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Preventing an AI-related catastrophe
Catastrophic pandemics
Nuclear war
Great power war
Climate change
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Other promising areas
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AI safety technical research
AI governance and coordination
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China-related AI safety and governance
Grantmaker
Operations in high-impact organisations
Research into global priorities
More promising paths
Be a founder
Software engineering
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How to build great career capital
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Introduction
Your most important decision
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Effective solutions
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2023

December

#175 – Lucia Coulter on preventing lead poisoning for $1.66 per child
Podcast
Software and tech skills (Updated)
Skill
Organisation-building (Updated)
Skill
Communicating ideas (Updated)
Skill
The highest-impact career paths our research has identified so far (Updated)
Article

November

#172 – Bryan Caplan on why you should stop reading the news
Podcast

October

#166 – Tantum Collins on what he’s learned as an AI policy insider at the White House, DeepMind and elsewhere
Podcast

September

Software and tech skills (First published)
Skill
Organisation-building (First published)
Skill
Communicating ideas (First published)
Skill
Expert in AI hardware (First published)
Career review

August

#161 – Michael Webb on whether AI will soon cause job loss, lower incomes, and higher inequality — or the opposite
Podcast
#160 – Hannah Ritchie on why it makes sense to be optimistic about the environment
Podcast

July

#157 – Ezra Klein on existential risk from AI and what DC could do about it
Podcast
How many lives does a doctor save? (Part 3)
Article
How many lives does a doctor save? (Part 2)
Article
How many lives does a doctor save? (Part 1)
Article

June

#155 – Lennart Heim on the compute governance era and what has to come after
Podcast
AI governance and coordination
Career review
AI safety technical research
Career review
#153 – Elie Hassenfeld on two big-picture critiques of GiveWell’s approach, and six lessons from their recent work
Podcast
Information security in high-impact areas (Updated)
Career review

April

Biorisk research, strategy, and policy (Updated)
Career review

March

#147 – Spencer Greenberg on stopping valueless papers from getting into top journals
Podcast
Earning to give in quantitative trading (Updated)
Career review
Why and how to earn to give (Updated)
Article

January

#144 – Athena Aktipis on why cancer is actually one of the fundamental phenomena in our universe
Podcast

2022

December

Information security in high-impact areas (First published)
Career review

November

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

September

Should you go to law school in the US to have a high-impact career?
Career review

August

#135 – Samuel Charap on key lessons from five months of war in Ukraine
Podcast

July

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

May

#129 – Dr James Tibenderana on the state of the art in malaria control and elimination
Podcast

April

#128 – Chris Blattman on the five reasons wars happen
Podcast
#127 – Sam Bankman-Fried on taking a high-risk approach to crypto and doing good
Podcast

March

#125 – Joan Rohlfing on how to avoid catastrophic nuclear blunders
Podcast
#124 – Karen Levy on fads and misaligned incentives in global development, and scaling deworming to reach hundreds of millions
Podcast
#123 – Samuel Charap on why Putin invaded Ukraine, the risk of escalation, and how to prevent disaster
Podcast

February

#121 – Matthew Yglesias on avoiding the pundit’s fallacy and how much military intervention can be used for good
Podcast
Software engineering
Career review
#120 – Audrey Tang on what we can learn from Taiwan’s experiments with how to do democracy
Podcast

2021

December

#119 – Andrew Yang on our very long-term future, and other topics most politicians won’t touch
Podcast
#118 – Jaime Yassif on safeguarding bioscience to prevent catastrophic lab accidents and bioweapons development
Podcast

November

#117 – David Denkenberger on using paper mills and seaweed to feed everyone in a catastrophe, ft Sahil Shah
Podcast

October

Expert in AI hardware (Updated)
Career review
#114 – Maha Rehman on working with governments to rapidly deliver masks to millions of people
Podcast
Expert on formal verification
Career review
Specialist in emerging global powers
Career review
Policy careers focused on other pressing global issues
Career review
Earning to give in quantitative trading (First published)
Career review
Biorisk research, strategy, and policy (First published)
Career review

August

#107 – Chris Olah on what the hell is going on inside neural networks
Podcast

July

#106 – Cal Newport on an industrial revolution for office work
Podcast

June

#103 – Max Roser on building the world’s first great source of COVID-19 data at Our World in Data
Podcast

