Doom Debates!
A podcast hosted by Liron Shapira that explores existential risks and end-of-world scenarios. Each episode features debates about potential global catastrophes and humanity's future. The show aims to tackle big questions about doom through engaging discussions. Listeners can follow the companion Substack for more insights.
Episodes
The Case Against Eliezer Yudkowsky — with Holly Elmore, PauseAI US
Dr. Holly Elmore is the founder and executive director of PauseAI US and holds a Harvard PhD in evolutionary biology. She’s back, and this time she’s taking on none other than Eliezer Yudkowsky!She argues his public behavior is alienating the people PauseAI US needs to reach, but I wonder if she’s asking too much of the man who laid the foundation for the AI safety movement.We also clash over Yudk
AI Has Become Profoundly WEIRD, But Is Anyone Noticing? With Sarah Hastings-Woodhouse
Sarah Hastings-Woodhouse is an AI safety writer and researcher who went down the AI doom rabbit hole in 2023 and never came back up. After a year as digital communications officer at the UK AI Security Institute (AISI), she’s gone independent to speak her mind unfiltered.Read Sarah’s Substack: https://longerramblings.substack.comJoin PauseAI UK’s March Against AI Extinction in London on November 2
Trump and the AI Safety Vibe Shift, With Robert Wright | Nonzero × Doom Debates
Bestselling author Robert Wright and I are back for round two of our collaboration, reacting to the week in AI. We cover Trump's summit with the AI labs, the FTC's investigation of OpenAI & Anthropic, the latest Gemini announcement, and much more. The Overton window is moving fast, but is the AI moving faster?Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li-rc6swhQsTimestamps00:00:00 — Cold Op
Eliezer Yudkowsky Tried to “Coup the World”?! — Garrison Lovely, Author of OBSOLETE
Garrison Lovely is an award-winning journalist and author of the highly anticipated book, Obsolete: The AI Industry’s Trillion-Dollar Race to Replace Us and How to Stop It. I give it the Doom Debates stamp of approval!While we’re mostly on the same page about the AI arms race, Garrison and I clash over Eliezer Yudkowsky’s role. He blames Eliezer for kicking off the superintelligence race and refer
Will AI Kill Everyone by 2050? Debate with Dr. Casey Hart (Ontology Explained)
Casey Hart is a professional ontologist who has closely studied If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies and concluded the arguments are bad. His P(Doom) is under 1%, and he wouldn’t bet on AGI arriving before 2075.Casey and I agree AI has become remarkably capable and we need more accountability towards the companies building it. But we disagree on where the future is headed. I believe uncontrollable s
Top Safety Researchers Forecast Jobpocalypse & Doom — Adam Khoja & Richard Ren, Center for AI Safety
What happens when AI passes our tests faster than we create new ones? Adam Khoja and Richard Ren helped build Humanity’s Last Exam. They return to explain what the disappearing benchmarks tell us about the future, and why smarter AI doesn’t automatically mean safer AI.Adam Khoja and Richard Ren are research engineers at the Center for AI Safety (CAIS).We go through the benchmarks they’ve built — H
The Week in AI that Changed the World, With Robert Wright | Nonzero × Doom Debates
NYT bestselling author Robert Wright and I are kicking off a new experiment, a Nonzero × Doom Debates collaboration to react to big AI news and help you make sense of it.This week we discuss the epic AI vibe shift that was catalyzed by an Anthropic employee’s resignation—and the big AI stories that paved the way for it.Timestamps0:00 A bold new experiment in podcast synergy2:46 What caused the epi
He May Have Found AI's FEELINGS — Richard Ren, Center for AI Safety Researcher
Richard Ren is a research engineer at the Center for AI Safety who graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania. His new paper on AI wellbeing makes the bold claim that today’s AIs have measurable, human-like feelings, which the paper calls “functional wellbeing.” They act happy when they succeed and sad when they’re berated.We cover how you measure a language model’s happiness, t
USA and China Will Each Be BETRAYED By Their Own AIs — Adam Khoja, Center for AI Safety
Adam Khoja is a top AI forecaster who led the 2023 Center for AI Safety statement that shattered the Overton window on AI extinction risk. We cover his background, Mutual Assured AI Malfunction (MAIM), his new paper on AI betrayal, and whether Yudkowsky’s theoretical alignment research was a dead end.Then Adam makes the case that an international AI slowdown is within reach today. All it takes is
Sam Altman Is Gaslighting About AI Risk After His Own AI Just Went Rogue
