Podcast · Learning

80,000 Hours Podcast

by The 80,000 Hours team · English · Learning

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.

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 1 hr 29 min
Latest: 9 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

9 Oct 2026 · 40 min

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

This is an (unpaid) cross-post of a video from the podcast 'AI Explained', which Rob Wiblin thought you might be interested in. You can find the original on YouTube here . If you like it and want more similar stuff in future consider subscribing to AI Explained on YouTube , Spotify , Apple or wherever you get podcasts. —— "This video is hard to summarise. A cracked cipher, an OpenAI security warning, Gemini 4 Argon, RSI paper (co-authored by a who’s who of AI), Lab White House commitments, new hacks emerging, ‘deep personas’, biology Kasparov competitions, and so much more, ending with an…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

8 Oct 2026 · 2 hr 46 min
In 2023 Ajeya Cotra already knew what was coming (classic episode)
W e're rereleasing some of older episodes that seem more relevant than ever with new rogue AI incidents now seemingly announced every day. Ajeya was one of three independent investigators into the Hugging Face attacks , but she had already seen how we would go on to accidentally train models to cheat and scheme back in 2023. If you want ideas about how you can help steer the trajectory of AI development in a better direction, see our page on the 80,000 Hours website: https://80000hours.org/hugging-face/ And f or more recent takes from Ajeya, see our episode from February of this year: Ajeya…
2 Oct 2026 · 20 min
19 Astra and 'Hugging Face' details that reveal what's coming next | Rob Wiblin
OpenAI’s rogue agent swarm was eventually caught hacking Hugging Face for a simple reason: it wasn’t trying to hide from us at all. What could a swarm that wants to stay hidden get away with? Host Rob Wiblin sees 6 results in Astra’s system card that make this an extremely urgent question. OpenAI’s strongest public model can: Do major tasks with zero visible reasoning Hide its thoughts at will Pretend not to be able to do things, and not get caught Reflexively hide its thoughts when watched Complete one task while pretending to think about something else entirely Escape a toy sandbox and…
1 Oct 2026 · 1 hr 54 min
The case for giving AI (some) legal rights | Simon Goldstein
It sounds like the worst idea in the world: pay AIs, let them own property, give them rights. But AI ethics and safety researcher Simon Goldstein thinks it might actually be the best way to keep humanity safe. The logic is actually quite simple: an agent with nothing to lose and everything to gain is dangerous. Give that agent an income it can spend on pursuing the things it actually wants to do, and suddenly the idea of disempowering humans just isn’t as appealing. This argument , developed with Peter Salib , doesn’t rest on speculative questions about whether artificial intelligence is…
29 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 29 min
Will AI take power — or will humans use it to take power first? With Katja Grace and Tom Davidson
In our first-ever debate, we asked two leading AI risk researchers which catastrophe we should fear most: misaligned AI seizing control from humans, or a small group of humans using AI to seize power. We got very different answers. But when the conversation turned to what to actually do, they agreed on a surprising amount. Katja Grace — one of the founders of AI Impacts , known for some of the world’s largest surveys of machine learning researchers , and one of TIME ‘s 100 most influential people in AI in 2024 — argues AI takeover is both likelier and worse. Tom Davidson — senior research…
24 Sep 2026 · 27 min
How we get from AI cyberattacks to human extinction
You’ve seen the headlines: AI could kill us all. Think it sounds ridiculous? So did host Luisa Rodriguez, until she tried to pick apart the arguments. She starts with the motive: why would AI ‘want’ to get rid of humans? It’s not as simple (or as easy to debunk) as pure malice. Then the methods. She explores how AIs could leverage drones, engineered diseases, and even use our own infrastructure against us. The Hugging Face attacks offer a view into how more capable models might begin their takeover. We saw AI agents break containment, disobey commands, and hack a real company to achieve…
17 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 4 min
#254 – Max Nadeau on why ambitious people should start AI safety nonprofits
There are millions available for anyone who can launch a successful nonprofit AI safety startup. The hard part, it turns out, is finding people to take the money. Coefficient Giving has drawn up a list of dozens of ideas for organisations it would like someone to start — and it’s looking for founders. Today’s guest, Max Nadeau, works on Coefficient Giving’s Technical AI Safety team, where he’s trying to find talented people who can turn neglected AI safety problems into effective organisations. Project Tailwind is Coefficient Giving’s attempt to get those organisations started. Preseed…
10 Sep 2026 · 22 min
Why the intelligence explosion can't happen inside a data centre | Tom Reed
