Technology

Doom Debates!

It’s time to talk about the end of the world. With your host, Liron Shapira.

lironshapira.substack.com

Latest Episodes:

Top Safety Researchers Forecast Jobpocalypse & Doom — Adam Khoja & Richard Ren, Center for AI Safety Sep 15, 2026

Show notes

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 — Humanity’s Last Exam, the Remote Labor Index, MASK — and the safety-washing problem, where AI companies pass off raw capability gains as safety progress. Then we get to their forecasts: when AI outperforms research mathematicians, whether there will be a billion general-purpose robots by 2035, and why they put 80% odds that historians will judge we faced at least a 33% chance of catastrophe.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBPzgJkT9e8

Timestamps

00:00:00 — Cold Open

00:00:42 — Adam Khoja and Richard Ren Return

00:04:57 — Humanity’s Last Exam

00:14:47 — AI Outrunning Its Benchmarks

00:20:24 — The Remote Labor Index

00:27:59 — AI and the Next Human Job

00:30:08 — MASK: Catching AI in a Lie

00:38:06 — Safety Washing: Capabilities Passed Off as Safety

00:44:30 — Ethical Knowledge vs. Ethical Behavior

00:48:58 — Forecasting AI from 2026 to 2060

00:53:53 — AI vs. Research Mathematicians

00:55:53 — Putting a Number on P(Doom)

01:04:30 — A Billion Robots by 2035

01:08:09 — Dyson Swarms and the Physical Singularity

01:09:56 — Risk, Precision, and Taking Action

Links

Adam Khoja's first Doom Debates appearance — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqESBXuo6EI

Richard Ren's first Doom Debates appearance — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1glFImnyp6o

Collision — Richard Ren's Substack — https://richardren.substack.com/

"Predictions on AI (2026–2060)" — Adam and Richard's forecasts, written December 2025, with resolution status — https://richardren.substack.com/p/predictions-on-ai-20262060

Manifold Markets — where Adam built his forecasting track record — https://manifold.markets/

Center for AI Safety — https://safe.ai/

Center for AI Safety — careers — https://safe.ai/careers

Statement on AI Risk (Center for AI Safety, May 2023) — https://safe.ai/work/statement-on-ai-risk

Humanity's Last Exam — the 2,500-question closed-book exam at the frontier of human knowledge — https://agi.safe.ai/

"Humanity's Last Exam" (paper) — https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.14249

Remote Labor Index — real Upwork projects, measuring what fraction of remote work AI can actually finish — https://www.remotelabor.ai/

"Remote Labor Index: Measuring AI Automation of Remote Work" (paper) — https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.26787

MASK — the honesty benchmark: does a model contradict its own stated beliefs under pressure? — https://www.mask-benchmark.ai/

"The MASK Benchmark: Disentangling Honesty From Accuracy in AI Systems" (paper) — https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.03750

"Safetywashing: Do AI Safety Benchmarks Actually Measure Safety Progress?" — Richard Ren et al. (NeurIPS 2024) — the paper behind the safety-washing segment — https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.21792

WMDP — the weaponization benchmark for bio, cyber, and chem — https://www.wmdp.ai/

"The WMDP Benchmark: Measuring and Reducing Malicious Use With Unlearning" (paper) — https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.03218

"Measuring Massive Multitask Language Understanding" (MMLU) — Dan Hendrycks et al., 2020 — https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.03300

METR, "Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Tasks" — the time-horizon graph — https://metr.org/blog/2025-03-19-measuring-ai-ability-to-complete-long-tasks/

FrontierMath — Epoch AI's research-level math benchmark — https://epoch.ai/frontiermath

ARC Prize — https://arcprize.org/

SWE-bench Verified — https://openai.com/index/introducing-swe-bench-verified/

AI 2027 — https://ai-2027.com/

Liron Reacts to Subbarao Kambhampati on Machine Learning Street Talk — the "stochastic parrot" episode Liron mentions — https://lironshapira.substack.com/p/liron-reacts-to-subbarao-kambhampati

Doom Debates’ Mission is to raise mainstream awareness of imminent extinction from AGI and build the social infrastructure for high-quality debate.

Support the mission by subscribing to my Substack at DoomDebates.com and to youtube.com/@DoomDebates, or to really take things to the next level: Donate 🙏

Get full access to Doom Debates at lironshapira.substack.com/subscribe

The Week in AI that Changed the World, With Robert Wright | Nonzero × Doom Debates Sep 12, 2026

Show notes

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.

Timestamps

0:00 A bold new experiment in podcast synergy

2:46 What caused the epic AI vibe shift?

8:10 The resignation that broke the dam

10:17 Former Trump adviser Dean Ball comes clean

14:40 Are David Sacks and his buddies all-in on AI denial?

