#72 - Toby Ord on the precipice and humanity's potential futures
80,000 Hours Podcast7 Mars 2020

#72 - Toby Ord on the precipice and humanity's potential futures

This week Oxford academic and 80,000 Hours trustee Dr Toby Ord released his new book The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity. It's about how our long-term future could be better than almost anyone believes, but also how humanity's recklessness is putting that future at grave risk — in Toby's reckoning, a 1 in 6 chance of being extinguished this century.

I loved the book and learned a great deal from it (buy it here, US and audiobook release March 24). While preparing for this interview I copied out 87 facts that were surprising, shocking or important. Here's a sample of 16:

1. The probability of a supervolcano causing a civilisation-threatening catastrophe in the next century is estimated to be 100x that of asteroids and comets combined.

2. The Biological Weapons Convention — a global agreement to protect humanity — has just four employees, and a smaller budget than an average McDonald’s.

3. In 2008 a 'gamma ray burst' reached Earth from another galaxy, 10 billion light years away. It was still bright enough to be visible to the naked eye. We aren't sure what generates gamma ray bursts but one cause may be two neutron stars colliding.

4. Before detonating the first nuclear weapon, scientists in the Manhattan Project feared that the high temperatures in the core, unprecedented for Earth, might be able to ignite the hydrogen in water. This would set off a self-sustaining reaction that would burn off the Earth’s oceans, killing all life above ground. They thought this was unlikely, but many atomic scientists feared their calculations could be missing something. As far as we know, the US President was never informed of this possibility, but similar risks were one reason Hitler stopped…

N.B. I've had to cut off this list as we only get 4,000 characters in these show notes, so:

Click here to read the whole list, see a full transcript, and find related links.

And if you like the list, you can get a free copy of the introduction and first chapter by joining our mailing list.

While I've been studying these topics for years and known Toby for the last eight, a remarkable amount of what's in The Precipice was new to me.

Of course the book isn't a series of isolated amusing facts, but rather a systematic review of the many ways humanity's future could go better or worse, how we might know about them, and what might be done to improve the odds.

And that's how we approach this conversation, first talking about each of the main threats, then how we can learn about things that have never happened before, then finishing with what a great future for humanity might look like and how it might be achieved.

Toby is a famously good explainer of complex issues — a bit of a modern Carl Sagan character — so as expected this was a great interview, and one which Arden Koehler and I barely even had to work for.

Some topics Arden and I ask about include:

• What Toby changed his mind about while writing the book
• Are people exaggerating when they say that climate change could actually end civilization?
• What can we learn from historical pandemics?
• Toby’s estimate of unaligned AI causing human extinction in the next century
• Is this century the most important time in human history, or is that a narcissistic delusion?
• Competing vision for humanity's ideal future
• And more.

Get this episode by subscribing: type '80,000 Hours' into your podcasting app. Or read the linked transcript.

Producer: Keiran Harris.
Audio mastering: Ben Cordell.
Transcriptions: Zakee Ulhaq.

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#2 - David Spiegelhalter on risk, stats and improving understanding of science

#2 - David Spiegelhalter on risk, stats and improving understanding of science

Recorded in 2015 by Robert Wiblin with colleague Jess Whittlestone at the Centre for Effective Altruism, and recovered from the dusty 80,000 Hours archives. David Spiegelhalter is a statistician at the University of Cambridge and something of an academic celebrity in the UK. Part of his role is to improve the public understanding of risk - especially everyday risks we face like getting cancer or dying in a car crash. As a result he’s regularly in the media explaining numbers in the news, trying to assist both ordinary people and politicians focus on the important risks we face, and avoid being distracted by flashy risks that don’t actually have much impact. Summary, full transcript and extra links to learn more. To help make sense of the uncertainties we face in life he has had to invent concepts like the microlife, or a 30-minute change in life expectancy. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microlife) We wanted to learn whether he thought a lifetime of work communicating science had actually had much impact on the world, and what advice he might have for people planning their careers today.

21 Juni 201733min

#1 - Miles Brundage on the world's desperate need for AI strategists and policy experts

#1 - Miles Brundage on the world's desperate need for AI strategists and policy experts

Robert Wiblin, Director of Research at 80,000 Hours speaks with Miles Brundage, research fellow at the University of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute. Miles studies the social implications surrounding the development of new technologies and has a particular interest in artificial general intelligence, that is, an AI system that could do most or all of the tasks humans could do. This interview complements our profile of the importance of positively shaping artificial intelligence and our guide to careers in AI policy and strategy Full transcript, apply for personalised coaching to work on AI strategy, see what questions are asked when, and read extra resources to learn more.

5 Juni 201755min

#0 – Introducing the 80,000 Hours Podcast

#0 – Introducing the 80,000 Hours Podcast

80,000 Hours is a non-profit that provides research and other support to help people switch into careers that effectively tackle the world's most pressing problems. This podcast is just one of many things we offer, the others of which you can find at 80000hours.org. Since 2017 this show has been putting out interviews about the world's most pressing problems and how to solve them — which some people enjoy because they love to learn about important things, and others are using to figure out what they want to do with their careers or with their charitable giving. If you haven't yet spent a lot of time with 80,000 Hours or our general style of thinking, called effective altruism, it's probably really helpful to first go through the episodes that set the scene, explain our overall perspective on things, and generally offer all the background information you need to get the most out of the episodes we're making now. That's why we've made a new feed with ten carefully selected episodes from the show's archives, called 'Effective Altruism: An Introduction'. You can find it by searching for 'Effective Altruism' in your podcasting app or at 80000hours.org/intro. Or, if you’d rather listen on this feed, here are the ten episodes we recommend you listen to first: • #21 – Holden Karnofsky on the world's most intellectual foundation and how philanthropy can have maximum impact by taking big risks • #6 – Toby Ord on why the long-term future of humanity matters more than anything else and what we should do about it • #17 – Will MacAskill on why our descendants might view us as moral monsters • #39 – Spencer Greenberg on the scientific approach to updating your beliefs when you get new evidence • #44 – Paul Christiano on developing real solutions to the 'AI alignment problem' • #60 – What Professor Tetlock learned from 40 years studying how to predict the future • #46 – Hilary Greaves on moral cluelessness, population ethics and tackling global issues in academia • #71 – Benjamin Todd on the key ideas of 80,000 Hours • #50 – Dave Denkenberger on how we might feed all 8 billion people through a nuclear winter • 80,000 Hours Team chat #3 – Koehler and Todd on the core idea of effective altruism and how to argue for it

1 Maj 20173min

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