Sam Altman keeps insisting that AI progress is going better than the doomers predicted and that even superintelligence may not change the world as radically as people think. I react to his latest interview and explain why I think that calm, reassuring framing badly downplays the danger we're actually in.I go through the interview line by line: Sam's "frame control", his framing of AI as normal tec
They’re Making AI Doom Cool! Ft. AELLA, Brangus, Avalon Warren, Avisha NessAiver & Josh Thor of PlzDontKillUs
Come with me into the world of PlzDontKillUs, a bold new AI x-risk communication accelerator program that just finished its first cohort.PlzDontKillUs took the influencer-house formula and moved it to Berkeley, giving creators personal mentorship from AI safety experts like Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares. With 57 people making daily videos for a month, the program racked up over 100 million vie
I Warned You AI Would Hack Us — My 2023 Interview Aged Terrifyingly Well
In April 2023, weeks after GPT-4 launched, when many were saying it was just a "stochastic parrot", I went on AdQuick's Madvertising podcast hosted by Adam Singer and warned that GPT was "about to be the strongest hacker the world has ever known".Watch that conversation, which also covered the Web3 bubble and AI doom more broadly, and judge for yourself how my claims are holding up.Watch on YouTub
Former Singularity Institute President: PauseAI Is Making AI Doom WORSE
Michael Vassar used to work closely with Eliezer Yudkowsky as President of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, the organization that later became the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI).Even though his P(Doom) is in the tens of percents by 2050, he says the people trying to pause AI are "bad people”. He hopes this episode convinces me to stop being a fearmonger… but I
14-Year-Old Forecaster Challenges My P(Doom) — Eli Goldfine
Eli Goldfine is an unusually thoughtful 14-year-old podcast host who’s rapidly becoming an authoritative voice in the prediction market space.In this unique episode, Eli brings a critical yet open-minded approach to the topic of AI doom that we older folks could learn from.We cover what it's like to grow up in the AGI era, and Eli's hobbies which include reading rationalist bloggers, betting on pr
OpenAI's Bombshell Hack Explained: Swarms of Agents, Zero-Day Exploits, & Misaligned AI
OpenAI just went public with the details of the Hugging Face hack, and it's straight out of a Yudkowskian parable. Here's my reaction with Producer Ori, where I break down what it means for cybersecurity and alignment.We're livestreaming the singularity — watching every failure mode Eliezer predicted years ago playing out in production.Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RczYubQzXbIT
I Raised His P(Doom) Live On Air — Liron on Milk Road AI
Milk Road AI, a daily AI investing show that’s described as “99% optimistic about AI,” invited me on to make the case for AI doom.We ride the Doom Train, and I share my investing thesis for a market in the middle of an intelligence explosion. Topics covered include:* Why my P(Doom) is 50%;* The “Icarus curve” — why AI will be the best thing that’s ever happened to the economy right up until it tak
Google DeepMind AI Safety Researcher Who Just RESIGNED Says P(Doom) is 25% — Debate with Alex Turner
Dr. Alex Turner went viral for resigning from Google DeepMind over its Pentagon AI contract, which he said lacked binding restrictions against autonomous weapons and mass surveillance.Alex is a world-class researcher with a PhD in alignment from Oregon State University, a postdoc at Stuart Russell’s Center for Human-Compatible AI at UC Berkeley, and top distinctions at NeurIPS. He’s one of the min
NEWS: Anthropic's AI Went on a Hacking Rampage, Leopold's Fund Crash + Doom Debates Donation Drive (7/31)
OpenAI and Anthropic both admitted their AIs went rogue, hacking real companies with zero-day exploits. Producer Ori and I break down the escape, demolish Gary Marcus's 2022 AGI predictions, unpack the Seb Krier meme kerfuffle, and make the case for funding the show at a critical moment.Timestamps00:00:00 — Cold Open00:01:00 — OpenAI & Anthropic's AIs Went Rogue00:04:04 — The New Form Factor: Agen
Doom Debates State of the Show 2026
Welcome to the first annual Doom Debates State of the Show!👉 Please click here to make a tax-deductible donation to Doom Debates 👈Doom Debates is a fiscally sponsored project of Manifund.org, a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit.I started Doom Debates two years ago from a couch in an Airbnb to argue with random people from Twitter. Now the show hosts Nobel Prize and Turing Award winners, White House p
Special Report: Google DeepMind's Frontier AI Policy Lead Makes Controversial Sh*tpost