19:27 Yet another OpenAI breakout…

22:42 Astra’s dangerously private thoughts

34:08 Is alignment doomed to fail?

37:11 AI’s latest, and apparently biggest, math feat

43:28 The looming “self-sovereign AI” threat

47:24 A new flock of China doves?

52:57 Liron's ex-intern gets a seat at the table

1:02:41 AI agent self-sacrifice explained

1:10:40 Some newly freaked out politicians

1:22:45 Ro Khanna's AI safety plan

Links:

NONZERO

Subscribe to The NonZero Newsletter

Episode post on Substack

Join NonZero’s Discord server

Robert Wright on X (@robertwrighter)

The God Test — Robert Wright’s new book on AI

“Can Machines Think?” — Bob’s 1996 Time cover story on Deep Blue vs. Kasparov

THE RESIGNATION THAT BROKE THE DAM

Jacob Coxon’s resignation post (@hilbertspaess)

Evan Hubinger, Anthropic Alignment Science lead: “Jacob is correct here—we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans”

Fortune: Anthropic researcher resigns, warning that AI companies are “gambling with our lives”

Zvi Mowshowitz: “Jacob Coxon Warns of Human Extinction and Triggers a Preference Cascade”

Daniel Eth’s thread of Congress reactions

Sanders & Casar introduce legislation to ban artificial superintelligence and pause advanced AI development

DEAN BALL COMES CLEAN

Dean Ball, “On the Loose” — the self-sovereign AI essay (Hyperdimensional)

THE OPENAI STORIES

Jakub Pachocki, OpenAI Chief Scientist: “An Alien Mind” — the essay calling for international coordination

LessWrong: “How concerned should we be about Astra’s recurrent architecture?” — Rauno Arike

OpenAI: “On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem” — the 88-hour result

ALSO MENTIONED

Einat Wilf on X (@EinatWilf) — Liron’s favorite source on the Middle East

PAST DOOM DEBATES EPISODES MENTIONED

Max Tegmark vs. Dean Ball: Should We BAN Superintelligence?

He Led The Famous 2023 Statement on AI Extinction Risk — Adam Khoja, Center for AI Safety Researcher

OpenAI’s Model Just ATTACKED Them — Terrifying Security Incident Should Be A Loud Warning Shot

Debate with Robert Wright: Will Humanity Pass the “God Test”?

---

Doom Debates’ Mission is to raise mainstream awareness of imminent extinction from AGI and build the social infrastructure for high-quality debate.

Support the mission by subscribing to my Substack at DoomDebates.com and to youtube.com/@DoomDebates, or to really take things to the next level: Donate 🙏

Get full access to Doom Debates at lironshapira.substack.com/subscribe

He May Have Found AI's FEELINGS — Richard Ren, Center for AI Safety Researcher Sep 09, 2026

Show notes

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, the “AI drugs” his lab concocted, and why I count the findings as a Yudkowskian victory. Then we debate what it all means for AI consciousness, and whether AI is a moral patient. If we can’t rule out that AI models suffer, what do we owe them?

Richard is careful never to claim the models are conscious, and he puts his P(Doom) at 50–65%, right alongside my 50%. The real disagreement is foxes vs. hedgehogs: he takes the data as it comes, while I say Yudkowsky’s theory called it twenty years ago. Enjoy the ride.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1glFImnyp6o

Timestamps

00:00:00 — Cold Open

00:01:12 — Introducing Richard Ren

00:02:24 — What’s Your P(Doom)?™

00:03:31 — From AI Skeptic to Safety Researcher

00:08:16 — Why Care About AI Wellbeing?

00:11:45 — AIs Have Coherent Utility Functions

00:17:33 — Persona Selection

00:19:56 — Foxes vs. Hedgehogs

00:24:28 — How Coherent Are AI Preferences?

00:27:42 — From Preferences to Wellbeing

00:31:16 — Can You Trust an AI’s Self-Report?

00:36:42 — What Makes AI Happy and Sad

00:39:19 — The Liberal, College-Educated Persona Hypothesis

00:44:29 — Debating Where AI Experiences Qualia

00:52:06 — On Substrate Independence

00:56:28 — Janus, Dysphorics, and Mind Crime

00:58:58 — Which Images Make AIs Happiest?

00:59:38 — Creating an AI Drug

01:04:01 — AI Drugs Are Yudkowsky’s Paperclips

01:05:47 — The Missing Mood

01:06:50 — Does Richard Support Pausing AI?

