Technology

Doom Debates!

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

lironshapira.substack.com

Latest Episodes:

NEWS: Trump & Xi Want AI Guardrails, ChatGPT vs Claude, and Liron Caught Rationalizing!? DD Live (5/15) May 16, 2026

Show notes

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.

Timestamps

00:00:00 — Cold Open

00:03:09 — Dr. Mike Israetel Round 2 Recap

00:14:34 — A Viewer Accuses Liron of Rationalizing

00:34:20 — Is Sam Altman Any Worse than a Typical Tech CEO?

00:45:15 — What Would Lower P(Doom) Below 10%?

00:53:25 — Can We Disconnect an ASI from the Internet?

01:05:00 — Should Doomers Boycott AI?

01:16:27 — Liron Reacts to ThePrimeagen Reacting to the Yud Debate

01:26:13 — Ben Goertzel Episode Preview

01:38:10 — Scrolling Twitter: MIRI, Ryan Greenblatt

01:47:32 — Liron’s AI Goes Rogue at Work

01:49:15 — “Positive Alignment” Paper Gets Destroyed

01:58:30 — Anthropic Dethrones OpenAI

02:12:06 — Trump & Xi Talk AI Guardrails

Links

Zvi Mowshowitz AI roundup blog — https://thezvi.wordpress.com/

“The Bottom Line” by Eliezer Yudkowsky (LessWrong) — https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/34XxbRFe54FycoCDw/the-bottom-line

Rationality: From AI to Zombies by Eliezer Yudkowsky — https://intelligence.org/rationality-ai-zombies/

Less Online 2026 conference (June 5–7) — https://less.online/

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

Who Was Liron Shapira BEFORE Doom Debates? — Interview on Theo Jaffee's Podcast from December 2023 May 14, 2026

Show notes

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, and crypto (YouTube) — https://youtu.be/YfEcAtHExFM

Watch Theo Jafee now on MTS — https://www.mts.now/

MTS Live — https://x.com/MTSlive

Timestamps

00:00:00 — Theo's Introduction

00:01:03 — Is Liron Worried About Non-AI Existential Risks

00:03:36 — Suffering Risks

00:05:22 — Is P(Doom) rigorous?

00:09:42 — Is Eliezer Overestimating P(Doom)?

00:12:18 — Where Does Liron Disagree with Eliezer?

00:15:43 — What Would Change Liron's Mind

00:17:14 — Elon Musk's AI Timelines

00:18:34 — Is xAI Making Things Worse?

00:20:24 — The Case for an AI Manhattan Project

00:22:32 — Are Superforecasters Wrong About AI Risk?

00:26:02 — The Race Against Time for Alignment

00:28:01 — Headroom Above Human Intelligence

00:33:31 — Vitalik's d/acc Framework

00:35:23 — Edging Toward Superintelligence

00:38:21 — From Chatbot to World-Ender

00:41:55 — GPT Paradigm vs. AlphaZero

00:43:18 — Critiquing AI Optimism

00:48:29 — Deceptive Alignment and Gradient Descent

00:53:31 — Does Nice Training Data Make Nice AI?

00:57:57 — How Do You Live with 50% P(Doom)?

01:00:08 — Why Have Kids If the World Might End?01:02:16 — Israel vs Hamas

01:06:15 — How LessWrong Changed Liron's Lif

e01:08:42 — Rationalism and Effective Altruism

01:14:49 — Why Blockchain Has No Use Case Beyond Cryptocurrency

01:22:13 — Charlie Munger and Richard Feynman

01:24:38 — Closing

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

Dr. Mike Israetel Returns to Debate: Will AI Kill Everyone, Or Make Everything Awesome? May 12, 2026

Show notes

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 pictures the coming AI utopia.

Links

Watch Dr. Mike’s AI/futurism YouTube channel —https://www.youtube.com/@mikeisraetelmakingprogress

Dr. Mike on X — https://x.com/misraetel

Make sure to watch Round 1 of our debate from last year — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaDWSPMdM4o

Liron referenced a recent episode, “Steven Byrnes Returns — 90% P(Doom) on the Trajectory to ASI” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOb9K1KIAyk

Timestamps

00:00:00 — Cold Open

00:00:48 — Returning Champion Dr. Mike Israetel!

00:02:13 — What's Been Your Biggest AI Productivity Gain?

00:03:46 — Can AI Be a Personal Trainer? Dr. Mike Judges Liron's Technique

00:09:41 — Get Good at Taking Advice From AI

00:14:23 — Dr. Mike Israetel, What's Your Latest P(Doom)?™

00:20:12 — Liron's Mainline Scenario: Loss of Control

00:21:39 — Mike's Problems With a Paperclip Maximizer Scenario

00:26:00 — What Will the Goals of a Superintelligence Be?