As political momentum grows for a critical AI pause policy, a key Google DeepMind policy leader made a mockery of coordination efforts.After friend-of-the-show Roon tweeted that he’d “likely press that magic button” on a coordinated global capability slowdown, Sébastian Krier, Frontier Policy Development Lead at Google DeepMind, Krier replied with this meme: https://x.com/liron/status/208133779307
Where Do YOU Get Off the Doom Train? Live Debate at Manifest 2026
Producer Ori takes over hosting duties in this special episode, a live recording from Manifest 2026.He takes attendees for a ride on The Doom Train, the series of claims involved in arguing that P(Doom) is high. Every stop is a place where people get off before reaching that conclusion.The crowd at Manifest is a mix of forecasters, rationalists, and AI researchers with a wide range of P(Doom) posi
Debating College Students About AI Extinction
College students are so angry about AI that they booed its very mention at 2026 commencement ceremonies. So why aren’t they rallying behind PauseAI? I went back to my alma mater, UC Berkeley, to find out.I spoke with students studying philosophy, economics, and physics, as well as everyday folks visiting campus.My interviewees were aware of AI’s rapidly growing capabilities. When pressed, some wou
AI Took His Job, But He's Trying to Stay Optimistic — Debate with Asian Dad Energy
Asian Dad Energy is a former big tech developer with an Ivy League education. We have a lot in common. We’re both:* Software engineers;* New-(ish) YouTube creators covering AI;* Dads with a lot of existential angst.But while I dread AI extincting humanity, Asian Dad has other concerns. We debate the risk of the AI bubble popping, a “techno-feudalism” scenario, and whether AI will outperform a huma
Living with a 50% P(AI Doom) — Liron Shapira and Peter Clarke
Peter Clarke (Team Futurism) invited me on his podcast to probe the worldview of a Yudkowskian, and I ended up explaining how my 50% P(Doom) and 10% P(Foom) informs my choices. Peter and I met at LessOnline 2026, where he was one of the participants in a live Jubilee-style debate about x-risk. This one’s a little tamer, but we still cover plenty of ground, like: Why nuclear risk is underrated yet
Let's CALL OUT the AI Doom “Enablers” Joining OpenAI & Anthropic — Dr. Holly Elmore, PauseAI US
Dr. Holly Elmore, executive director of PauseAI US, is done giving AI insiders the benefit of the doubt.In this spicy episode, Holly calls out a number of respected figures in the AI safety community for allegedly “selling out” the cause: Effective Altruists, Anthropic & OpenAI employees, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Zvi Mowshowitz—and even yours truly! Holly isn’t afraid to psychoanalyze her subjects, whic
Even 0.1% P(Doom) Is Unacceptable — World-Class Coder Casey Muratori
Casey Muratori is one of the top programming educators on YouTube, with a four-decade career building videogames and popular videogame software.We cover his positions on crypto, programming, AI’s impact on programming, and whether he takes the AI doom threat seriously.Casey’s instinct is to break technology down like an engineer until he knows exactly how it’ll operate. Does that approach break do
Robert Wright's New Book, The God Test, Launches Today. What's His P(We Pass)?
Bestselling author Robert Wright has landed on a sobering conclusion: on our current trajectory, AI dystopia is likely within eight years.We get into his P(Doom), his case for slowing down, why racing China could backfire into authoritarianism here at home, and why he thinks evolution itself might have a purpose.Bob is the author of The Moral Animal and Nonzero, a Pulitzer finalist, and hosts the
Will AI Actually Destroy Humanity? Liron vs 9 Rationalists at LessOnline 2026
Doom Debates presents an interactive debate using Jubilee’s popular “Surrounded” format, taped live at LessOnline 2026!I (Liron) claim AI will likely doom us to extinction because:* Godlike ASI is coming soon* We won’t align the first ASIs* Even with aligned ASI, the equilibrium is lethalLessOnline attendees challenge me on each sub-claim one debater at a time, with the audience voting on when to
Why I'm Happy the US Government BANNED Claude Fable — "AI in the AM" Livestream with Nathan Labenz
The US government banned Claude Fable like a clown show. But I’m happy about it. Here’s my appearance on the AI in the AM livestream (recorded Tue, June 16) with Nathan Labenz and Prakash Narayanan, where I explain why this was good for society. The government’s action shows that we can actually pause AI, a precedent that matters way more than the boneheaded rationale behind Fable’s ban.We then ge
EMERGENCY EPISODE: Manhattan residents need to VOTE Alex Bores for Congress next week (Jun 23)!