April

#97 – Mike Berkowitz on keeping the U.S. a liberal democratic country
Podcast
#96 – Nina Schick on disinformation and the rise of synthetic media
Podcast

March

#94 – Ezra Klein on aligning journalism, politics, and what matters most
Podcast
#92 – Brian Christian on the alignment problem
Podcast

2020

December

#88 – Tristan Harris on the need to change the incentives of social media companies
Podcast

October

If you care about social impact, why is voting important?
Article

August

#84 – Shruti Rajagopalan on what India did to stop COVID-19 and how well it worked
Podcast

July

#83 – Jennifer Doleac on ways to prevent crime other than police and prisons
Podcast
#82 – James Forman Jr on reducing the cruelty of the US criminal legal system
Podcast

June

#80 – Stuart Russell on the flaws that make today’s AI architecture unsafe, and a new approach that could fix them
Podcast

May

#76 – Tara Kirk Sell on COVID-19 misinformation, who’s done well and badly, and what we should reopen first
Podcast

April

#74 – Dr Greg Lewis on COVID-19 and reducing global catastrophic biological risks
Podcast

February

#70 – Dr Cassidy Nelson on the twelve best ways to stop the next pandemic (and limit COVID-19)
Podcast
Bonus episode: What we do and don’t know about the 2019-nCoV coronavirus
Podcast

2019

November

Before committing to management consulting, consider directly entering priority paths, policy, startups, and other options
Article

October

#64 – Bruce Schneier on how insecure electronic voting could break the United States — and surveillance without tyranny
Podcast

August

Philosophy academia
Career review

July

#61 – Helen Toner on the new 30-person research group in DC investigating how emerging technologies could affect national security
Podcast

June

#60 – Accurately predicting the future is central to absolutely everything. Phil Tetlock has spent 40 years studying how to do it better.
Podcast
#58 – Pushmeet Kohli on DeepMind’s plan to make AI systems robust & reliable, why it’s a core issue in AI design, and how to succeed at AI research
Podcast

April

#57 – Tom Kalil on how to have a big impact in government & huge organisations, based on 16 years’ experience in the White House
Podcast

March

#54 – Askell, Brundage & Clark on whether policy has a hope of keeping up with AI advances
Podcast

February

#52 – Glen Weyl on radical institutional reforms that make capitalism & democracy work better, and how to get them
Podcast

January

#51 – Martin Gurri on the revolt of the public & crisis of authority in the information age
Podcast

2018

December

#49 – Rachel Glennerster on a year’s worth of education for under a dollar and other ‘best buys’ in development
Podcast

August

#41 – If the US put fewer people in prison, would crime go up? Not at all, according to Open Philanthropy’s renowned researcher David Roodman.
Podcast
#39 – How much should you change your beliefs based on new evidence? Spencer Greenberg on the scientific approach to solving difficult everyday questions
Podcast

May

#34 – Politics is so much worse because we use an atrocious 18th century voting system. Aaron Hamlin has a viable plan to fix it.
Podcast
#32 – Economist Bryan Caplan thinks education is mostly pointless showing off. We test the strength of his case.
Podcast
Congressional staffer
Career review

March

#24 – Stefan Schubert on why it’s a bad idea to break the rules, even if it’s for a good cause
Podcast
Yes, a career in commercial law has earning potential. We still don’t recommend it.
Blog post
#22 – Leah Utyasheva on how to massively cut suicide rates in Sri Lanka, and her non-profit’s plan to do the same around the world
Podcast

January

#18 – Ofir Reich on using data science to end poverty and the spurious action/inaction distinction
Podcast

2017

November

#15 – Phil Tetlock on predicting catastrophes, why keep your politics secret, and when experts know more than you
Podcast

October

#13 – Claire Walsh on testing which policies work & how to get governments to listen to the results
Podcast
#12 – Beth Cameron fought Ebola for the White House. Now she works to stop something even worse.
Podcast
Policy-oriented government jobs
Career review

August

#5 – Alex Gordon-Brown on making millions for charity each year by working in quant finance
Podcast

June

Which professions are paid too much given their value to society?
Blog post
#1 – Miles Brundage on the world’s desperate need for AI strategists and policy experts
Podcast

