The Highest-impact Career Paths Our Research Has Identified So Far

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The highest-impact career paths our research has identified so far

Most of these paths are difficult to enter, and it’s common to start by investing years in building useful skills before pursuing them. But if any might be a good fit for you, we encourage you to seriously consider it.

We’ve ranked these paths roughly in terms of our take on their expected impact, holding personal fit for each fixed and given our view of the world’s most pressing problems. But your personal fit matters a lot for your impact, and there is a lot of variation within each path too — so the best opportunities in one lower on the list will often be better than most of the opportunities in a higher-ranked one.

1. AI governance and policy
Improve organisational, political, and societal decision-making about AI to reduce catastrophic risks.
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2. AI safety technical research
The development of AI could transform society. Help increase the chance it’s positive by doing technical research to find ways to prevent AI systems from carrying out dangerous behaviour.
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3. Biorisk research, strategy, and policy
Help reduce the risk of a global biological catastrophe, like an engineered pandemic much worse than COVID-19.
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4. Information security in high-impact areas
Help secure important organisations from attacks and prevent emerging technologies like AI and biotech from being misused, stolen, or tampered with.
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5. Expert in AI hardware
Use knowledge of a key input into advanced AI systems to reduce risks and improve governance decisions.
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6. China-related AI safety and governance paths
Help Chinese companies and stakeholders involved in building AI make the technology safe and good for society.
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7. Grantmaker focused on pressing world problems
Allocate philanthropic funding as effectively as possible by identifying and vetting new organisations and projects.
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8. Helping build the effective altruism community
If you could cause two other equally talented people to use their skills to tackle the world’s most pressing problems, that’d be double the impact you’d have if you did it yourself.
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9. Nuclear weapons safety and security
Help reduce the dangers posed by nuclear weapons by working in policy, communications, or research.
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10. Operations management in high-impact organisations
One of the biggest bottlenecks for organisations working on pressing global problems is excellent operations staff to design, scale, and implement great systems.
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11. Research into global priorities
Help identify the most pressing global problems and the most effective ways to solve them to enable others to have a greater impact.
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