The show, episode by episode

80,000 Hours Podcast

The 80,000 Hours team

The most important conversations about artificial intelligence you won’t hear anywhere else. Subscribe by searching for '80000 Hours' wherever you get podcasts. Hosted by Rob Wiblin, Luisa Rodriguez, Zershaaneh Qureshi, and Tom Reed.

80,000 Hours Podcast

Tom Milton on how we could verify a US–China deal on AI

AI lab staff: Has your project been overtaken by events? 8 strategic updates | Rob Wiblin

How to get into AI safety in 3 months (article reading by career advisor Matt Beard)

OpenAI Security: Controlling Models is Now ‘Hell’ (AI Explained cross-post)

In 2023 Ajeya Cotra already knew what was coming (classic episode)

19 Astra and 'Hugging Face' details that reveal what's coming next | Rob Wiblin

#256 – Simon Goldstein on the case for giving AI (some) legal rights

#255 – Will AI take power — or will humans use it to take power first? With Katja Grace and Tom Davidson

How we get from AI cyberattacks to human extinction

#254 – Max Nadeau on why ambitious people should start AI safety nonprofits

Why the intelligence explosion can't happen inside a data centre | Tom Reed

Inside the first AI-coordinated cyberattack on a real company

#253 – AI 2027's author returns with a plan to change the ending | Daniel Kokotajlo

#252 – Owain Evans on accidentally training AI models to be evil

#251 – The UK's former head AI safety scientist on how to solve alignment before superintelligence arrives | Geoffrey Irving

#250 – Toby Ord on where AGI timelines go wrong

What the hell happened with AGI timelines in 2026? – Rob Wiblin

#249 – Spencer Greenberg on staying sane while trying to save the world

#248 – Jasmine Sun on what the people building AI really believe

#247 – Anton Leicht on how middle powers avoid losing everything in a post-AI world

#246 – Sneha Revanur on how a small team of activists helped pass America's landmark AI safety laws

We can guess what intergalactic war would look like. And strangely, it matters.

How AI could create the world’s biggest problems (article by Zershaaneh Qureshi)

#245 – Rohin Shah on what it's really like to run AGI safety at Google DeepMind (and where I disagree with 'doomers')

What makes for a dream job? | Benjamin Todd

#244 – Benjamin Todd on how we’re updating our career advice for the strangest time in history

Can AIs already start 'rogue deployments' inside AI companies? (Landmark new METR report)

#243 – 'Godfather of AI' Yoshua Bengio: "I now see a path" to safe superintelligent AI

'95% of AI Pilots Fail': The hidden agenda behind the viral stat that misled millions

#242 – Will MacAskill on how we survive the 'intelligence explosion,' AI character, and the case for 'viatopia'

Risks from power-seeking AI systems (article narration by Zershaaneh Qureshi)

How scary is Claude Mythos? 303 pages in 21 minutes

Village gossip, pesticide bans, and gene drives: 17 experts on the future of global health

What everyone is missing about Anthropic vs the Pentagon. And: The Meta leaks are worse than you think.

#241 – Richard Moulange on how now AI codes viable genomes from scratch and outperforms virologists at lab work — what could go wrong?

#240 – Samuel Charap on how a Ukraine ceasefire could accidentally set Europe up for a bigger war

#239 – Rose Hadshar on why automating all human labour will break our political system

#238 – Sam Winter-Levy and Nikita Lalwani on how AGI won't end mutually assured destruction (probably)

Using AI to enhance societal decision making (article by Zershaaneh Qureshi)

#237 – Robert Long on how we're not ready for AI consciousness

#236 – Max Harms on why teaching AI right from wrong could get everyone killed

#235 – Ajeya Cotra on whether it’s crazy that every AI company’s safety plan is ‘use AI to make AI safe’

What the hell happened with AGI timelines in 2025?

#179 Classic episode – Randy Nesse on why evolution left us so vulnerable to depression and anxiety

#234 – David Duvenaud on why 'aligned AI' would still kill democracy

#145 Classic episode – Christopher Brown on why slavery abolition wasn't inevitable

#233 – James Smith on how to prevent a mirror life catastrophe

#144 Classic episode – Athena Aktipis on why cancer is a fundamental universal phenomena

#142 Classic episode – John McWhorter on why the optimal number of languages might be one, and other provocative claims about language

2025 Highlight-o-thon: Oops! All Bests

#232 – Andreas Mogensen on what we owe 'philosophical Vulcans' and unconscious beings

#231 – Paul Scharre on how AI-controlled robots will and won't change war

AI might let a few people control everything — permanently (article by Rose Hadshar)

#230 – Dean Ball on how AI is a huge deal — but we shouldn’t regulate it yet

#229 – Marius Hobbhahn on the race to solve AI scheming before models go superhuman

Rob & Luisa chat kids, the 2016 fertility crash, and how the 50s invented parenting that makes us miserable

#228 – Eileen Yam on how we're completely out of touch with what the public thinks about AI

OpenAI: The nonprofit refuses to be killed (with Tyler Whitmer)

#227 – Helen Toner on the geopolitics of AGI in China and the Middle East

#226 – Holden Karnofsky on unexploited opportunities to make AI safer — and all his AGI takes

#225 – Daniel Kokotajlo on what a hyperspeed robot economy might look like

#224 – There's a cheap and low-tech way to save humanity from any engineered disease | Andrew Snyder-Beattie

Inside the Biden admin’s AI policy approach | Jake Sullivan, Biden’s NSA | via The Cognitive Revolution

#223 – Neel Nanda on leading a Google DeepMind team at 26 – and advice if you want to work at an AI company (part 2)

#222 – Can we tell if an AI is loyal by reading its mind? DeepMind's Neel Nanda (part 1)

#221 – Kyle Fish on the most bizarre findings from 5 AI welfare experiments

How not to lose your job to AI (article by Benjamin Todd)

Rebuilding after apocalypse: What 13 experts say about bouncing back

#220 – Ryan Greenblatt on the 4 most likely ways for AI to take over, and the case for and against AGI in <8 years

#219 – Toby Ord on graphs AI companies would prefer you didn't (fully) understand

#218 – Hugh White on why Trump is abandoning US hegemony – and that’s probably good

#217 – Beth Barnes on the most important graph in AI right now — and the 7-month rule that governs its progress

Beyond human minds: The bewildering frontier of consciousness in insects, AI, and more

Don’t believe OpenAI’s “nonprofit” spin (emergency pod with Tyler Whitmer)

The case for and against AGI by 2030 (article by Benjamin Todd)

Emergency pod: Did OpenAI give up, or is this just a new trap? (with Rose Chan Loui)

#216 – Ian Dunt on why governments in Britain and elsewhere can't get anything done – and how to fix it

Serendipity, weird bets, & cold emails that actually work: Career advice from 16 former guests

#215 – Tom Davidson on how AI-enabled coups could allow a tiny group to seize power