May

How much do hedge fund traders earn?
Blog post
Which industry has the highest-paying jobs?
Article

January

5 reasons not to go into education
Blog post

2016

November

How much is one vote worth?
Blog post

June

Maria Gutierrez on doing good through art, Costa Rica and why 80,000 Hours changed her career
Blog post
How to do high impact research (Updated)
Article

February

New career review: web designer
Blog post
Web designer
Career review
Is nursing or headhunting the best career for you?
Blog post
Nursing
Career review
We can learn a lot from Tara, who left pharmacy to work in effective altruism
Blog post

January

10 steps to a job in politics
Blog post

2015

September

Are too many people going into biomedical research – or too few?
Blog post
Will effective altruism destroy the arts? No.
Blog post

August

How can doctors do the most good? An interview with Dr Gregory Lewis
Blog post
Biomedical research
Career review

July

Is wealth inequality so extreme that it’s OK to be a ruthless trader?
Blog post
If you want to save lives, should you study medicine? Probably not.
Blog post
Teaching
Career review
Pursuing fame in art and entertainment
Career review
Medical careers
Career review
The highest-impact career paths our research has identified so far (First published)
Article
Effective altruists love systemic change
Blog post
80,000 Hours thinks that only a small proportion of people should earn to give long term
Blog post
In some careers your parents can give you a huge boost. Should you do what they did?
Blog post
I want to make a difference. Should I work in marketing?
Blog post
What are your chances of getting elected to Congress, if you try?
Blog post
Marketing (for skill-building & earning to give) (Updated)
Career review

June

Marketing (for skill-building & earning to give) (First published)
Career review
Computer Science PhD
Career review
New profile on a new career path: data science
Blog post
Data science (for skill-building & earning to give)
Career review

May

New in-depth profile on management consulting
Blog post

April

Management consulting
Career report
Management consulting (for skill-building & earning to give) (Updated)
Career review

March

Management consulting (for skill-building & earning to give) (First published)
Career review

February

The Chronicle of Higher Education on who gets ‘elite’ jobs
Blog post

2014

December

Why apply to Teach First?: An interview with the UK’s largest graduate recruiter
Blog post

September

Update: In which career can you make the most difference?
Blog post
Why and how to earn to give (First published)
Article
How to do high impact research (First published)
Article

August

Front office finance (for skill-building & earning to give) (First published)
Career review
Party politics (First published)
Career review
Job satisfaction research
Article

July

Party politics (Updated)
Career review
How to influence policy? An interview with Owen Barder of the Center for Global Development
Blog post

June

Increasing your earnings as a doctor
Blog post
Case series – why and how to learn programming
Blog post

February

Front office finance (for skill-building & earning to give) (Updated)
Career review
Case study: earning to give compared to medical research
Blog post
An estimate of the expected influence of becoming a politician
Blog post
In which career can you make the most difference?
Blog post

January

Case study: can I earn more in software or finance?
Blog post
Reasoning about influence in politics
Blog post

2013

December

A comparison of medical research and earning to give
Blog post

November

Interview with a Cambridge Professor of Medical Genetics on research careers
Blog post
Case study: Working in the financial sector to promote a flourishing long-term future
Blog post

October

Why consider becoming a trader?
Blog post

July

Show me the harm
Blog post

January

Trading, donating and charter cities: An interview with Ben Gilbert
Blog post

2012

September

How many lives does a doctor save? – Part 3 – Replacement
Blog post
How many lives does a doctor save? – Part 2 – Diminishing marginal returns
Blog post

August

How many lives does a doctor save?
Blog post

May

How to be a high impact philosopher
Blog post

February

How hard is it to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom?
Blog post

January

Is banking harmful?
Blog post
Health vs education
Blog post

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All147
Podcasts62
Blog posts46
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Key articles10
Skills3

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80,000 Hours is an Effective Ventures project. Effective Ventures Foundation (UK) (EV UK) is a charity in England and Wales (with registered charity number 1149828, registered company number 07962181, and is also a Netherlands registered tax-deductible entity ANBI 825776867). Effective Ventures Foundation USA Inc. (EV US) is a section 501(c)(3) organization in the USA (EIN 47-1988398). EV UK and EV US are separate charities that collaborate closely under the “Effective Ventures” name.

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