Hear This Idea

Jaime Sevilla is the Director of Epoch , a team of researchers investigating and forecasting the development of advanced AI. This is his second time on the podcast. Over the next few episodes, we will be exploring the potential for catastrophe cause by advanced artificial intelligence. Why? First, you might think that AI is likely to become transformatively powerful within our lifetimes. Second, y...

Chris Miller is an Associate Professor of International History at Tufts University and author of the book “ Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology ” (the Financial Times Business Book of the Year). He is also a Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and Eurasia Director at the Foreign Policy Research Institute . Over the next few episodes we will be e...

AI might bring huge benefits — if we avoid the risks. This episode is a rebroadcast of an article written for 80,000 Hours Preventing an AI-related catastrophe . It was written by Benjamin Hilton and narrated by Perrin Walker for Type III Audio. The full url is: 80000hours.org/problem-profiles/artificial-intelligence Why are we sharing this article on our podcast feed? Over the next few months, we...

A full writeup of this episode, including references and a transcript, is available on our website: https://hearthisidea.com/episodes/robichaud . Carl Robichaud co-leads Longview Philanthropy’s programme on nuclear weapons. We discuss: Lessons from the Ukraine crisis China's future as a nuclear power Nuclear near-misses The Reykjavik Summit , Acheson–Lilienthal Report and Baruch Plan Lessons from...

Damon Binder is a research analyst at Open Philanthropy . His research focuses on potential risks from pandemics and from biotechnology. He previously worked as a research scholar at the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute , where he studied existential risks. Prior to that he completed his PhD in theoretical physics at Princeton University. We discuss: How did early states manage...

A full writeup of this episode, including references and a transcript, is available on our website: https://hearthisidea.com/episodes/nemet Greg Nemet is a a Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the La Follette School of Public Affairs and an Andrew Carnegie Fellow. He is also the author of How Solar Energy Became Cheap We discuss: The distinct phases that helped solar PV move down...

A full writeup of this episode, including references and a transcript, is available on our website: https://hearthisidea.com/episodes/erwan Dewi Erwan is a co-founder of BlueDot Impact , the Biosecurity Advisor to the Cambridge Existential Risk Initiative , and the previous Executive Director of Effective Altruism Cambridge . We discuss: Setting up BlueDot Impact and scaling pilot programmes Talen...

A full writeup of this episode, including references and a transcript, is available on our website: hearthisidea.com/episodes/pannu-monrad Jassi Pannu is a Resident Physician at Stanford, a Visiting Scholar at John Hopkins , and a Fellow at the Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiative . Joshua Monrad is a Biosecurity Program Officer at Effective Giving and a Researcher at Oxford's Future Humanit...

A full writeup of this episode, including references and a transcript, is available on our website: hearthisidea.com/episodes/mathieu Edouard Mathieu is the Head of Data at Our World in Data (OWID), a scientific online publication that focuses on large global problems such as poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, war, existential risks, and inequality. We discuss: What Ed learned from working...

A full writeup of this episode, including references and a transcript, is available on our website: hearthisidea.com/episodes/alexanian-ahuja Tessa Alexanian is the Safety & Security Program Officer at the iGEM Foundation , which organises a worldwide competition in synthetic biology and helps foster a collaborative community. She is a fellow at the Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiati...

Michael Aird is a senior research manager at Rethink Priorities , where he co-leads the Artificial Intelligence Governance and Strategy team alongside Amanda El-Dakhakhni . Before that, he conducted nuclear risk research for Rethink Priorities and longtermist macrostrategy research for Convergence Analysis , the Center on Long-Term Risk , and the Future of Humanity Institute , which is where we kn...

A full writeup of this episode is available on our website: hearthisidea.com/episodes/esvelt-sandbrink . Kevin Esvelt is an assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab , where he is director of the Sculpting Evolution group , which invents new ways to study and influence the evolution of ecosystems. He helped found the SecureDNA Project and the Nucleic Acid Observatory , both of which we discuss in t...