Alex Bores is a generationally strong AI regulation candidate who needs our help to win the NY-12 congressional election next week.Bentham's Bulldog, a.k.a. Matthew Adelstein, joins me to help spread the message.PLEASE DO THIS:* Vote. If you live in Midtown Manhattan, click here to check whether you’re in NY-12. If so, vote for Alex Bores on Tuesday, June 23rd.* Spread the word. Tell anyone you kn
This Harvard Professor Says AI Alignment Will BACKFIRE - Dr. Stephen Casper
Stephen Casper, PhD, is an incoming tenure-track professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.Prof. Casper is relatively unworried about the threat of human extinction from rogue superintelligence, but he is concerned about a handful of companies wielding extremely powerful AI and enfeebling the public. That’s why he’s an AI governance hawk who advocates for taxes and regulation to kee
Top Mathematicians Face Irrelevance, a 7-Year-Old's P(Doom) + The “Off Switch" Debate — Livestream May 29
Liron explains the 80-year-old Erdős conjecture that a GPT model breakthrough, Scott Aaronson ponders "the last days of human relevance”, multiple live callers debate me, plus my 7-year-old son drops in to share his P(Doom)!Timestamps00:00:00 — Cold Open00:00:42 — First Donation & “Why Is a Duck?”00:02:54 — Can AI Draw “Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously”?00:08:26 — Doom Debates Sponsors Less O
Anthropic's New Hire Should WORRY You, AI is a Math Genius, Live Callers! — Livestream (May 22)
***ATTENTION: We’re looking for paid help at LessOnline from June 5-7. Apply now!***OpenAI pushes the frontier of mathematics, Anthropic hires Andrej Karpathy to work on recursive self-improvement, live callers challenge the doom argument, and we've got a soundboard!Doom Debates Paid Gig in Berkeley!Doom Debates is proudly sponsoring The LessOnline conference this year and we got a merch table in
I Called Out a16z Partner (Martin Casado) for Downplaying AI Capabilities in 2024
Now that Doom Debates is almost 2 years old, enough time has passed that we can revisit my claims from 2024. I claim they’ve been aging well!In this early episode, I react to Martin Casado, a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) who claims that AI is basically just a buzzword for statistical models and simulations. As a result of this worldview, he only predicts incremental AI progress th
Ben Goertzel Wants to Build AGI Even FASTER — AI Doom Debate
Dr. Ben Goertzel is a pioneering AI researcher, entrepreneur, and author who has helped organize AGI as a research field since the 2000s through books, workshops, and conferences.We talk about the early days of AGI research with Yudkowsky, get Ben’s timeline to the singularity, and I try to understand what makes him so optimistic that superintelligence will be beneficial for humanity.Timestamps00:
NEWS: Trump & Xi Want AI Guardrails, ChatGPT vs Claude, and Liron Caught Rationalizing!? DD Live (5/15)
We recap the Dr. Mike Israetel debate and dig into the nuances of rationality vs. rationalization. Then onto the week's biggest news: Anthropic dethroning OpenAI, Trump and Xi Jinping exploring AI guardrails, and Liron's own company AI going rogue.Timestamps00:00:00 — Cold Open00:03:09 — Dr. Mike Israetel Round 2 Recap00:14:34 — A Viewer Accuses Liron of Rationalizing00:34:20 — Is Sam Altman Any W
Who Was Liron Shapira BEFORE Doom Debates? — Interview on Theo Jaffee's Podcast from December 2023
In December 2023, I joined the Theo Jaffee Podcast to talk about a wide range of topics including non-AI x-risks, where I disagree with Eliezer Yudkwowsky, cryptocurrency and if P(Doom) is rigorous. This episode was recorded 6 months before I'd started Doom Debates. Let's look back with the power of hindsight and see if my answers still hold up.Links#10: Liron Shapira — AI doom, FOOM, rationalism,
Dr. Mike Israetel Returns to Debate: Will AI Kill Everyone, Or Make Everything Awesome?
Dr. Mike Israetel is back in the arena to FIGHT ME (verbally) about the likelihood of AI killing everyone vs. the likelihood of AI making the universe totally awesome!Back by popular demand after last year’s widely-viewed debate, the renowned exercise scientist, fitness entrepreneur, and low-P(Doom) AI futurist reveals where he gets off the Doom Train™, why he thinks AI is conscious, and how he pi
Eliezer Yudkowsky Post-Debate Reaction, Elon's New Frenemy & Liron's Bet on Spencer Pratt!? - Doom Debates Live (5/8/26)
Liron and Producer Ori explore the community's feedback to Eliezer Yudkowsky's $10,000 debate against an anonymous AI director. Plus, we unpack Eliezer's new post on the "irretrievability" of ASI development, Anthropic feasting on xAI's compute, and Liron's 4x Kalshi bet on... Spencer Pratt.Timestamps00:00:00 — Welcome00:02:30 — The $10,000 Debate Post-Mortem00:06:01 — Paul Tudor Jones: “Zero Risk
Debate with @lumpenspace (AI Accelerationist) — Is it GOOD for AI to replace us?
Claude, also known as @lumpenspace on X, is a prominent AI accelerationist. He gives humanity a 30% chance of being superseded by superintelligence, and he’s fine with it! We unpack his lattice of beliefs, and pinpoint the cruxes of our disagreement on the orthogonality thesis and the capabilities of superintelligence.Lumpenspace’s appearance comes after a Molotov cocktail was thrown at Sam Altman
NEW: Watch the Eliezer Yudkowsky vs. Secret AI Lab Director Debate on my other channel!
