1007: How to Find Solid Career Ground in the AI Era, with 80,000 Hours Founder Ben Todd
Benjamin Todd, co-founder and President of 80,000 Hours and author of the new Penguin Random House book 80,000 Hours: How to Have a Fulfilling Career That Does Good, joins Jon Krohn for a major update on career strategy in the AI era, his first appearance since before ChatGPT existed. Ben explains why “follow your passion” is backwards and why rare, valuable skills used to help others are what actually generate lasting fulfillment, the ABZ framework for planning under deep uncertainty, why the only durable move is to keep shifting onto whatever bottleneck AI can’t yet clear, and how a human-level digital worker becomes superhuman almost immediately. He and Jon also map the risk landscape, power-seeking AI, extreme power concentration, engineered pandemics, gradual disempowerment, and S-risks, before landing on a hopeful, actionable note: your career is a bigger lever than ever.
Additional materials: https://www.superdatascience.com/1007
Interested in sponsoring a SuperDataScience Podcast episode? Email natalie@superdatascience.com for sponsorship information.
In this episode you will learn:
(06:44) The ABZ framework for career planning under deep uncertainty
(14:30) Why “follow your passion” is backwards and what builds fulfillment instead
(20:52) The moving bottleneck: how to stay valuable as AI keeps improving
(29:54) Why a human-level digital worker becomes superhuman almost immediately
(51:11) Power-seeking AI and extreme power concentration
(1:16:11) Why your career is a bigger lever than ever
Your Biggest Lever: Designing your AI Career for Maximum Impact, with 80,000 Hours founder Ben Todd
Ben Todd, co-founder of 80,000 Hours and author of the newly rewritten book by the same name, shares his latest thinking on how individuals can position their careers to improve the chances that AI benefits humanity. They discuss AI timelines reframed around personal impact, top global risks including loss of control over AI systems and dangerous power concentration, the pros and cons of working at frontier AI labs, and undervalued emerging concerns like AI welfare and space governance. Ben also assesses the current funding landscape and whether to join existing organizations or start new ones.
LINKS:
80,000 Hours homepage
Nick Bostrom Astronomical Waste
AI 2027 forecast
Ajeya Cotra AI timelines
METR evaluations research
Redwood Research homepage
AI tools existential security
Gradual disempowerment EA Forum
Why viatopia is important
Benjamin Todd author page
The Precipice Wikipedia page
Forethought Research homepage
Catalyze Impact homepage
Horizon Public Service Fellowship
Gradual Disempowerment paper
Mark Humphries faculty profile
Andrew Ng discussion thread
Cognitive Revolution show home
Cognitive Revolution Apple Podcasts
Sponsors:
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#467 — EA, AI, and the End of Work
Sam Harris speaks with William MacAskill about effective altruism, AI, and the future of humanity. They discuss the post-FTX recovery of the EA movement, global health and pandemic preparedness, the limits of quantifiable ethics, the intelligence explosion, risks of concentrated AI power, what a post-scarcity world might look like, and other topics.
If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.
497: Maximizing the Global Impact of Your Career
Benjamin Todd joins us to discuss his work helping professionals maximize their career capital, the top skills to learn across professions, and more.
In this episode you will learn:
How Benjamin helped me become a data scientist [6:56]
How did 80,000 Hours come about? [9:39]
The impact of 80,000 Hours [14:46]
Funding [17:23]
Where does the name come from? [23:32]
What kind of advice does Benjamin give to people? [25:21]
How data scientists can make an impact [42:04]
How can someone strategize about their career? [1:02:53]
Top skills that everyone should learn [1:05:49]
Additional materials: www.superdatascience.com/497