What it's really like to run AGI safety at Google DeepMind (and where I disagree with 'doomers') | Rohin Shah

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What makes for a dream job? | Benjamin Todd

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We’re updating our career advice for the strangest time in history | Benjamin Todd, author of 80,000 Hours

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

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

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

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

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

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How scary is Claude Mythos? 303 pages in 21 minutes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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What the hell happened with AGI timelines in 2025?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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2025 Highlight-o-thon: Oops! All Bests

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Rebuilding after apocalypse: What 13 experts say about bouncing back

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Guilt, imposter syndrome & doing good: 16 past guests share their mental health journeys

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#214 – Buck Shlegeris on controlling AI that wants to take over – so we can use it anyway

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15 expert takes on infosec in the age of AI

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#213 – Will MacAskill on AI causing a “century in a decade” – and how we're completely unprepared

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Emergency pod: Judge plants a legal time bomb under OpenAI (with Rose Chan Loui)

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#139 Classic episode – Alan Hájek on puzzles and paradoxes in probability and expected value

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#143 Classic episode – Jeffrey Lewis on the most common misconceptions about nuclear weapons

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#212 – Allan Dafoe on why technology is unstoppable & how to shape AI development anyway

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Emergency pod: Elon tries to crash OpenAI's party (with Rose Chan Loui)

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AGI disagreements and misconceptions: Rob, Luisa, & past guests hash it out

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#124 Classic episode – Karen Levy on fads and misaligned incentives in global development, and scaling deworming to reach hundreds of millions

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If digital minds could suffer, how would we ever know? (Article)

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#132 Classic episode – Nova DasSarma on why information security may be critical to the safe development of AI systems

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#138 Classic episode – Sharon Hewitt Rawlette on why pleasure and pain are the only things that intrinsically matter

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#134 Classic episode – Ian Morris on what big-picture history teaches us

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#140 Classic episode – Bear Braumoeller on the case that war isn’t in decline

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2024 Highlightapalooza! (The best of The 80,000 Hours Podcast this year)

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#211 – Sam Bowman on why housing still isn't fixed and what would actually work

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#210 – Cameron Meyer Shorb on dismantling the myth that we can’t do anything to help wild animals

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#209 – Rose Chan Loui on OpenAI’s gambit to ditch its nonprofit

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#208 – Elizabeth Cox on the case that TV shows, movies, and novels can improve the world

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#207 – Sarah Eustis-Guthrie on why she shut down her charity, and why more founders should follow her lead

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Parenting insights from Rob and 8 past guests

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#206 – Anil Seth on the predictive brain and how to study consciousness

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How much does a vote matter? (Article)

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#205 – Sébastien Moro on the most insane things fish can do

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#204 – Nate Silver on making sense of SBF, and his biggest critiques of effective altruism

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#203 – Peter Godfrey-Smith on interfering with wild nature, accepting death, and the origin of complex civilisation

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Luisa and Keiran on free will, and the consequences of never feeling enduring guilt or shame

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#202 – Venki Ramakrishnan on the cutting edge of anti-ageing science

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#201 – Ken Goldberg on why your robot butler isn’t here yet

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#200 – Ezra Karger on what superforecasters and experts think about existential risks

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#199 – Nathan Calvin on California’s AI bill SB 1047 and its potential to shape US AI policy

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#198 – Meghan Barrett on upending everything you thought you knew about bugs in 3 hours

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#197 – Nick Joseph on whether Anthropic's AI safety policy is up to the task

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#196 – Jonathan Birch on the edge cases of sentience and why they matter

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#195 – Sella Nevo on who's trying to steal frontier AI models, and what they could do with them

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#194 – Vitalik Buterin on defensive acceleration and how to regulate AI when you fear government

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#193 – Sihao Huang on navigating the geopolitics of US–China AI competition

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#192 – Annie Jacobsen on what would happen if North Korea launched a nuclear weapon at the US

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#191 (Part 2) – Carl Shulman on government and society after AGI

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#191 (Part 1) – Carl Shulman on the economy and national security after AGI

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#190 – Eric Schwitzgebel on whether the US is conscious

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#189 – Rachel Glennerster on why we still don’t have vaccines that could save millions

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Podcast Details

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Listen Show PodCast

What it's really like to run AGI safety at Google DeepMind (and where I disagree with 'doomers') | Rohin Shah

Playlist

What makes for a dream job? | Benjamin Todd

Playlist

We’re updating our career advice for the strangest time in history | Benjamin Todd, author of 80,000 Hours

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

How scary is Claude Mythos? 303 pages in 21 minutes

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

What the hell happened with AGI timelines in 2025?

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

2025 Highlight-o-thon: Oops! All Bests

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

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

Playlist

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