In this episode, Fin and Luca celebrate 50 episodes of Hear This Idea: all the highs, lows, and near-disasters along the way. We chat about: The HTI origin story Favourite behind the scenes moments Should we argue with guests more? Mistakes we've made (and are still making?) What we've learned about asking better questions Starting projects from scratch Ideas for the next 50 episodes Future topics...

Professor Doyne Farmer is the Baillie Gifford Professor in Mathematics at Oxford, the Director of the Complexity Economics programme at INET, and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. In our conversation we discuss: How Doyne and his friends used physics and hidden computers to beat the roulette wheel in Las Vegas casinos Advancing economic models to better predict business cycles and k...

Ajay Karpur is a senior research software engineer at RAND, working with the Meselson Center. He's hoping to start tweeting again soon, at @ajaykarpur . Joining as a guest co-host on this episode was Janvi Ahuja , who is a PhD student in computational biology at Oxford University, and part of the Johns Hopkins Centre for Health Security ‘Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity’ program. She's tweeting at...

Dr Spencer R. Weart served as the Director of the Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics from 1974 to 2009. He is the author of several books, including The Discovery of Global Warming and The Rise of Nuclear Fear . In our conversation, we discuss: How climate science emerged, what it took for scientists to form a consensus in the mid-1960s, and how that consensus has e...

Jason Crawford is the founder of The Roots of Progress , a nonprofit dedicated to establishing a new philosophy of progress for the 21st century. He writes and speaks about the history and philosophy of progress, especially in technology and industry. In our conversation we discuss — What progress is, and why it matters (maybe more than you think) How to think about resource constraints — why they...

Cristina Bicchieri is the S. J. Patterson Harvie Professor of Social Thought and Comparative Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania. In our conversation we discuss — How to define social norms and distinguish them from similar concepts How social norms evolve and why they often persist, even in situations where they are harmful Real world policy applications of social norms, including covid and...

Lord Bird is the co-founder of The Big Issue , a magazine supporting street vendors who are homeless, a crossbench peer in the House of Lords, and co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Groups on Future Generations . In our conversation, we discuss — The Future Generations Bill , currently being discussed in the UK Parliament Causes of political short-sightedness Broader social issues facing the...

Sam Hilton is the Research Director at Charity Entrepreneurship , the Parliamentary Coordinator at the UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Group for Future Generations , and a Research Affiliate at the Center for the Study of Existential Risk . In our conversation, we discuss — Charity Entrepreneurship's plans for the 2022 Incubation Program Exploratory Altruism and finding new cause areas Lessons for lo...

Glen Weyl is Microsoft’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer Political Economist and Social Technologist (OCTOPEST), where he advises Microsoft’s senior leaders on macroeconomics, geopolitics and the future of technology. Glen also co-authored Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society ; a book about "Revolutionary ideas on how to use markets to bring about fairness...

Habiba Islam is a member of the 80,000 Hours career advising team . First, the two most important links: Apply to receive free career coaching: 80000hours.org/hti Apply to join the 80k career advising team here In this conversation, we talk about — How to begin planning a high-impact career What one-on-one calls with 80k are like (and why you might consider applying) Different motivations and fram...

Michael Bhaskar is a writer, researcher and publisher. He is a former consultant Writer in Residence at DeepMind , and most recently he wrote a book called Human Frontiers , which tries to answer the question: “why has the flow of big, world-changing ideas slowed down?” In our conversation, we discuss — The ' Adams curve ' How so much of the modern world was invented in exceptional 20th century re...

Mike Hinge is a Senior Economist at ALLFED (Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters). In our interview, we discuss: Why nuclear fallout blocking sunlight could be one of the most extreme threats to the global food supply, and how this compares to the risk from climate change; How scientists and ALLFED model the fallout of nuclear winter, how it affects crop yields, and how it changes food prices f...

Keith Frankish is a philosopher of mind. He is an Honorary Reader at the University of Sheffield , UK, Visiting Research Fellow with The Open University , and adjunct Professor with the Brain and Mind Programme at the University of Crete . In our interview, we discuss: What is the hard problem of consciousness? What is the illusionist theory of consciousness? What does illusionism have to do with...