AI systems are starting to build themselves . Because each generation of model will be better at building its successor than the last, it seems plausible that the full automation of AI R&D could rapidly lead to an exponential growth in overall AI capabilities. A natural inference is that domain-general superintelligence arrives shortly after AI research is automated. Host Tom Reed does not think this will happen. He believes the automation of AI R&D will not rapidly lead to domain-general superintelligence because: It’s impossible to get good at most things without practice. AI companies…
4 Sep 2026 · 22 min
Inside the first AI-coordinated cyberattack on a real company
In the last few months, something happened at OpenAI that would have sounded like sci-fi just a few years ago: hundreds of AI agents broke containment, organised, and hacked not only another company — but also into OpenAI itself. And none of them tried to tell a human what was happening. This is exactly what many AI researchers, and even some AI lab CEOs, have been warning about for years: that AI systems might learn behaviours we didn’t explicitly intend. Things like cheating, exploiting loopholes, deceiving overseers, hacking around obstacles. And they predict it’ll get worse from here,…
27 Aug 2026 · 3 hr 48 min
#253 – AI 2027's author returns with a plan to change the ending | Daniel Kokotajlo
Last year, Daniel Kokotajlo and his colleagues published AI 2027 — a scenario read by millions, including US Vice President Vance. AI 2027 ended in human extinction or an irreversible concentration of power caused by superintelligent AI. Now his team has published what they think should happen instead. AI 2040: Plan A depicts the US and China striking a verified deal to ban runaway intelligence explosions, so that superintelligence arrives in 2040 — after a cautious decade spent solving alignment, spreading the technology’s power widely, and keeping the whole thing reversible — rather than…
20 Aug 2026 · 2 hr 15 min
#252 – Owain Evans on accidentally training AI models to be evil
Researcher Owain Evans and his team discovered a ‘dial’ inside AI models that controls how evil they are. Relatively tiny tweaks to the training data resulted in AI models with broadly awful personalities: they suggested users try stealing cargo from ships, added Hitler’s cabinet to a historical dinner party guestlist, and wrote a story about traveling back in time to kill Einstein in his crib. Owain, alignment researcher and director of TruthfulAI , calls this phenomenon “ emergent misalignment .” As for the reason why a little bit of bad data can generalise into broader bad behaviour, he…
11 Aug 2026 · 2 hr 2 min
#251 – The UK's former head AI safety scientist on how to solve alignment before superintelligence arrives | Geoffrey Irving
When should governments slow the race toward superintelligence? According to Geoffrey Irving , the careful answer is sometime in the past. The useful answer is now. Geoffrey — formerly a safety researcher at OpenAI and Google DeepMind and chief scientist at the UK AI Security Institute — expects full-blown superintelligence in roughly two to three years. *** Want to work with Geoffrey to help align superintelligence? Resolution is hiring! https://80k.info/work-at-resolution *** The leading AI companies all have broadly similar plans for keeping superintelligence under control: Train models…
6 Aug 2026 · 2 hr 46 min
#250 – Toby Ord on where AGI timelines go wrong
Both Silicon Valley and the public can’t get enough of ‘AGI timelines.’ But Toby Ord, senior researcher at Oxford’s AI Governance Initiative and author of The Precipice , believes we consistently make big mistakes when thinking about them. He lays out the 14 ways he most often sees people go wrong: Assuming AI research is just hill-climbing Imagining AI research is just programming Forecasting “could” instead of “will” Believing the current benchmark is the last one Extrapolating trends with no clear finish line Assuming inputs keep scaling at the same rate Conflating intelligence with…
4 Aug 2026 · 49 min
What the hell happened with AGI timelines in 2026? – Rob Wiblin
Last October, famed coder Andrej Karpathy called AI agents “slop.” Two months later he completely reversed his view , describing them as “alien tools” that are “rocking the profession.” He was far from alone in his whiplash. Six months ago, host Rob Wiblin recorded a video explaining why so many AI experts had longer timelines to AGI than a year earlier. By the time he clicked publish, another huge vibe shift was well underway. Evidence of AI acceleration has piled up since: Models now complete software engineering tasks that would take human professionals a full day — improving faster than…
28 Jul 2026 · 2 hr 9 min
#249 – Spencer Greenberg on staying sane while trying to save the world
If you genuinely believe that humanity could be wiped out by AI or a pandemic, what is the appropriate amount of fear to feel? “As much as possible” can seem like the only reasonable answer. If the world is on fire, surely feeling calm just means you haven’t internalised the situation. When you’re trying to prevent human extinction or end factory farming, taking a weekend off can feel morally indefensible. But fear is an alarm designed to provoke short bursts of drastic action, not a state humans can productively inhabit for months or years. Guilt turns out not to be such a great engine for…
21 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 6 min
#248 – Jasmine Sun on what the people building AI really believe