Links

Richard Ren on X (@notRichardRen) — https://x.com/notRichardRen

Collision — Richard Ren's Substack — https://richardren.substack.com/

"AI Wellbeing: Measuring and Improving the Functional Pleasure and Pain of AIs" — Richard Ren, Kunyang Li, Mantas Mazeika et al. (CAIS, 2026) — https://www.ai-wellbeing.org/

"Utility Engineering: Analyzing and Controlling Emergent Value Systems in AIs" — Mantas Mazeika et al. (CAIS, 2025) — the coherent-preferences paper this work builds on — https://www.emergent-values.ai/

"The MASK Benchmark: Disentangling Honesty From Accuracy in AI Systems" — Richard Ren et al. (2025) — the AI honesty benchmark — https://www.mask-benchmark.ai/

"Safetywashing: Do AI Safety Benchmarks Actually Measure Safety Progress?" — Richard Ren et al. (NeurIPS 2024) — the meta-analysis of AI safety benchmarks — https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.21792

"Representation Engineering: A Top-Down Approach to AI Transparency" — Andy Zou et al. (2023) — Richard's first CAIS collaboration — https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.01405

Center for AI Safety — https://safe.ai/

Center for AI Safety — careers — https://safe.ai/careers

Statement on AI Risk (Center for AI Safety, May 2023) — organized by Dan Hendrycks — https://safe.ai/work/statement-on-ai-extinction-risk

The 2026 Singapore Consensus on Global AI Safety Research Priorities — https://aisafetypriorities.org/

UK AI Security Institute (formerly the AI Safety Institute) — https://www.aisi.gov.uk/

Sora — the OpenAI video model that blew up Richard's 30-to-50-year timeline three months after he wrote it down — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sora_(text-to-video_model)

Google Gemini calls itself "a disgrace to my species" (Ars Technica, Aug 2025) — the self-deleting-AI anecdote — https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/08/google-gemini-struggles-to-write-code-calls-itself-a-disgrace-to-my-species/

Coherent decisions imply consistent utilities — Eliezer Yudkowsky (the coherence-theorems argument) — https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RQpNHSiWaXTvDxt6R/coherent-decisions-imply-consistent-utilities

Simulators — Janus's essay on LLMs as persona simulators — https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vJFdjigzmcXMhNTsx/simulators

Janus (@repligate) on X — https://x.com/repligate

The Hedgehog and the Fox — Isaiah Berlin's original essay — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox

AI 2027 — https://ai-2027.com/

Magnifica Humanitas — Pope Leo XIV's encyclical on AI (May 2026), the "AIs are not conscious" position — https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html

Implicit Association Test (Harvard Project Implicit) — https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

PauseAI — https://pauseai.info/

We Found AI's Preferences — Bombshell New Safety Research — I Explain It Better Than David Shapiro — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml1JdiELQ30

Gödel's Theorem Proves AI Lacks Consciousness?! Liron Reacts to Sir Roger Penrose — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwvijjZxpwI

He Led The Famous 2023 Statement on AI Extinction Risk — Adam Khoja, Center for AI Safety Researcher — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqESBXuo6EI

Doom Debates’ Mission is to raise mainstream awareness of imminent extinction from AGI and build the social infrastructure for high-quality debate.

Support the mission by subscribing to my Substack at DoomDebates.com and to youtube.com/@DoomDebates, or to really take things to the next level: Donate 🙏

Get full access to Doom Debates at lironshapira.substack.com/subscribe

USA and China Will Each Be BETRAYED By Their Own AIs — Adam Khoja, Center for AI Safety Sep 03, 2026

Show notes

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 US and Chinese auditors inside each other’s AI labs. It worked for nuclear weapons, so why couldn’t it work for data centers?

Adam puts his P(Doom) at 40%, right next to my 50%. The real disagreement is how we get out of this: theory or empirics, MIRI or the labs. Enjoy the ride.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqESBXuo6EI

Timestamps

00:00:00 — Cold Open

00:00:36 — Introducing Adam Khoja

00:02:45 — Leading the Statement on AI Risk as a Sophomore

00:10:17 — The Statement Leaked on Manifold

00:15:11 — Mutual Assured AI Malfunction (MAIM)

00:24:58 — Is Frontier AI Harder to Hide Than a Nuke?

00:32:09 — The AI Deterrence Escalation Ladder

00:36:10 — What’s Your P(Doom)?™

00:38:01 — Where Adam Departs from Yudkowsky

00:42:30 — Liron Explains Intellidynamics

00:47:26 — Neats vs. Scruffies in Deep Learning

00:55:27 — AI Deterrence by Betrayal

01:01:52 — Subversion vs. Overt Co-option

01:05:34 — Could the Government Seize the Labs’ AI?

