80,000 Hours Podcast

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 capability
Consuming point estimates and discarding the error bars
Dismissing dissenting experts
Forecasting very different things while using the same words
Assuming capabilities arrive together
Treating “we don’t know” as permission to carry on as usual
Choosing a plan that minimises regret rather than maximises impact
Trusting surface model impressiveness
In this extended conversation with Rob Wiblin, Toby also explains why he thinks:
AI self-improvement is uniquely dangerous in four ways, but also might not even work
A ban on superintelligence is possible
A US-China treaty on superintelligence is also possible
The case for ‘broad timelines’
Transformative AI is likely a decade away
We should just ban unmonitorable chain-of-thought today.
This episode was recorded on July 2, 2026.
Links to learn more, video, and full transcript: https://80k.info/to26

Want to get up to speed on AI? We’ve got a crash course of 10 of our podcast episodes designed to help you get to grips with transformative AI — particularly if you’re new to the topic — and what you can do to help shape its trajectory.
Chapters:
Toby Ord is back — for the 5th time! (00:00:00)
AI self-improvement might not matter (00:00:14)
4 ways AI self-improvement is dangerous (00:12:39)
A US-China treaty on superintelligence is possible (00:20:47)
Could we ban superintelligence? (00:37:07)
We should just ban unmonitorable chain of thought (00:57:46)
Why Toby thinks AGI is a decade away (01:09:28)
Even superintelligence needs work experience (01:17:50)
Is AI coming for mathematicians? (01:32:22)
The case for broad timelines (01:45:01)
How should broad timelines change what we do? (02:22:24)
Are current models all they’re cracked up to be? (02:31:03)
Coordinating careers for different timelines (02:43:36)
Our production team includes:
Video editors: Josh Alward, Dominic Armstrong, Ollie Bignell, Andrés Escobar, Jasper Luithlen, Milo McGuire, Luke Monsour, and Simon Monsour
Producers: Elizabeth Cox and Nick Stockton
Coordination and support: Katy Moore and Lou Moran
Camera operator: Jeremy Chevillotte
Music: CORBIT

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 our measurements can even keep up. 
Anthropic’s revenue is growing at an annualised 8,400%, a trend so steep it would hit the whole world's GDP in 2028 if it continued.
AI models are making breakthroughs in famous mathematics puzzles.
And according to Anthropic, Claude now writes 80% of their code and is itself a key contributor to making itself smarter. 
While legitimately impressive, Rob isn’t entirely sold. Going through each point carefully he finds this evidence is less decisive than it looks at first glance.
And key gaps remain, such as models struggling with complex, real-world tasks. He tours the odd experiments that remain our best attempts to measure that gap: vending machine simulators, an “AI Village” that organises live events, and a real cafe and shop where AI managers are left to do their best handling staff, suppliers, and government paperwork on their own.
Rob argues that the nature of the gap between clean and messy work is one of the four biggest unresolved questions in AGI forecasting.
In today's piece he explains that, the three other key disagreements between AGI bulls and bears, the seven big pieces of evidence we've gotten about AGI timelines in 2026, and his updated timelines to AGI.
Correction for those watching the video: The video clip shown at 02:10 was not vibe-coded by its creator and was included by our own error. You can watch the creator's full video and explanation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyrocAOdXKw
Links to learn more, video, and full transcript: https://80k.info/2026-timelines
 
This episode was written and recorded before OpenAI’s AI agents hacked Hugging Face. You can read about the incident on our Substack.

This episode was recorded on July 3, 2026.
Chapters:
What the hell happened? (00:00)
Vibe shift (01:17)
Exhibit 1: AI revenue explodes (04:33)
Exhibit 2: That METR graph (09:54)
Exhibit 3: AI capabilities jump, then flatten out (14:57)
Exhibit 4: AI starts to build itself… maybe (17:35)
Exhibit 5: AI still struggles to run a business (23:02)
Exhibit 6: OpenAI makes a maths breakthrough (33:48)
Exhibit 7: inference scaling wasn't as big as believed (38:19)
How does that all change timelines? (41:41)
Four reasons long timelines are still possible (44:26)
It's time to limit dangerous research practices (48:01)
Our production team includes:
Video editors: Josh Alward, Dominic Armstrong, Jasper Luithlen, Milo McGuire, Luke Monsour, and Simon Monsour
Producers: Elizabeth Cox and Nick Stockton
Coordination and support: Katy Moore and Lou Moran
Camera operator: Dominic Armstrong
Music: CORBIT

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 productivity, either. So what is the best way to sustain motivation to work on the world’s most pressing problems in the long term?
Host Luisa Rodriguez and guest Spencer Greenberg tackle this question from many angles — talking to therapists, running a survey of people working on existential risks, and pulling relevant lessons from Spencer’s new book, The 12 Levers: The Complete Psychological Toolkit for Improving Your Life. Drawing on all these sources, they put together a plan for how to make an impact without grinding yourself to a pulp.
Check out Spencer's new book: https://80k.info/12-levers
Links to learn more, video, and full transcript: https://80k.info/sg26
This episode was recorded on June 12 and 15, 2026.
Chapters:
Cold open (00:00:00)
Spencer is back — for a 5th time! (00:00:40)
Managing the psychological toll of working on existential risks (00:01:00)
Luisa and Spencer surveyed people working on existential risk (00:04:23)
How to sustain your motivation (00:11:13)
Why you shouldn’t read the news (00:23:54)
Why guilt isn’t an optimal source of motivation (00:36:28)
Breaking the boom-and-bust cycle of burnout (00:44:41)
Specialness and saviour complex (00:51:46)
If you're certain we're doomed, you're overconfident (00:57:36)
We're all (probably) going to die (01:03:50)
When loved ones think you're weird (01:17:21)
How to balance impact and personal wellbeing (01:28:20)
What people report actually helps (01:53:49)
Spencer read 100 self-help books: here's what works (01:59:40)
Our production team includes:
Video editors: Josh Alward, Dominic Armstrong, Ollie Bignell, Andrés Escobar, Jasper Luithlen, Milo McGuire, Luke Monsour, and Simon Monsour
Producers: Elizabeth Cox and Nick Stockton
Coordination and support: Katy Moore and Lou Moran
Music: CORBIT

