handed over to a few 'bridge not falling down engineers'. Making sure a bridge is safe to use and remains standing in a storm is completely central to the design, and indeed the entire project. When it comes to artificial intelligence, commentators often distinguish between enhancing the capabilities of machine learning systems and enhancing their safety. But to Pushmeet Kohli, principal scientist...
Rob Wiblin on human nature, new technology, and living a happy, healthy & ethical life
May 13, 2019 22:28 - 2 hours - 127 MBThis is a cross-post of some interviews Rob did recently on two other podcasts — Mission Daily (from 2m) and The Good Life (from 1h13m). Some of the content will be familiar to regular listeners — but if you’re at all interested in Rob’s personal thoughts, there should be quite a lot of new material to make listening worthwhile. The first interview is with Chad Grills. They focused largely on new technologies and existential risks, but also discuss topics like: • Why Rob is wary o...
#57 - Tom Kalil on how to do the most good in government
April 23, 2019 12:51 - 2 hours - 156 MBYou’re 29 years old, and you’ve just been given a job in the White House. How do you quickly figure out how the US Executive Branch behemoth actually works, so that you can have as much impact as possible - before you quit or get kicked out? That was the challenge put in front of Tom Kalil in 1993. He had enough success to last a full 16 years inside the Clinton and Obama administrations, working to foster the development of the internet, then nanotechnology, and then cutting-edge ...
#56 - Persis Eskander on wild animal welfare and what, if anything, to do about it
April 15, 2019 17:22 - 2 hours - 165 MBElephants in chains at travelling circuses; pregnant pigs trapped in coffin sized crates at factory farms; deers living in the wild. We should welcome the last as a pleasant break from the horror, right? Maybe, but maybe not. While we tend to have a romanticised view of nature, life in the wild includes a range of extremely negative experiences. Many animals are hunted by predators, and constantly have to remain vigilant about the risk of being killed, and perhaps experiencing the...
#55 - Lutter & Winter on founding charter cities with outstanding governance to end poverty
March 31, 2019 18:42 - 2 hours - 139 MBGovernance matters. Policy change quickly took China from famine to fortune; Singapore from swamps to skyscrapers; and Hong Kong from fishing village to financial centre. Unfortunately, many governments are hard to reform and — to put it mildly — it's not easy to found a new country. This has prompted poverty-fighters and political dreamers to look for creative ways to get new and better 'pseudo-countries' off the ground. The poor could then voluntary migrate to in search of securit...
#54 - OpenAI on publication norms, malicious uses of AI, and general-purpose learning algorithms
March 19, 2019 21:32 - 2 hours - 159 MBOpenAI’s Dactyl is an AI system that can manipulate objects with a human-like robot hand. OpenAI Five is an AI system that can defeat humans at the video game Dota 2. The strange thing is they were both developed using the same general-purpose reinforcement learning algorithm. How is this possible and what does it show? In today's interview Jack Clark, Policy Director at OpenAI, explains that from a computational perspective using a hand and playing Dota 2 are remarkably similar p...
#53 - Kelsey Piper on the room for important advocacy within journalism
February 27, 2019 04:28 - 2 hours - 142 MB“Politics. Business. Opinion. Science. Sports. Animal welfare. Existential risk.” Is this a plausible future lineup for major news outlets? Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and given very little editorial direction, Vox's Future Perfect aspires to be more or less that. Competition in the news business creates pressure to write quick pieces on topical political issues that can drive lots of clicks with just a few hours' work. But according to Kelsey Piper, staff writer for this...
Julia Galef and Rob Wiblin on an updated view of the best ways to help humanity
February 17, 2019 01:00 - 56 minutes - 52.3 MBThis is a cross-post of an interview Rob did with Julia Galef on her podcast Rationally Speaking. Rob and Julia discuss how the career advice 80,000 Hours gives has changed over the years, and the biggest misconceptions about our views. The topics will be familiar to the most fervent fans of this show — but we think that if you’ve listened to less than about half of the episodes we've released so far, you’ll find something new to enjoy here. Julia may be familiar to you as the gues...