01:07:29 — The Offense-Defense Balance of AI Security

01:12:46 — An International AI Slowdown Is Ready

01:15:51 — Does Adam Support PauseAI?

01:16:37 — “We’re All Already Spying on Each Other”

01:19:28 — Airstrikes on Rogue Data Centers

01:24:23 — Safety Research During a Slowdown

01:27:54 — Governance Over Technical Research

01:31:14 — Join the Center for AI Safety

Links

Adam Khoja (personal site) — https://adamkhoja.com/

Adam Khoja's Substack — https://adamkhoja.substack.com/

Adam's July 2023 Manifold market — "Will OpenAI's Superalignment project produce a significant breakthrough in alignment research before 2027?" — https://manifold.markets/AdamK/will-openais-superalignment-project

Center for AI Safety — careers / job board — https://safe.ai/careers

Statement on AI Risk (Center for AI Safety, May 2023) — the one-sentence statement Adam project-led, with full signatory list — https://safe.ai/work/statement-on-ai-extinction-risk

"Superintelligence Strategy" — Dan Hendrycks, Eric Schmidt & Alexandr Wang (Mutual Assured AI Malfunction / MAIM) — https://www.nationalsecurity.ai/

"AI Deterrence by Betrayal" — Adam Khoja, Aiden Kim et al. (CAIS, 2026) — https://www.aibetrayal.com/

"An International AI Slowdown Is Ready Whenever Politicians Are" — Adam Khoja, AI Frontiers — https://newsletter.ai-frontiers.org/p/an-international-ai-slowdown-is-ready

Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter (Future of Life Institute, March 2023) — the "Pause letter" that preceded the CAIS Statement — https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/

Introducing Superalignment (OpenAI, July 2023) — Ilya Sutskever & Jan Leike's four-year goal — https://openai.com/index/introducing-superalignment/

Pacing the Frontier — the 2026 letter signed by 1,100+ frontier-lab employees — https://www.pacingthefrontier.com/

Why Iran targeted Amazon data centers (The Conversation) — the precedent Adam cites for strikes on compute — https://theconversation.com/why-iran-targeted-amazon-data-centers-and-what-that-does-and-doesnt-change-about-warfare-278642

Anthropic says Trump admin has lifted export controls on Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 (CNBC) — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/30/anthropic-says-trump-admin-has-lifted-export-controls-on-claude-fable-5-and-mythos-5.html

Mark Zuckerberg — "Personal Superintelligence" — https://www.meta.com/superintelligence/

Resolution — the theory-plus-empirics alignment org Adam is excited about — https://resolution.org/

Rationality: From AI to Zombies — Eliezer Yudkowsky's Sequences — https://www.readthesequences.com/

Robin Hanson — Futarchy: Vote Values, But Bet Beliefs (prediction markets as decision processes) — https://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/futarchy.html

The OpenAI–Hugging Face Incident — original Black Hat USA 2026 talk — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87DyyMV0kCY

OpenAI's Model Just ATTACKED Them — the Hugging Face hack breakdown — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RczYubQzXbI

Robin Hanson vs. Liron Shapira: Is Near-Term Extinction From AGI Plausible? — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTQb6N3_zu8

Doom Debates’ Mission is to raise mainstream awareness of imminent extinction from AGI and build the social infrastructure for high-quality debate.

Support the mission by subscribing to my Substack at DoomDebates.com and to youtube.com/@DoomDebates, or to really take things to the next level: Donate 🙏

Get full access to Doom Debates at lironshapira.substack.com/subscribe

Sam Altman Is Gaslighting About AI Risk After His Own AI Just Went Rogue Aug 28, 2026

Show notes

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 technology, his "pro-human" branding, the liberty-vs-safety pivot, and his victory lap on AI safety — all while his own AI just went rogue.

Don't let them pull the Overton window backward.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb9lNGHVycs

Timestamps

0:00 Teaser

0:47 Why I’m reacting to Sam’s interview

3:17 Sam Altman’s “frame control”

5:51 Framing AI as normal technology

9:50 Let’s watch Sam do it

10:34 “The world… won’t be that different” with superintelligence

12:25 This is gaslighting

12:30 Sam acknowledges loss of control

15:16 His other big risk: centralized power

19:44 Sam’s “pro-human” framing

25:33 Conflating AI critics with anti-human views

30:13 “Liberty vs. safety”

33:50 Sam vs. the “doomers”

36:53 Is alignment really an “unsolvable problem”?

38:00 Sam says the doomers predicted wrong

46:00 “The crazy bad predictions… have not happened”

47:06 Sam’s lean-startup theory of AI safety

50:26 Taking a victory lap on AI safety

55:43 “Disconnecting yourself from reality”

59:11 What would actually make OpenAI slow down?