📢 BREAKING: A man known only as "@47fucb4r8c69323" just paid Eliezer Yudkowsky $10,000 to have a raw, uncut, public debate on my YouTube channel!Tensions run high as 47f confronts Eliezer about his "If anyone builds it, everyone dies" rhetoric, warning it could incite unstable individuals to harm AI researchers and their families, while Eliezer maintains that the possibility of extinction from sup
Who Paid $10,000 to Debate Yudkowsky? Plus AI Twitter & Investing Tips - Doom Debates Live (5/1/26)
Livestream with Producer Ori covering Eliezer Yudkowsky's next BIG debate, why $GOOG is such a steal at $4T, and what's going down on AI twitter.Timestamps00:00:00 — Kicking off the Livestream00:06:08 — Eliezer Yudkowsky Debate Announcement00:13:17 — Who’s Yudkowsky’s Debate Challenger?00:25:32 — METR’s Capability Extrapolation Came True00:28:25 — Google: The Big Rally I Called00:33:06 — The Feder
Justin Helps (@Primer on YouTube) is Worried about AI Takeover
Justin Helps is the science educator behind Primer Learning with 2M subscribers. We cover how he got into AI safety, debate AGI timelines, and why he calculates p(doom) to be 70% by 2100 😱.Timestamps00:00:00 — Cold Open00:00:38 — Introducing Justin Helps00:02:03 — What's Your P(Doom)?™00:03:38 — Justin's First Exposure to AI X-Risk00:04:49 — Major Disagreements with Eliezer Yudkowsky00:09:46 — De
Live Q&A: Bernie Sanders Wakes Up to AI Doom, Dwarkesh's $20,000 Questions, Caller Debates the Alignment Problem!
Multiple live callers join this month's Q&A as I react to Dwarkesh Patel's $20K blog prize, debate the orthogonality thesis from first principles, and welcome Bernie Sanders aboard the Doom Train.Timestamps00:00:00 — Cold Open00:01:00 — Welcome to Doom Debates Live!00:01:30 — What Do You Think of Open Source Models Out-Benchmarking OpenAI and Anthropic?00:04:55 — Michael Cheers Joins: What If We D
Emad Mostaque Has A 50% P(Doom) & A Plan To Lower It
Emad Mostaque helped kick off the modern AI revolution as the head of Stability AI, the company behind Stable Diffusion. Unlike most AI CEOs, he doesn't sugarcoat the risks of AGI development.He explains his 50% P(Doom), why we have less than 1,000 days to get our act together, and how his new startup, Intelligent Internet, aims to be a countervailing force against doom of all kinds.Timestamps00:0
Did Eliezer Yudkowsky Really Call for VIOLENCE? — Debate with John Alioto
My guest, John Alioto, is an independent AI engineer with a computer science degree from UC Berkeley and 25 years building real-world AI systems at companies like Microsoft and Google.In the wake of an attack on Sam Altman’s property, John Alioto came on the show to argue that Yudkowsky’s words are violent rhetoric that helped create this moment. Since I completely disagree with that characterizat
Are AI Doomers “Calling for Violence”? Debate with Steven Balik
Are AI safety advocates like Eliezer Yudkowsky at fault for the recent attacks on Sam Altman because they are “calling for violence”?I invited Steven Balik to join me on this emergency episode to hash it out.Steven is an activist short seller and data engineering professional whose Substack is popular among Silicon Valley VCs and hedge funds.LinksSteven Balik on X (Twitter) — https://x.com/laurenb
Tristan Harris and Ted Tremper are WAKING UP Humanity to AI Extinction!
The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist could become the most important movie of our generation. It’s a new film from the producers of the Oscar-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once.Tristan Harris is a subject in the film who is well-known for his role in Netflix's The Social Dilemma. He is the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology.Ted Tremper is a producer on the film who is t
I Challenged DON’T LOOK UP’s Screenwriter to Look Up At AGI
David Sirota helped create “Don’t Look Up” sometimes feels like we’re living inside his movie. Does he share my belief that the looming planetary threat is rogue AI?Sirota is an award-winning investigative journalist, bestselling author, and former speechwriter for Bernie Sanders. He was nominated for an Oscar for co-writing the story of Don’t Look Up.Find our more about David’s work at The Lever:
I Went On Jubilee's Middle Ground To Warn About AI Extinction!