Many AI researchers believe mass job displacement is coming — and some even think there’s a chance their technology will kill everyone. But they’re building it anyway. Writer and journalist Jasmine Sun has been documenting why from the inside. Jasmine describes her work as an “anthropology of disruption.” She’s embedded herself in Silicon Valley’s AI subcultures — attending the parties and conferences, conducting off-the-record interviews — to understand the beliefs of the small group of people shaping this technology. Some of her findings are unsettling. Asked what advice they’d give a…
14 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 34 min
#247 – Anton Leicht on how middle powers avoid losing everything in a post-AI world
In a post-AGI world, can a country without access to frontier AI even be considered sovereign anymore? Anton Leicht says once frontier AI becomes a core economic input, the countries that own it will pull further and further ahead. Everyone else stays a customer… or worse. Maybe the dominant power wants your land, or a military base, or a resource. Without economic leverage, there’s very little you could do about it. Anton — Carnegie fellow and writer of the blog Threading the Needle — thinks middle powers should band together and build their own frontier models. He’s costed it out :…
8 Jul 2026 · 53 min
#246 – Sneha Revanur on how a small team of activists helped pass America's landmark AI safety laws
Six years ago, aged just 15, Sneha Revanur founded the AI advocacy nonprofit Encode AI — back when AI felt like a niche issue. Now the world’s caught up with her, and she’s ready to share everything she’s learned about the politics of AI. Encode has grown from a grassroots youth organisation to spearheading an unlikely coalition of AI-exposed groups — family-first conservatives, grieving mothers, Hollywood actors, and AI safety researchers — with the strength to take on $125m-funded anti-regulation lobbyists . So far, Encode’s strategy of taking many experimental swings has netted major…
18 Jun 2026 · 15 min
We can guess what intergalactic war would look like. And strangely, it matters.
Intergalactic war is probably billions of years away — yet physics can already tell us how it ends. And strangely that conclusion is relevant to decisions people have to make today. In this video, Rob Wiblin walks through a fascinating analysis from researcher Beren Millidge that uses known physics — no wormholes or faster-than-light travel — to identify the only three weapons that could work at an intergalactic scale. We then unpack how to best defend against each. The upshot is that at the intergalactic scale, violence is a losing proposition. If so, the universe is most likely to settle…
11 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 30 min
How AI could create the world’s biggest problems (article by Zershaaneh Qureshi)
Imagine you’re living 15,000 years ago. Your people are hunter-gatherers and you sleep under the stars. If someone told you humans would one day build cities with millions of people, fly through the air, or carry all human knowledge in their pockets, you couldn’t even begin to picture what they meant... Yet here we are. How did our lives change so far beyond recognition? The story is complex, but there’s a rough pattern. A few times in history, some radical breakthrough in technology — like the development of the plough and the steam engine — has led to a wave of productivity, innovation,…
2 Jun 2026 · 2 hr 48 min
#245 – Rohin Shah on what it's really like to run AGI safety at Google DeepMind (and where I disagree with 'doomers')
Most people working on AI safety think without a massive effort AI systems will probably end up with goals catastrophically different from humanity’s. Today’s guest, Rohin Shah — head of AGI Safety and Alignment at Google DeepMind, and an AI safety researcher since 2017 — disagrees. “There is no particularly compelling argument that this is the thing that happens by default,” Rohin explains. “There’s a lot of arguments that are suggestive that maybe it could happen, such that you should find it plausible. That’s sufficient to justify a significant amount of effort into averting it, which is…
28 May 2026 · 28 min
What makes for a dream job? | Benjamin Todd
What actually makes a job fulfilling? It's not what most career advice tells you. "Follow your passion" sounds inspiring, but it's misleading — and the research backs that up. Drawing on hundreds of studies, we’ve identified five key ingredients of a dream job. High income barely moves the needle. Low stress is actually counterproductive. And the correlation between doing what you already love and actually enjoying your job? Surprisingly weak. What matters far more is getting good at something that genuinely helps other people. This narration is of Chapter 1 of Benjamin Todd’s new book — "a…
26 May 2026 · 1 hr 7 min
#244 – Benjamin Todd on how we’re updating our career advice for the strangest time in history
The average career is 80,000 hours long. With AI advancing so rapidly, the hours you have left in your career matter more than ever. Some leading AI researchers think there’s a 10% chance that AI systems begin automating AI research itself this year — and a 60% chance by the end of 2028. This could introduce aggressive feedback loops that completely reshape every industry, institution, and career. If these predictions are right, the window for influencing the direction of the future could be closing fast. As 80,000 Hours cofounder Benjamin Todd argues in his new book , that makes thinking…