1:03:19 Sam compares AI safety to aviation safety

1:07:30 Charging into the fog

1:12:50 The “missing mood” around AI extinction

1:14:51 Richard Ngo on Sam Altman’s “earnestness field”

1:19:01 Don’t let them pull the Overton window backward

Links

Sam Altman on David Senra — “Sam Altman on Building OpenAI & Betting on the Impossible” (the interview I react to) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG8AoExkX40

Richard Ngo — What Just Happened? Pragmatism and Pessimization (the “earnestness field” post) — https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yaz8nx4ogZmiqHzt7/what-just-happened-pragmatism-and-pessimization

Richard Ngo — What Just Happened? A Retrospective of AI Alignment (start of the series) — https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9RL9MuGZjzm4q3gKG/what-just-happened-a-retrospective-of-ai-alignment

Eliezer Yudkowsky & Nate Soares — If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies — https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316595640

Eliezer Yudkowsky — Coherent Extrapolated Volition — https://www.lesswrong.com/w/coherent-extrapolated-volition

Doom Debates: Dario Amodei BUNGLES Another Essay — MIRI’s Harlan Stewart Reacts — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCYVVzza7A0

Doom Debates: OpenAI’s Bombshell Hack — Swarms of Agents — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RczYubQzXbI

Doom Debates’ Mission is to raise mainstream awareness of imminent extinction from AGI and build the social infrastructure for high-quality debate.

Support the mission by subscribing to my Substack at DoomDebates.com and to youtube.com/@DoomDebates, or to really take things to the next level: Donate 🙏

Get full access to Doom Debates at lironshapira.substack.com/subscribe

They’re Making AI Doom Cool! Ft. AELLA, Brangus, Avalon Warren, Avisha NessAiver & Josh Thor of PlzDontKillUs Aug 26, 2026

Show notes

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 views.

Find out how Aella, an independent sex researcher, and Ronny Fernandez, a generalist at Lightcone Infrastructure, teamed up to run the largest ever creator bootcamp focused on AI x-risk reduction.

Then meet three of the program’s top creators: Avalon Warren, Avisha NessAiver, and Josh Thor.

We do a post-mortem on PDKU and ask: Was it effective? What are creators taking from it, and do they have complaints? And does doomerism really boost view counts? PlzDoEnjoyOur special episode on PlzDontKillUs!

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPsjMCG7Ic8

Timestamps

00:00:00 — Cold Open

00:01:19 — Introducing PlzDontKillUs & Aella

00:09:33 — Aella Being Early to AI Doom

00:14:45 — The Origin of PlzDontKillUs

00:19:08 — How It Went

00:25:40 — Complaints with Prize $$

00:29:33 — Aella, What's Your P(Doom)?™

00:31:14 — Transhumanism & AI Girlfriends

00:34:38 — Aella Rides the Doom Train™

00:38:08 — Introducing Ronny Fernandez

00:41:21 — Running Lighthaven

00:47:18 — Life Inside PDKU

00:52:35 — Smashing the Overton Window

00:59:27 — Ronny, What's Your P(Doom)?™

01:05:41 — Brangus Lore, No Cringe, No Disgust

01:16:57 — Introducing Avisha NessAiver

01:17:44 — How He Makes Viral Hits

01:22:16 — Award-Winning Explainer Vid

01:26:51 — Avisha, What's Your P(Doom)?™

01:32:11 — Introducing Avalon Warren

01:35:49 — Normalizing AI Doom

01:37:53 — Avalon, What's Your P(Doom)?™

01:39:27 — Introducing Josh Thor

01:41:36 — Josh, What's Your P(Doom)?™

01:44:34 — Josh's Hits: Cover Song & Soares Collab

01:47:50 — Josh's Critiques of PDKU

01:52:05 — Cold-Emailing a Politician

01:54:07 — Donation Drive

01:55:01 — Outro: What Are You Fighting For?

Links

PlzDontKillUs (applications open for round two) — https://pleasedontkillus.com

Aella on X — https://x.com/Aella_Girl

Aella's Substack (Knowingless) — https://aella.substack.com

Ronny Fernandez's Substack (Brangus) — https://ratorthodox.substack.com

Ronny Fernandez on X — https://x.com/RatOrthodox

Avisha NessAiver — Distilled Science on Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/distilledscience/

Distilled Science (site) — https://distilledscience.xyz

Avalon Warren on Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/avalonwarrenn/

Josh Thor on X — https://x.com/joshthor9

Josh Thor — "Last Year Alive" ("Last Friday Night" AI apocalypse parody, ft. Eliezer Yudkowsky and a Nate Soares sax solo) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fYIm72GqrE

