Our Levels of Ambition Should Match The Problems We're Solving
webAuthor
Matt Beard
Credibility Rating
3/5
Good(3)Good quality. Reputable source with community review or editorial standards, but less rigorous than peer-reviewed venues.
Rating inherited from publication venue: EA Forum
An EA Forum opinion piece urging the AI safety and effective altruism communities to adopt ambition commensurate with the scale of existential risks, critiquing underinvestment and overly cautious approaches relative to the stakes involved.
Forum Post Details
Karma
143
Comments
20
Forum
eaforum
Forum Tags
Career choiceAI safetyBuilding effective altruismAmbitionAltruistic motivationBurnoutOpinion
Metadata
Importance: 42/100commentary
Summary
This EA Forum post argues that the effective altruism community and AI safety field should scale up their ambition, resources, and approaches to match the true magnitude of the problems being addressed, particularly existential risks. It contends that incremental or cautious thinking is insufficient when the stakes involve civilizational-scale outcomes.
Key Points
- •The scale of effort and ambition devoted to a problem should be proportional to the severity and scope of that problem.
- •Existential and catastrophic risks demand bolder, more ambitious interventions than conventional philanthropic or policy approaches typically employ.
- •There is a mismatch between the acknowledged stakes of AI risk and existential threats and the relatively modest scale of current responses.
- •The EA community should reconsider norms around caution and incrementalism when dealing with problems of civilizational importance.
- •Raising ambition levels may require cultural and structural shifts within organizations working on high-stakes problems.
Cached Content Preview
HTTP 200Fetched Apr 7, 202628 KB
# Our Levels of Ambition Should Match The Problems We're Solving
By Matt Beard
Published: 2026-02-12
*\[I am a career advisor at 80,000 Hours writing in a personal capacity here. I've been thinking about something Will MacAskill said recently in an* [*interview with my shrimp-friend Matt*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wll9B_9rpB0&t=2s)*: "should people be more ambitious? I genuinely think yes. I think people systematically aren't ambitious enough, so the answer is almost always yes. Again, the ambition you have should match the scale of the problems that we're facing—and the scale of those problems is very large indeed." *
*This post is my reflection on these ideas.\]*
*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\**
My [last post](https://thatvastvariety.substack.com/p/your-goal-isnt-really-to-get-a-job) argued that if you want to have a great career, your goal should not be to get a job. Instead, you should choose an important problem to work on, then “***get good and be known***.” Building skills will allow you to solve problems and reap the benefits.
In the ~500 career advising calls I’ve hosted in the past year, the most common response I’ve heard has been: “Okay, ***how good***? How well known? How many hours of practice will get me there?” Most people want to calibrate their ambitions so that the time and energy they invest feels worth it to them.
I empathize with this, but when I’m honest– with myself for my own goals, with the people I see working on important problems full time, and with so many who are trying to break into meaningful careers– I’m **desperate for altruistic people to be more ambitious**. I wish more people realized that:
1. There is a massive gap between the average person’s level of ambition and those of top performers. Until you’ve seen it up close or read a few biographies, it’s hard to realize the pathological urge some people feel to improve their skills, to set absurd goals, and to do what’s necessary to achieve them.
2. Despite this, most extremely ambitious people are focused on unimportant problems. For whatever reason, workaholic strivers are usually more interested in seeking status or power than in solving real problems to reduce suffering and keep people safe.
3. Because your ambitions should ideally match the scale of the problem that you’re trying to solve, if you genuinely care about improving the world, you should aim much higher and work much harder than the average person. Conversely, if the problem you’re trying to solve in life is to maximize KPIs for Deloitte, who the hell cares. Rise to whatever occasion you’ve set for yourself.
It’s hard to figure out *how* to become more ambitious, but I think it’s possible. [Ambition seems to be quite malleable](https://paulgraham.com/determination.html). You can read great biographies, surround yourself with other ambitious people, set up systems to remind yourself what you’re working for and why, set concrete goals, work in public, etc. Regardless, I think the first s
... (truncated, 28 KB total)Resource ID:
22d7672416328579 | Stable ID: sid_sH8FSbBH1W