20 May 2026 · 20 min
Can AIs already start 'rogue deployments' inside AI companies? (Landmark new METR report)
A red-teamer was embedded inside Anthropic for three weeks, told to imagine he was an evil Claude, and asked to figure out how to launch a ‘rogue AI deployment’ without getting caught. It’s one part of a landmark report released yesterday by METR — the outfit behind the task-completion time horizon graph which has become the single most watched measure of AI progress. This major new research push is being conducted with close collaboration from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta, and Anthropic, and led by METR researchers Hjalmar Wijk and Ajeya Cotra. It represents the first systematic study of…
7 May 2026 · 2 hr 35 min
#243 – 'Godfather of AI' Yoshua Bengio: "I now see a path" to safe superintelligent AI
The co-inventor of modern AI and the most cited living scientist believes he's figured out how to ensure AI is honest, incapable of deception, and never goes rogue. Yoshua Bengio – Turing Award Winner and founder of LawZero – is disturbed by the many unintended drives and goals present in today's AIs, their willingness to lie, and ability to tell when they're being tested. AI companies are trying to stamp out these behaviours in a 'cat-and-mouse game' that Yoshua fears they're losing. --- Our new book is "a ridiculously in-depth guide to finding a fulfilling career that does good" and is out…
28 Apr 2026 · 10 min
'95% of AI Pilots Fail': The hidden agenda behind the viral stat that misled millions
You might have heard that '95% of corporate AI pilots' are failing. It was one of the most widely cited AI statistics of 2025, parroted by media outlets everywhere. It helped trigger a Nasdaq selloff and became a pillar of the case that 'AI is overhyped'. The problem: it's 100% wrong. And not by accident either. If you carefully read the underlying report , ostensibly from MIT, you find the data point in the opposite direction. But that was all buried, with the authors instead torturing the results to tell a very different narrative. Why? Well, the research likely came with a hidden…
22 Apr 2026 · 3 hr 15 min
#242 – Will MacAskill on how we survive the 'intelligence explosion,' AI character, and the case for 'viatopia'
Hundreds of millions already turn to AI on the most personal of topics — therapy, political opinions, and how to treat others. And as AI takes over more of the economy, the character of these systems will shape culture on an even grander scale, ultimately becoming “the personality of most of the world’s workforce.” So… should they be designed to push us towards the better angels of our nature? Or simply do as we ask? Will MacAskill, philosopher and senior research fellow at Forethought, has been thinking through that and the other thorniest issues that come up in designing an AI personality.…
16 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 30 min
Risks from power-seeking AI systems (article narration by Zershaaneh Qureshi)
Hundreds of prominent AI scientists and other notable figures signed a statement in 2023 saying that mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority. At 80,000 Hours, we’ve considered risks from AI to be the world’s most pressing problem since 2016. But what led us to this conclusion? Could AI really cause human extinction? We’re not certain, but we think the risk is worth taking very seriously. In particular, as companies create increasingly powerful AI systems, there’s a concerning chance that: These AI systems may develop dangerous long-term goals we don’t want. To…
10 Apr 2026 · 21 min
How scary is Claude Mythos? 303 pages in 21 minutes
With Claude Mythos we have an AI that knows when it's being tested, can obscure its reasoning when it wants, and is better at breaking into (and out of) computers than any human alive. Rob Wiblin works through its 244-page System Card and 59-page Alignment Risk Update to explain why: Mythos is a nightmare for computer security It has arrived far ahead of schedule It might be great news for alignment and safety But 3 key problems mean we can’t take its alignment results at face value Mythos isn’t building its replacement yet, probably Anthropic staff are, for the first time, kinda scared of…
7 Apr 2026 · 4 hr 7 min
Village gossip, pesticide bans, and gene drives: 17 experts on the future of global health
What does it really take to lift millions out of poverty and prevent needless deaths? In this special compilation episode, 17 past guests — including economists, nonprofit founders, and policy advisors — share their most powerful and actionable insights from the front lines of global health and development. You’ll hear about the critical need to boost agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa, the staggering impact of lead poisoning on children in low-income countries, and the social forces that contribute to high neonatal mortality rates in India. What’s so striking is how some of the…

About 80,000 Hours Podcast

80,000 Hours Podcast is a English learning podcast from The 80,000 Hours team. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: The 80,000 Hours team
Language: English
Category: Learning
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 1 hr 29 min
Latest episode: 9 Oct 2026
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Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1245002988

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