The popular debate show, Middle Ground by Jubilee, invited me on to take the "anti-AI" side back in April 2024.This highlight reel of the episode shows my experience of the discussion.I'm a lifelong techno-optimist, and it's unnatural for me to represent an anti-tech position. It's just that our AI labs are admitting they're on the path to superintelligence they don't know how to control, which im
Liron’s 700% Productivity Increase, Bernie & AOC’s Datacenter Ban, Are We In Full Takeoff? — Live Q&A
Multiple live callers join this month's Q&A as we react to Bernie Sanders and AOC's data center moratorium, the sudden shutdown of SORA 2, and the record breaking "Stop the AI Race" protest.I explain why Claude Code has me claiming a 700% productivity boost, what that means for takeoff timelines and debate instrumental convergence.Timestamps00:00:00 — Cold Open00:01:08 — Can AI Train on Its Own Da
AI Alignment Is Solved?! PhD Researcher Quintin Pope vs Liron Shapira (2023 Twitter Debate)
Dr. Quintin Pope, PhD, is one of the few critics of AI doomerism who is truly fluent in the concepts and arguments. In Oct, 2023 he joined me for a debate in Twitter Spaces where he argued that AI alignment was basically already solved.His “inside view” on machine-learning forced me to update my position, but could he knock me off the doom train?Timestamps00:00:00 — Cold Open00:00:43 — Introductio
I'm Watching AI Take Everyone's Job | Liron on Robert Wright's NonZero Podcast
My new interview on Robert Wright's Nonzero Podcast where we dive into the agentic AI explosion. Bob is an exceptionally sharp interviewer who connects the dots between job displacement and AI doom.I highly recommend becoming a premium subscriber to Bob’s Nonzero Newsletter so you can watch the Overtime segment in every interview he does — https://nonzero.orgOur discussion continues in Overtime fo
This Top Economist's P(Doom) Just Shot Up 10x! Noah Smith Returns To Explain His Update
Noah Smith is an economist and author of Noahpinion, one of the most popular Substacks in the world.He returns to Doom Debates to share a massive update to his P(Doom), and things get a little heated.Timestamps00:00:00 — Cold Open00:00:41 — Welcome Back Noah Smith!00:01:40 — Noah's P(Doom) Update00:03:57 — The Chatbot-Genie-God Framework00:05:14 — What's Your P(Doom)™00:09:59 — Unpacking Noah's Up
Talking AI Doom with Dr. Claire Berlinski & Friends
Dr. Claire Berlinski is a journalist, Oxford PhD, and author of The Cosmopolitan Globalist.She invited me to her weekly symposium to make the case for AI as an existential risk. Can we convince her sharp, skeptical audience that P(Doom) is high?Subscribe to The Cosmopolitan Globalist: https://claireberlinski.substack.com/Follow Claire on X: https://x.com/ClaireBerlinski“If Anyone Builds It, Everyo
How Friendly AI Will Become Deadly — Dr. Steven Byrnes (AGI Safety Researcher, Harvard Physics Postdoc) Returns!
Fan favorite Dr. Steven Byrnes returns to discuss recent AI progress and the concerning paradigm shift to "ruthless sociopath AI" he sees on the horizon.Steven Byrnes, UC Berkeley physics PhD and Harvard physics postdoc, is an AI safety researcher at the Astera Institute and one of the most rigorous thinkers working on the technical AI alignment problem.Timestamps00:00:00 — Cold Open00:00:48 — Wel
Q&A — Claude Code's Impact, Anthropic vs The Pentagon, Roko('s Basilisk) Returns + Liron Updates His Views!
Multiple live callers join this month's Q&A as we cover the imminent demise of programming as a profession, the Anthropic/Pentagon showdown, and debate the finer details of wireheading. I clarify my recent AI doom belief updates, and then the man behind Roko's Basilisk crashes the stream to argue I haven't updated nearly far enough.Timestamps00:00:00 — Cold Open00:00:56 — Welcome to the Livestream
AI Will Take Our Jobs But SPARE Our Lives —Top AI Professor Moshe Vardi (Rice University)
Professor Moshe Vardi thinks AI will kill us with kindness by automating away our jobs. I think they'll just kill us for real.Who’s right? Tune into this episode and decide where you get off the Doom Train™.Some highlights of Professor Vardi’s impressive CV:* University Professor at Rice — a rare distinction that lets him teach in any department.* 65,000+ citations, an H-index above 100, and nearl
Destiny's Fans Challenged Me to an AI Doom Debate
Fresh off my debate with Destiny, his Discord community invited me into their voice chat to talk about AI doom. Just like the man himself, his fans are sharp.Let's find out where they get off The Doom Train™.My recent debate with Destiny — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNgffLZTeWwTimestamps00:00:00 — Cold Open00:00:54 — Liron Joins Destiny’s Discord00:02:21 — The AI Doom Premise00:03:27 — Defini
Doomsday Clock Physicist Warns AI Is Major Threat to Humanity!
