interpretation: this is a very conservative lower bound on people who could plausibly do high-quality remote cognitive work using tools like chatgpt (incl. translation). this is not a hiring claim; it’s an order-of-magnitude sanity check.
hacky fermi table
country
population
internet users
final pool (÷8000)
brazil
203,000,000
170,520,000
21,315
argentina
46,000,000
41,400,000
5,175
colombia
52,000,000
40,040,000
5,005
peru
34,000,000
24,480,000
3,060
chile
19,500,000
17,940,000
2,243
bolivia
12,400,000
7,440,000
930
paraguay
7,500,000
5,850,000
731
ecuador
18,300,000
13,725,000
1,716
mexico
129,000,000
96,750,000
12,094
nigeria
227,000,000
88,530,000
11,066
ghana
34,000,000
18,020,000
2,253
kenya
55,000,000
23,650,000
2,956
uganda
49,000,000
14,210,000
1,776
tanzania
67,000,000
20,100,000
2,513
south africa
62,000,000
44,640,000
5,580
egypt
112,000,000
80,640,000
10,080
morocco
37,000,000
31,080,000
3,885
tunisia
12,300,000
8,733,000
1,092
india
1,430,000,000
800,800,000
100,100
bangladesh
173,000,000
70,930,000
8,866
pakistan
241,000,000
86,760,000
10,845
sri lanka
22,000,000
11,880,000
1,485
vietnam
101,000,000
75,750,000
9,469
philippines
114,000,000
83,220,000
10,403
indonesia
277,000,000
182,820,000
22,853
thailand
71,000,000
60,350,000
7,544
malaysia
34,000,000
32,980,000
4,123
nepal
30,500,000
13,420,000
1,678
cambodia
17,000,000
9,520,000
1,190
mongolia
3,500,000
2,905,000
363
fiji
930,000
697,500
87
samoa
225,000
157,500
20
tonga
107,000
74,900
9
key takeaway:
even after filtering to internet users only and then applying an extremely harsh 95%×95%×95% filter, many countries still have thousands to tens of thousands of plausible high-quality contributors. at global scale, talent supply is not the bottleneck; coordination, tooling, and trust are.
“”″
(I know this estimation relies on some independence assumptions. Regardless, it is meant to be illustrative, not authoritative.)
I agree this cannot replace donation-based interventions! It is still feels potentially underrated and underconsidered.
I do agree that management and structure are the hardest parts. I do imagine many EA orgs have solved harder problems in the past.
I think automatic dubbing services have become good enough to make English fluency not be a hard requirement anymore for many potential jobs.
Here is a super hacky fermi-gpt estimate of a headcount of potentially hireable global workers:
“”″
hacky fermi estimate — internet users → elite tail
definitions (clean + explicit):
population: total population (≈2024–2025)
internet users: people using the internet (any device)
final pool (÷8000): internet users filtered by three independent 95th-percentile criteria
high cognitive ability (≈95th percentile)
hardworking (≈95th percentile)
ethical / trustworthy (≈95th percentile)
combined ⇒ (1 / (20×20×20) ≈ 1 / 8000)
interpretation: this is a very conservative lower bound on people who could plausibly do high-quality remote cognitive work using tools like chatgpt (incl. translation). this is not a hiring claim; it’s an order-of-magnitude sanity check.
hacky fermi table
key takeaway:
even after filtering to internet users only and then applying an extremely harsh 95%×95%×95% filter, many countries still have thousands to tens of thousands of plausible high-quality contributors. at global scale, talent supply is not the bottleneck; coordination, tooling, and trust are.
“”″
(I know this estimation relies on some independence assumptions. Regardless, it is meant to be illustrative, not authoritative.)