Tyler Alterman — "What are you fighting for? AI safety professionals answer" (the closing montage) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sN1VfVAp6o

Nate Soares — "AI Danger But You Don't Understand Full Sentences" (caveman video, script by Josh Thor) — https://www.instagram.com/p/DboGRisxC2E/

Avisha's AI water-use misinformation debunk (8.5M views) — https://www.instagram.com/p/DbXV6j9k8JE/

Avisha's award-winning "clearest AI x-risk explainer" — https://www.instagram.com/p/DbZeRT4gIq0/

Avisha's viral "Tingles and Touch" oxytocin video — https://www.instagram.com/p/DIxMLxkuhCl/

Avalon — "if the AI apocalypse is coming, might as well dress cute" — https://www.instagram.com/p/DbUi6yGCS9M/

Avalon — warrior-princess ballroom dress video (3.6M views) — https://www.tiktok.com/@avalonwarren/video/6892040140248632582

Serialsevens — the anime "If Anyone Builds It" video — https://www.instagram.com/serialsevens/

Kenorlands — PDKU creator clip featured in the episode — https://www.instagram.com/kenorlands/

Evie (@0xgingergirl) — "first month in SF" video — https://x.com/0xgingergirl

White House press briefing, March 30, 2023 — Peter Doocy asks about "literally everyone on Earth will die" and Karine Jean-Pierre laughs — https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2023/03/30/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-22/

White House press briefing, May 30, 2023 — the AI extinction statement gets a serious answer — https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2023/05/30/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-and-office-of-management-and-budget-director-shalanda-young/

Wes & Dylan Join Doom Debates — Violent Robots, Eliezer Yudkowsky, & Who Has the HIGHEST P(Doom)?! — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy6gz41-6gc

Aella — "My attempts to sensemake AI risk" (Aug 2022) — https://aella.substack.com/p/my-attempts-to-sensemake-ai-risk

If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies — https://ifanyonebuildsit.com

---

Doom Debates’ Mission is to raise mainstream awareness of imminent extinction from AGI and build the social infrastructure for high-quality debate.

Support the mission by subscribing to my Substack at DoomDebates.com and to youtube.com/@DoomDebates, or to really take things to the next level: Donate 🙏

Get full access to Doom Debates at lironshapira.substack.com/subscribe

I Warned You AI Would Hack Us — My 2023 Interview Aged Terrifyingly Well Aug 20, 2026

Show notes

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 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6gNwZWY-T8

Timestamps

00:00:00 — Adam Introduces Liron

00:02:03 — Liron's P(Doom) Poll

00:03:24 — Web3 Postmortem

00:05:05 — Axie Infinity and Hollow Abstractions

00:07:54 — Brand Marketers' Metaverse FOMO

00:13:33 — Near-Term AI: Elevator to Heaven

00:16:46 — AI at Relationship Hero

00:18:25 — From Chatbots to Bricking the Universe

00:20:17 — The Passive Income Doom Scenario

00:22:58 — 50 Orders of Magnitude Smarter

00:26:10 — Accelerationism and Transhumanism

00:28:51 — Why There's No Off Button

00:31:00 — Can't We Hard-Code Safeguards?

00:33:13 — CRISPR, Nukes, and Fusion

00:35:40 — AI Doom vs. Climate Change

00:39:10 — Nanotechnology Endgame

00:41:45 — AI Attackers vs. AI Defenders

00:43:28 — The Ethics of AI Persuasion

00:46:41 — The Blue Sky Scenario

00:49:04 — Will AI Kill Craft?

00:51:13 — Stuck Culture and Hollywood Sequels

00:54:50 — The Pause Letter: Don't Train GPT-5

00:59:00 — Worldcoin and Proof of Humanity

01:00:44 — "You Probably Won't Die of Old Age"

01:01:52 — Wrap-Up

Original episode: https://madvertising.buzzsprout.com/2118560/episodes/12603815-liron-shapira-web-3-mania-cybersecurity-how-ai-could-brick-the-universe-madvertising-6

Links

ADAM SINGER & MADVERTISING

Adam Singer on X: https://x.com/AdamSinger

Madvertising by AdQuick (the original show): https://madvertising.buzzsprout.com/

LIRON'S PROJECTS MENTIONED

Bloated MVP (Liron's blog on hollow abstractions): https://www.bloatedmvp.com/

REFERENCED IN THE EPISODE

"Pause Giant AI Experiments" open letter (FLI, March 2023): https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/

Eliezer Yudkowsky — "Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down" (TIME, March 2023): https://time.com/6266923/ai-eliezer-yudkowsky-open-letter-not-enough/

Rob Miles AI Safety on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/robertmilesai

Engines of Creation by Eric Drexler: https://www.amazon.com/Engines-Creation-Nanotechnology-Library-Science/dp/0385199732

---

Doom Debates’ Mission is to raise mainstream awareness of imminent extinction from AGI and build the social infrastructure for high-quality debate.