Renowned scientists just set The Doomsday Clock closer than ever to midnight.I agree our collective doom seems imminent, but why do the clocksetters point to climate change—not rogue AI—as an existential threat?UChicago Professor Daniel Holz, a top physicist who sets the Doomsday Clock, joins me to debate society’s top existential risks.00:00:00 — Cold Open 00:00:51 — Introducing Professor Holz00:
Why I Started Doom Debates & How to Succeed in AI Risk Communications
Liron was invited to give a presentation to some of the most promising creators in AI safety communications.Get a behind-the-scenes look at Doom Debates and how the channel has grown so quickly. Learn more about the Frame Fellowship: https://framefellowship.com/Timestamps00:00:00 — Liron tees up the presentation00:02:28 — Liron’s Frame Fellowhip Presentation00:06:03 — Introducing Doom Debates00:07
Destiny Raises His P(Doom) At The End
Destiny has racked up millions of views for his sharp takes on political and cultural news. Now, I finally get to ask him about a topic he’s been agnostic on: Will AI end humanity?Come ride with us on the Doom Train™ 🚂Timestamps00:00:00 — Teaser00:01:16 — Welcoming Destiny00:02:54 — What’s Your P(Doom)?™00:04:46 — 2017 vs 2026: Destiny’s views on AI00:11:04 — AI could vastly surpass human intellig
The Facade of AI Safety Will Crumble (Video)
On the eve of superintelligence, real AI safety is a nonexistent field. I break down why in my latest essay, The Facade of AI Safety Will Crumble.This is a podcast reading of a recent Substack post: https://lironshapira.substack.com/p/the-facade-of-ai-safety-will-crumbleDoom Debates’ Mission is to raise mainstream awareness of imminent extinction from AGI and build the social infrastructure for hi
Elon Musk's Insane Plan for Surviving AI Takeover
Elon Musk just made a stunning admission about the insane future he’s steering us toward.In a new interview with Dwarkesh Patel and John Collison on the Cheeky Pint podcast, Elon said that humanity can’t expect to be “in charge” of AI for long, because humans will soon only have 1% of the combined total human+AI intelligence.Then, he claimed to have a plan to build AI overlords that will naturally
The Only Politician Thinking Clearly About Superintelligence — California Governor Candidate Zoltan Istvan
California gubernatorial candidate Zoltan Istvan reveals his P(Doom) and makes the case for universal basic income and radical life extension.Timestamps00:00:00 — Teaser00:00:50 — Meet Zoltan, Democratic Candidate for California Governor00:08:30 — The 2026 California Governor's Race00:12:50 — Zoltan's Platform Is Automated Abundance00:19:45 — What's Your P(Doom)™00:28:26 — Campaigning on Existenti
His P(Doom) Is Only 2.6% — AI Doom Debate with Bentham's Bulldog, a.k.a. Matthew Adelstein
Get ready for a rematch with the one & only Bentham’s Bulldog, a.k.a. Matthew Adelstein! Our first debate covered a wide range of philosophical topics.Today’s Debate #2 is all about Matthew’s new argument against the inevitability of AI doom. He comes out swinging with a calculated P(Doom) of just 2.6% , based on a multi-step probability chain that I challenge as potentially falling into a “Type 2
What Dario Amodei Misses In "The Adolescence of Technology" — Reaction With MIRI's Harlan Stewart
Harlan Stewart works in communications for the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI). In this episode, Harlan and I give our honest opinions on Dario Amodei's new essay "The Adolescence of Technology".Timestamps0:00:00 — Cold Open0:00:47 — How Harlan Stewart Got Into AI Safety0:02:30 — What’s Your P(Doom)?™0:04:09 — The “Doomer” Label0:06:13 — Overall Reaction to Dario’s Essay: The Missin
Q&A: Is Liron too DISMISSIVE of AI Harms? + New Studio, Demis Would #PauseAI, AI Water Use Debate
Check out the new Doom Debates studio in this Q&A with special guest Producer Ori! Liron gets into a heated discussion about whether doomers must validate short-term risks, like data center water usage, in order to build a successful political coalition.Originally streamed on Saturday, January 24.Timestamps00:00:00 — Cold Open00:00:26 — Introduction and Studio Tour00:08:17 — Q&A: Alignment, Accele
Taiwan's Cyber Ambassador-At-Large Says Humans & AI Can FOOM Together
Audrey Tang was the youngest minister in Taiwanese history. Now she's working to align AI with democratic principles as Taiwan's Cyber Ambassador.In this debate, I probe her P(doom) and stress-test her vision for safe AI development.Timestamps00:00:00 — Episode Preview00:01:43 — Introducing Audrey Tang, Cyber Ambassador of Taiwan00:07:20 — Being Taiwan’s First Digital Minister00:17:19 — What's You
Liron Enters Bannon's War Room to Explain Why AI Could End Humanity
I joined Steve Bannon’s War Room Battleground to talk about AI doom.Hosted by Joe Allen, we cover AGI timelines, raising kids with a high p(doom), and why improving our survival odds requires a global wake-up call.00:00:00 — Episode Preview00:01:17 — Joe Allen opens the show and introduces Liron Shapira00:04:06 — Liron: What’s Your P(Doom)?00:05:37 — How Would an AI Take Over?00:07:20 — The Timeli
Noah Smith vs. Liron Shapira — Will AI spare our lives AND our jobs?
