Key categories of impactful careers

Before thinking about specific career paths, we think it’s valuable to consider what kinds of careers tend to be highest impact. The career categories below can enable you to make a big contribution to whichever global problems you think are most pressing.

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  Work out how government policy can help solve the world’s most pressing problems, and help make those policies happen.

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  Help build great organisations doing important work via entrepreneurship, operations, people management, project management, fundraising, or administration.

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  Aim to make intellectual advances about how to tackle the world’s most pressing problems.

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  We mostly focus on more common skills, but a huge variety is needed. If you already have expertise in a narrow area, there might be a way to apply it to a pressing global problem.

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  Convey important ideas and information in a compelling way, and you can help others focus on the right things and work more effectively.

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  Take a job that fits you well and lets you contribute financially to funding-constrained, highly effective organisations.

List of top-recommended career paths

If you want to help tackle the global problems we think are most pressing, these are the career paths we most recommend — our priority paths. Most of them are difficult to enter — you may need to start by investing in building skills for several years, and there may be relatively few positions available. However, if you have the potential to excel in any of these paths, we encourage you to seriously consider it.

We’ve ranked these paths roughly in terms of impact, assuming your personal fit for each is constant. But there is a lot of variation within each path — so the best opportunities in one lower on the list will often be better than most of the opportunities in a higher-ranked one.

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  The development of AI could transform society. Help increase the chance it’s positive by tackling the technical problems of AI alignment, such as ‘corrigibility,’ ‘interpretability,’ and reliability.

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  The deployment of powerful AI systems could go very well or very badly for society. Help shape and implement policies to make it go well.

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  Most people can only do great work within a great organisation. Make it possible to deploy more talent and resources toward progress on pressing global problems.

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  Allocate philanthropic funding as effectively as possible by identifying and vetting new organisations and projects.

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  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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  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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  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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  Help reduce the risk of a global biological catastrophe, like an engineered pandemic much worse than COVID-19.

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  Help Chinese companies and stakeholders involved in building AI make the technology safe and good for society.

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  Help powerful institutions make good predictions and decisions, particularly around catastrophic risks.

Sometimes recommended: other high-impact career paths we’re excited about

Below we list some other career paths that we don’t recommend as often or as highly as those above, but which can still often be top options for people we advise. Take a look and consider any that might be a good fit for you. These aren’t ranked in terms of impact.

High-impact but especially competitive

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  Help anticipate future changes to society and technology by examining the past.

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  Build a platform and spread important ideas about pressing global problems and how we can best solve them.

Potentially high-impact but still under-researched

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  Shape the course and pace of AI deployment though AI hardware — e.g. by restricting or allowing access to compute by different actors.

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  Help prevent emerging technologies like AI and biotech from being misused, stolen, or tampered with.

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  Research, promote, or implement policies that address global issues beyond biosecurity and AI safety.

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  Help emerging global powers coordinate with the rest of the world in addressing pressing global problems.

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  Help philanthropists invest resources now in order to deploy the returns in the medium- to long-term future, or whenever the time is right.

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  See if we can make progress on an under-researched problem that could be even more pressing than those we currently prioritise.

Other impactful options if you’re an especially good fit

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  Spread important ideas and help shape public discourse for the better.

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  You don’t have to be a technical or policy researcher to help AI labs work toward greater safety.

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  Use coding skills to help shape the development of AI, prevent pandemics, and support the most impactful nonprofits.

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  Multiply the impact of research by guiding, coordinating, and promoting the best work.

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  Grow the effective altruism community by running events, mentoring, and connecti