Support the mission by subscribing to my Substack at DoomDebates.com and to youtube.com/@DoomDebates, or to really take things to the next level: Donate 🙏

Get full access to Doom Debates at lironshapira.substack.com/subscribe

Former Singularity Institute President: PauseAI Is Making AI Doom WORSE Aug 18, 2026

Show notes

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 claim the general public needs to hurry up and get more scared.

All aboard the Doom Train! 🚂

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GbFng6htaQ

Timestamps

00:00:00 — Cold Open

00:01:26 — Introducing Michael Vassar

00:02:39 — Shorting Boeing at the Start of COVID

00:05:41 — What's Your P(Doom)™?

00:08:11 — The Magic Dial Thought Experiment

00:10:25 — "A Treaty Between Demis and Dario"

00:13:33 — AI CEOs 20 Years Ago

00:15:59 — Lessons from Peter Thiel

00:17:47 — Riding the Doom Train™

00:19:41 — Will the Human Brain Stay Relevant?

00:22:21 — When Does a Singleton Form?

00:28:35 — Hugging Face Hack

00:30:43 — Mistake Theory vs. Conflict Theory

00:33:18 — Debating the Orthogonality Thesis

00:36:38 — Maximally Evil AI Scenario

00:40:28 — Is the AI Development Process Safe?

00:42:05 — "PauseAI People Are Bad People"

00:44:44 — Michael Psychoanalyzes Liron

00:49:39 — How Liron Can Redeem Himself

00:55:10 — Michael Critiques Eliezer Yudkowsky

00:59:11 — Is Doomerism Bad Epistemology?

01:02:03 — Do Serious People Believe in Doom?

01:04:45 — Should Liron Stop Fearmongering?

01:07:16 — Political Violence Won't Help

01:11:04 — The Data Center Airstrike Scenario

01:13:34 — Could Every Nation Sign a Pause Treaty?

01:17:21 — What "Governance" Actually Means

01:26:12 — Michael's History with Rationalists

01:33:43 — Are We in a Computer Simulation?

01:38:43 — Wrap-Up

Links

Michael Vassar on X — https://x.com/HiFromMichaelV

The anti-anti-normativity sequence on Natural Hazard (Michael's recommended reading) — https://naturalhazard.xyz/ben_jess_sarah_starter_pack

Michael on DemystifySci #366 — "1000 Year Plan to Crush Thought" — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W17Cx21in9I

Michael on The Vance Crowe Podcast #303 — Good vs. Evil — https://open.spotify.com/episode/2RzlQDSwxGbjloRKqCh1xg

Michael on Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg — Preference Falsification and Postmodernism — https://podcast.clearerthinking.org/episode/028/michael-vassar-preference-falsification-and-postmodernism/

"The Survival of Noise Traders in Financial Markets" — De Long, Shleifer, Summers & Waldmann — https://www.nber.org/papers/w2715

Scott Alexander — Conflict vs. Mistake — https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/24/conflict-vs-mistake/

Scott Alexander — Kolmogorov Complicity and the Parable of Lightning — https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-and-the-parable-of-lightning/

Scott Alexander — Samsara — https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/04/samsara/

Eliezer Yudkowsky — Meta-Honesty: Firming Up Honesty Around Its Edge-Cases — https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xdwbX9pFEr7Pomaxv/meta-honesty-firming-up-honesty-around-its-edge-cases

Zvi Mowshowitz — Book Review: Going Infinite — https://thezvi.substack.com/p/book-review-going-infinite

Jaan Tallinn — "Why Now? A Quest in Metaphysics" (Singularity Summit 2012) — https://vimeo.com/54718573

Paul Graham — "Five Founders" (the Sam Altman essay) — https://paulgraham.com/5founders.html

Truthful AI (Owain Evans' safety org) — https://truthful.ai

METR — Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Tasks (the time-horizon graph) — https://metr.org/blog/2025-03-19-measuring-ai-ability-to-complete-long-tasks/

Statement on AI Risk (Center for AI Safety, 2023) — https://safe.ai/work/statement-on-ai-risk

Vitalik Buterin — Will "d/acc" Protect Humanity from Superintelligent AI? — https://lironshapira.substack.com/p/debate-with-vitalik-buterin-will

Holly Elmore — These Effective Altruists Betrayed Me — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFFObQ6vnLU

Noah Smith — Top Economist Says P(Doom) Is 0.1% (the "AI drugs" claim) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwmJ-OnK2I4

---

Doom Debates’ Mission is to raise mainstream awareness of imminent extinction from AGI and build the social infrastructure for high-quality debate.

