80k After Hours

Michael Webb discusses the impact of AI on job loss and economy, including examples of increased employment. The podcast also explores the time it took for previous game-changing technologies to have economy-wide effects. The slow adoption of technology and the challenges of regulating AI are also discussed.

Hannah Ritchie, expert on being optimistic about the environment, discusses factors affecting agricultural productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa, the concept of land productivity and its impact on crop yield, balancing environmental impacts and human needs, accelerating technological advancements in electric vehicles and renewable energy, and the need to radically change the food system to achieve environmental sustainability.

Jan Leike, an expert on OpenAI's efforts to ensure the safety of superintelligence, discusses various topics including the reasons for optimism about alignment in AI development, the impact of Chat GPT on AI research, the origins and success of reinforcement learning from human feedback, the importance of backup plans and addressing risks in superintelligence, and concerns and considerations for integrating large language models.

Holden Karnofsky discusses the importance of measuring and managing the risks associated with AI systems. The chapter explores the uncertainty surrounding the timeline of AI surpassing human capabilities. It delves into the debates about the level of intelligence required for AI to pose a significant risk. The chapter explores the uncertainty surrounding super intelligence and discusses the concerns of misaligned AI. It explores the tension between utilitarianism and other ethical considerations.

Journalist and author, Ezra Klein, discusses the process of AI regulation, strategies to slow down AI development, regulating AI development, and insights on parenting and self-care.

Markus Anderljung, an expert on regulating cutting-edge AI models, discusses the challenges of regulating AI models and the need for early addressing of concerns. They also explore the evaluation of AI models for controllability and dangerous capabilities, as well as the potential impact of regulatory approaches on AI adoption.

Lennart Heim, expert on compute governance, discusses challenges of enforcing regulations, the need for hardware security and AI compute safe havens, balancing offense and defense in AI, risks of advanced AI models hacking servers, and the importance of technical expertise in compute governance.

Rohin Shah, DeepMind researcher and advocate, explores safety and ethics in AI, potential risks of superintelligent beings, and the need for evaluation in AI progress. They discuss the challenges in AI development and the role of conceptual arguments.

Career advice expert Alex Lawsen discusses common mistakes people make when pursuing a high-impact career, including taking rankings too seriously, not trying hard enough to fail, overthinking career choices, and ignoring conventional wisdom. They also explore the importance of recognizing success, optimizing for long-term impact, and navigating uncertainties in order to maximize impact. The podcast provides a decision-making process and metaphor for making better career choices, and emphasizes the need to take action over analysis. They discuss the misconception of community work for impact and the challenges of finding the right balance when pursuing high-impact careers.

The podcast discusses GiveWell's approach and the potential inclusion of subjective well-being. They explore the concept of saving lives based on quality of life and highlight the need for input from low-income countries. They also discuss organizations improving conditions in the developing world, challenges of aggregating study results, and addressing economic growth policies and political dynamics.