Yeah I agree there's a central claim which is "80k switching to AI is a loss for cause neutral EA" which I basically agree with (and then think is right for the world, ala Matt Reardon's comment) but I do think it would be harder to have this orientation if you thought AI risk was really imminent / severe / etc, and so that's where the real crux is.
Hey, writing in my personal capacity (but gave others from 80k the chance to suggest edits).
I want to write a comment that’s a bit more raw than usual. I think I might die, because we don’t have control of AI. And I think you might die, and also my parents and also everyone else. Potentially very very soon.
It is a terrible position for the world to be in.
I can’t imagine being excited about an EA that looks at those facts and doesn’t jump into action. Obviously you might disagree with those facts! Great, let’s argue about that. This post doesn’t try to argue for or against x-risk, or try to take the view of why 80k might do this.
I’ve heard this argument, that EA is about finding and thinking about the most effective ways to do good. That seems right and good to me. But surely it is also about doing them.
I’m not saying I’m not excited for people to just be engaged in asking the question, I am! For instance I’m on the board of NEST.
But from my perspective, this post, which I want to recognize cares about protecting something I hold very dear, is missing a very serious mood.
I don’t think 80,000 Hours cuts off other worldviews about doing the most good, I think it has an opinion about what doing the most good, right now, on October 27, 2026, looks like. 80,000 Hours has always had opinions about that, it’s had a ranked list for over a decade.
As for esoteric concerns, I think you and I just disagree about how to relate to them, but for what it’s worth, I think e.g. engineered pandemics and extreme power concentration (imagine Trump or some other head of state, especially a dictator, with a superintelligent army) are potentially extremely extremely near to hand.
Yeah, we have mixed evidence on this - we didn't get on the hype leaderboard despite having enough votes, which suggests disfavoring, but we also just did get a lot of views and no weird ratios of e.g. views/comments so I don't personally think there was a lot going on there.
Basically you're right about all of the above, and we don't yet have an end metric we've figured out, so we don't know how much impact we're having! It's the biggest open question for our team right now, and I hope to get clarity on it in the next quarter or two and share that.
Re: Timelines - we don't have super strong views on timelines, but the amount of weight I put on short timelines do I think mean that any longer leads than an average of 3 months per video seem bad to me. Whether we should try to go for e.g. 1/week I'm not yet sure on.
Not sure if that’s the same distinction I would make but broadly just takes a long time to write a full script that we’re happy with, which includes figuring out the right structure, the high level narratives, the beats we want to hit, the takeaways, giving it a good emotional arc, etc.
Yeah I agree there's a central claim which is "80k switching to AI is a loss for cause neutral EA" which I basically agree with (and then think is right for the world, ala Matt Reardon's comment) but I do think it would be harder to have this orientation if you thought AI risk was really imminent / severe / etc, and so that's where the real crux is.
Appreciate your engagement here and the caveat you left at the top of the post <3
Hey, writing in my personal capacity (but gave others from 80k the chance to suggest edits).
I want to write a comment that’s a bit more raw than usual. I think I might die, because we don’t have control of AI. And I think you might die, and also my parents and also everyone else. Potentially very very soon.
It is a terrible position for the world to be in.
I can’t imagine being excited about an EA that looks at those facts and doesn’t jump into action. Obviously you might disagree with those facts! Great, let’s argue about that. This post doesn’t try to argue for or against x-risk, or try to take the view of why 80k might do this.
I’ve heard this argument, that EA is about finding and thinking about the most effective ways to do good. That seems right and good to me. But surely it is also about doing them.
I’m not saying I’m not excited for people to just be engaged in asking the question, I am! For instance I’m on the board of NEST.
But from my perspective, this post, which I want to recognize cares about protecting something I hold very dear, is missing a very serious mood.
I don’t think 80,000 Hours cuts off other worldviews about doing the most good, I think it has an opinion about what doing the most good, right now, on October 27, 2026, looks like. 80,000 Hours has always had opinions about that, it’s had a ranked list for over a decade.
As for esoteric concerns, I think you and I just disagree about how to relate to them, but for what it’s worth, I think e.g. engineered pandemics and extreme power concentration (imagine Trump or some other head of state, especially a dictator, with a superintelligent army) are potentially extremely extremely near to hand.
Yeah, we have mixed evidence on this - we didn't get on the hype leaderboard despite having enough votes, which suggests disfavoring, but we also just did get a lot of views and no weird ratios of e.g. views/comments so I don't personally think there was a lot going on there.
Basically you're right about all of the above, and we don't yet have an end metric we've figured out, so we don't know how much impact we're having! It's the biggest open question for our team right now, and I hope to get clarity on it in the next quarter or two and share that.
Re: Timelines - we don't have super strong views on timelines, but the amount of weight I put on short timelines do I think mean that any longer leads than an average of 3 months per video seem bad to me. Whether we should try to go for e.g. 1/week I'm not yet sure on.
Thanks so much for your comment!
Not sure if that’s the same distinction I would make but broadly just takes a long time to write a full script that we’re happy with, which includes figuring out the right structure, the high level narratives, the beats we want to hit, the takeaways, giving it a good emotional arc, etc.
That means the world, Toby, on behalf of the whole team, thank you!
Well everything in American politics sucks.
But! There are probably things to actually do about it.
I’m looking for competent, agentic people to volunteer, fundraise or work full time on evidence based preservation of american democracy.
(not in 80k capacity)
DM me if interested.
IMO that's a different category - there's a lot of that kind of thing as well and I'm glad it exists but I think it's useful to separate out.
Thank you!