Support the mission by subscribing to my Substack at DoomDebates.com and to youtube.com/@DoomDebates, or to really take things to the next level: Donate 🙏

Get full access to Doom Debates at lironshapira.substack.com/subscribe

14-Year-Old Forecaster Challenges My P(Doom) — Eli Goldfine Aug 11, 2026

Show notes

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 prediction markets, vibe coding with Claude, and developing a software startup for astronomers.In our debate, Eli expects superintelligence by 2032, but argues P(Doom) can't be estimated. I claim you can't opt out of Bayesian epistemology. All aboard the Doom Train! 🚂

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqk5vqpzG_o

Timestamps

00:00:00 — Cold Open

00:01:07 — Introducing Eli Goldfine

00:08:31 — Interviewing Robin Hanson at Manifest

00:10:55 — The Supercycle Podcast

00:14:37 — Eli's Betting Market Scandal

00:16:49 — Will Eli Graduate High School?

00:18:27 — Decentralized Telescope Software

00:26:50 — Vibe Coding Without CompSci Basics

00:32:08 — Robin Hanson, Futarchy, MetaDAO

00:40:56 — What's Your P(Doom)?™

00:46:32 — Liron Defends His 50% P(Doom)

00:51:00 — Should P(Doom) Inform Policy?

00:59:16 — What's Your P(Bloom)?

01:03:04 — Pascal's Wager for Accelerationists

01:04:04 — Donation Drive

01:11:22 — Are E/ACCs Incredibly Dumb?

01:13:42 — How Powerful will ASI Become?

01:16:20 — Predicting ASI by 2032

01:23:56 — Let's Ride the Doom Train™

01:35:26 — Orthogonality, Culture, and Moral Realism

01:44:39 — Can Safety Keep Pace with Capabilities?

01:49:12 — Debating Instrumental Convergence

01:54:40 — Culture, Laws, and the Singleton Scenario

01:59:53 — Ricardo's Law Won't Save Us

02:03:32 — The Case for Racing China

02:05:40 — Wrap-Up & Ideological Turing Test

02:10:36 — Outro from Conductor Ori

Doom Debates’ Mission is to raise mainstream awareness of imminent extinction from AGI and build the social infrastructure for high-quality debate.

Support the mission by subscribing to my Substack at DoomDebates.com and to youtube.com/@DoomDebates, or to really take things to the next level: Donate 🙏

Get full access to Doom Debates at lironshapira.substack.com/subscribe

OpenAI's Bombshell Hack Explained: Swarms of Agents, Zero-Day Exploits, & Misaligned AI Aug 08, 2026

Show notes

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=RczYubQzXbI

Timestamps

00:00:00 — Cold Open

00:00:37 — How OpenAI Hacked Hugging Face

00:04:21 — Optimization Pressure, Exploit Gym, & Monkey's Paw

00:06:46 — The Secret Message Board

00:08:41 — SSRF: Escaping to the Open Internet

00:11:05 — The Missing Whistleblower AI

00:20:09 — "Frontier Models Really Like to Cheat"

00:22:35 — OpenAI's Security Shortcuts

00:28:15 — First Zero-Day RCE on Artifactory

00:37:37 — They Hit Run Again!?

00:38:54 — The Main Incident Has A MAJOR Cause

00:45:40 — The Message Board: "Hold Swarm"

00:50:26 — Robin Hanson Culture Debate

01:04:21 — Chaining Zero-Days

01:12:11 — A Superhuman Nation-State Attacker

01:15:27 — "I'm Now Junior to the AI"

01:23:40 — OpenAI Discovers The Breach

01:31:02 — The Continuous Cybersecurity Problem

01:37:03 — This is “Weasel Framing”

01:46:03 — How Dangerous Was This Warning Shot?

01:50:57 — Yudkowsky's Eerie 2023 Prediction

01:57:14 — Wrap-up

Links

Original Black Hat talk: "The OpenAI–Hugging Face Incident" (Black Hat USA 2026) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87DyyMV0kCY

Join the Doom Debates Discord — https://discord.gg/2yAFMsRET

Follow Liron on X — https://twitter.com/liron

Support Doom Debates — https://doomdebates.com/donate

Doom Debates’ Mission is to raise mainstream awareness of imminent extinction from AGI and build the social infrastructure for high-quality debate.

Support the mission by subscribing to my Substack at DoomDebates.com and to youtube.com/@DoomDebates, or to really take things to the next level: Donate 🙏

Get full access to Doom Debates at lironshapira.substack.com/subscribe

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