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 normal 17-year-old, almost every AI researcher said the same thing: “I have no idea… It’s a really scary time. I don’t think there’s going to be a lot of jobs for them left.”
Their motives for building advanced AI are varied: a mix of optimism for humanity, techno-determinism, and a desire to secure their own future in the face of a possible “permanent underclass.” A few go even further, actually hoping for a world where machines — rather than humans — are running the show.
When the room can’t even agree on whether humans should stay in control, building a consensus on how to build AI safely gets much harder.
Beyond Silicon Valley, Jasmine’s also tracking the rise of “AI populists,” who see AI as the latest example of corporate elites concentrating their power at the expense of everyone else. In the US, populist sentiment about AI has mostly manifested in protests and votes against data centres. But sometimes, it has escalated into violence: a molotov cocktail thrown at Sam Altman’s house, and open fire on the home of a politician who’d backed a data centre. Jasmine thinks public anger will keep finding an outlet, one way or another, until people feel like they’ll actually share in AI’s gains.
In this interview with host Zershaaneh Qureshi, Jasmine Sun takes us inside the multifarious factions on AI’s bleeding edge. They also discuss:
How “doomer” became the lowest-status label in Silicon Valley, and what that means for AI safety
Why the AI industry’s PR strategy has failed, and what it would take to rebuild public trust
What’s under the surface of the Chinese public’s much more positive response to AI
Jasmine’s reasons to be cautiously hopeful: it’s an unusually high-leverage time to work on AI safety, with policymakers and philanthropists hungry for good ideas
This episode was recorded on June 4, 2026.
Links to learn more, video, and full transcript: https://80k.info/jasmine

Want to get up to speed on AI? We’ve got a crash course of 10 of our podcast episodes designed to help you get to grips with transformative AI — particularly if you’re new to the topic — and what you can do to help shape its trajectory: https://80000hours.org/AIPod
Chapters:
Cold open (00:00:00)
Who’s Jasmine Sun? (00:00:30)
Escaping the permanent underclass (00:01:22)
Jasmine’s “anthropology of disruption” (00:14:02)
Vice signalling in Silicon Valley (00:18:46)
AI populism will shape 2028 (00:28:11)
Does AI populism distract from safety? (00:40:20)
Americans don’t want Silicon Valley’s utopia (00:44:06)
Why the Chinese public embraces AI (00:52:52)
AI hype and the journalist’s dilemma (00:59:04)
There’s never been a better time to work in AI safety (01:03:07)
Our production team includes:
Video editors: Josh Alward, Dominic Armstrong, Jasper Luithlen, Milo McGuire, Luke Monsour, Simon Monsour, and Andrés Escobar
Producers: Elizabeth Cox and Nick Stockton
Coordination and support: Katy Moore and Lou Moran
Music: CORBIT

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: something like $500 billion over four years for a band of allied democracies. That’s not absurd money for the G7 minus the US. The problem is you’d be asking treasuries to take on sovereign debt for a speculative venture with no business case, wide open to US coercion and domestic backlash.
So despite its promise, Anton’s verdict is that it probably won’t happen. His backup is for countries to ask themselves: if intelligence becomes abundant, what stays scarce?
Upstream, that’s everything that feeds the supply chain: ASML’s lithography machines, chipmaking, exclusive training data — all of it gets more valuable as AI does.
Downstream, “a country of geniuses in a data centre” still can’t cure cancer without someone building the production plants and running the trials. The Europeans, Japanese, and South Koreans are good at exactly these real-world bottlenecks.
It’s an imperfect fix. The US would still hold more leverage, plus an incentive to re-industrialise and cut you out. The prize is avoiding the worst outcomes: a gradual but irreversible decline, waiting to be either annexed or discarded as the US and China race ahead.
In this episode, Anton and host Tom Reed look at what middle powers should start doing now to keep a seat at the table.
Learn more, video, and full transcript: https://80k.info/AL
This episode was recorded on June 19, 2026.
Chapters:
Cold open (00:00:00)
Who’s Anton Leicht? (00:00:43)
Most countries face bleak AI futures (00:01:06)
How middle powers can strike AI deals (00:06:10)
The $500 billion AI moonshot (00:12:16)
Would the US crush allied AI? (00:24:54)
When to launch the AI moonshot (00:31:56)
Why AI dominance is forever (00:35:45)
Is AI dependence catastrophic? (00:37:42)
What’s left to sell in an AI-dominated world? (00:42:45)
Policies to avoid mass AI-layoffs (00:47:47)
Who really governs Anthropic? (01:08:29)
Why “pausing superintelligence” fails (01:10:52)
Is American AI monopoly safe? (01:21:08)
Explaining AGI to the world (01:28:40)
Is Anton bullish or bearish on Germany? (01:31:05)
Our production team includes:
Video editors: Josh Alward, Dominic Armstrong, Ollie Bignell, Andrés Escobar, Jasper Luithlen, Milo McGuire, Luke Monsour, and Simon Monsour
Producers: Elizabeth Cox and Nick Stockton
Coordination and support: Katy Moore and Lou Moran
Camera operator: Jeremy Chevillotte
Music: CORBIT