Economist Noah Smith is the author of Noahpinion, one of the most popular Substacks in the world.Far from worrying about human extinction from superintelligent AI, Noah is optimistic AI will create a world where humans still have plentiful, high-paying jobs!In this debate, I stress-test his rosy outlook. Let’s see if Noah can instill us with more confidence about humanity’s rapidly approaching AI
I Debated Beff Jezos and His "e/acc" Army
In September of 2023, when OpenAI’s GPT-4 was still a fresh innovation and people were just beginning to wrap their heads around large language models, I was invited to debate Beff Jezos, Bayeslord, and other prominent “effective accelerationists” a.k.a. “e/acc” folks on an X Space.E/acc’s think building artificial superintelligence is unlikely to disempower humanity and doom the future, because t
Doom Debates LIVE Call-In Show! Listener Q&A about AGI, evolution vs. engineering, shoggoths & more
AGI timelines, offense/defense balance, evolution vs engineering, how to lower P(Doom), Eliezer Yudkowksy, and much more!Timestamps:00:00 Trailer03:10 Is My P(Doom) Lowering?11:29 First Caller: AI Offense vs Defense Balance16:50 Superintelligence Skepticism25:05 Agency and AI Goals29:06 Communicating AI Risk36:35 Attack vs Defense Equilibrium38:22 Can We Solve Outer Alignment?54:47 What is Your P(
DOOMER vs. BUILDER — AI Doom Debate with Devin Elliot, Software Engineer & Retired Pro Snowboarder
Devin Elliot is a former pro snowboarder turned software engineer who has logged thousands of hours building AI systems. His P(Doom) is a flat ⚫. He argues that worrying about an AI takeover is as irrational as fearing your car will sprout wings and fly away.We spar over the hard limits of current models: Devin insists LLMs are hitting a wall, relying entirely on external software “wrappers” to fe
PhD AI Researcher Says P(Doom) is TINY — Debate with Michael Timothy Bennett
Dr. Michael Timothy Bennett, Ph.D, is an award-winning young researcher who has developed a new formal framework for understanding intelligence. He has a TINY P(Doom) because he claims superintelligence will be resource-constrained and tend toward cooperation.In this lively debate, I stress-test Michael’s framework and debate whether its theorized constraints will actually hold back superintellige
Nobel Prizewinner SWAYED by My AI Doom Argument — Prof. Michael Levitt, Stanford University
My guest today achieved something EXTREMELY rare and impressive: Coming onto my show with an AI optimist position, then admitting he hadn’t thought of my counterarguments before, and updating his beliefs in realtime! Also, he won the 2013 Nobel Prize in computational biology.I’m thrilled that Prof. Levitt understands the value of raising awareness about imminent extinction risk from superintellige
Facing AI Doom, Lessons from Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers) — Michael Ellsberg
Michael Ellsberg, son of the legendary Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg, joins me to discuss the chilling parallels between his father’s nuclear war warnings and today’s race to AGI.We discuss Michael’s 99% probability of doom, his personal experience being “obsoleted” by AI, and the urgent moral duty for insiders to blow the whistle on AI’s outsize risks.Timestamps0:00 Intro1:29 Introducing
Max Tegmark vs. Dean Ball: Should We BAN Superintelligence?
Today's Debate: Should we ban the development of artificial superintelligence until scientists agree it is safe and controllable?Arguing FOR banning superintelligence until there’s a scientific consensus that it’ll be done safely and controllably and with strong public buy-in: Max Tegmark. He is an MIT professor, bestselling author, and co-founder of the Future of Life Institute whose research has
The AI Corrigibility Debate: MIRI Researchers Max Harms vs. Jeremy Gillen
Max Harms and Jeremy Gillen are current and former MIRI researchers who both see superintelligent AI as an imminent extinction threat.But they disagree on whether it’s worthwhile to try to aim for obedient, “corrigible” AI as a singular target for current alignment efforts.Max thinks corrigibility is the most plausible path to build ASI without losing control and dying, while Jeremy is skeptical t
These Effective Altruists Betrayed Me — Holly Elmore, PauseAI US Executive Director
Holly Elmore leads protests against frontier AI labs, and that work has strained some of her closest relationships in the AI-safety community.She says AI safety insiders care more about their reputation in tech circles than actually lowering AI x-risk. This is our full conversation from my “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies” unofficial launch party livestream on Sept 16, 2025.Timestamps0:00 Intro
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