80,000 Hours Podcast Using AI to enhance societal decision making (article by Zershaaneh Qureshi)
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Mar 6, 2026 
Zershaaneh Qureshi, author and narrator of the article on AI-enhanced decision making, outlines why AI could both raise stakes and improve how we decide. She covers AI tools for truth-finding, forecasting, and coordination. She weighs objections about market forces, safety risks, and misuse, and suggests who might be well suited to help build these tools.
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AGI Could Make Decision Windows Shorter And Riskier
- AGI could compress a century of progress into a decade, making decisions faster, higher-stakes, and more error-prone for humans.
- Zershaaneh Qureshi points to historical failures (climate, COVID, wars) to show how speed and scale of AI amplify existing decision problems.
Epistemic AI Can Fix False Beliefs And Poor Forecasting
- AI epistemic tools can improve truth-finding and forecasting, addressing misinformation and poor prediction that underlie many bad decisions.
- Qureshi lists fact-checkers, forecasting systems, and moral-reasoning aids as concrete epistemic examples.
Coordination AI Can Overcome Trust And Bargaining Failures
- Coordination tools can help groups with competing interests reach better agreements and verify compliance, overcoming trust failures.
- Examples include AI negotiation simulators, verification systems, and structured transparency to reveal specific threats safely.