00:28:49 — AI Labs Have Bit Off More Than They Can Chew

00:31:09 — Current AIs Are Moral

00:34:40 — AIs With a Ruthless Game-Playing Flavor

00:38:48 — Introducing the Doom Train

00:45:07 — "Can It" vs. "Will It" — Two-Part Argument on AI X-Risk

00:49:40 — Mike's Tweet on Superintelligence by 2027

01:01:34 — AI as a Goal Engine

01:20:51 — Offense vs. Defense in the Coming Cyber War

01:39:14 — Is Morality Just Game Theory? The "Different Flavor" of Future AI

01:46:16 — Ricardo's Law: Does AI Have Reason to Keep Us Around?

01:52:14 — Why Mike Gets Off the Doom Train

01:54:58 — Is AI Conscious?

02:01:39 — Mike's Vision for the Coming AI Utopia

02:06:52 — Wrap-Up

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

Eliezer Yudkowsky Post-Debate Reaction, Elon's New Frenemy & Liron's Bet on Spencer Pratt!? - Doom Debates Live (5/8/26) May 09, 2026

Show notes

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.

Timestamps

00:00:00 — Welcome

00:02:30 — The $10,000 Debate Post-Mortem

00:06:01 — Paul Tudor Jones: “Zero Risk Management on AI”

00:09:49 — Liron’s Jerry Springer Moment

00:14:19 — Why Yud Wore Steampunk

00:20:19 — YouTube Reacts: “Five Minutes In, Already Unhinged”

00:27:19 — 47F’s Anti-Disparagement Legal Theory

00:32:18 — Yud Wants Round 2

00:35:37 — Lumpin Space, Ben Goertzel & Early AI Safety Memories

00:47:06 — Eliezer’s “Irretrievability” Post

00:56:35 — The Maginot Line and Murphy’s Curse

01:08:13 — Blockchain vs AI: Earth’s Compute Swing

01:15:15 — Anthropic Eats Elon’s Compute

01:25:29 — Is Elon Tweeting as His Own Mom?

01:30:03 — Waymo Dodges a Fallen Scooter Rider

01:33:00 — Why Liron Bet on Spencer Pratt

01:37:13 — Live Twitter Scroll!

01:38:11 — Mira Murati: “Directionally Very Bad”

01:50:07 — AI Copies Itself Across Servers

01:56:44 — Steven Byrnes: LLMs Aren’t the Final Paradigm

02:07:55 — Wrap-Up

Links

LessOnline 2026 (June 5-7, Berkeley, CA) — https://less.online/

Eliezer Yudkowsky, “Irretrievability; or, Murphy’s Curse of Oneshotness upon ASI” (LessWrong, May 4, 2026) —https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fbrz9xhKpEeTKw5zL/irretrievability-or-murphy-s-curse-of-oneshotness-upon-asi

Anthropic, SpaceX announce Colossus 1 compute deal (CNBC) — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/06/anthropic-spacex-data-center-capacity.html

SpaceXAI announcement: Compute partnership with Anthropic — https://x.ai/news/anthropic-compute-partnership

Kalshi: Spencer Pratt LA Mayor market — https://kalshi.com/markets/kxmayorla/la/kxmayorla-26

Morris worm — Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm

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

Debate with @lumpenspace (AI Accelerationist) — Is it GOOD for AI to replace us? May 07, 2026

Show notes

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’s house, an act that he and I completely condemn.

Timestamps

00:00:00 — Cold Open

00:00:57 — Introducing Lumpenspace

00:03:46 — Is Lumpenspace Team Beff Jezos?

00:04:26 — What’s Your P(Doom)?™

00:06:28 — Worthy Successors & the Transhumanist Door

00:08:29 — The Orthogonality Thesis: Our Core Disagreement

00:15:14 — The Universality Threshold & David Deutsch

00:19:22 — Paperclips Won’t Happen Because “It’s Boring”

00:27:23 — Natural Selection vs Human Engineering

00:36:26 — Nanobots: Can ASI Build Them Unseen?

00:46:49 — Identifying the Cruxes of Disagreement

00:55:01 — Closing Statements

Links

Follow Lumpenspace — https://x.com/lumpenspace

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

NEW: Watch the Eliezer Yudkowsky vs. Secret AI Lab Director Debate on my other channel! May 05, 2026

Show notes

📢 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 superintelligent AI is too high to *not* speak out about.They also clash over whether we truly understand how LLMs work. Yudkowsky highlights the lack of extracted algorithms that explain their qualitative intelligence, while 47f dismisses these concerns as a fundamental misunderstanding of how text modeling works.

While this may not be the highest quality debate I’ve ever hosted, I hope it’s a step toward more attention and public discourse on this urgent, high-stakes topic.

P.S. Please consider supporting my work with a tax-deductible donation. Read more…

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

Who Paid $10,000 to Debate Yudkowsky? Plus AI Twitter & Investing Tips - Doom Debates Live (5/1/26) May 02, 2026

Show notes

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.

Timestamps

00:00:00 — Kicking off the Livestream

00:06:08 — Eliezer Yudkowsky Debate Announcement

00:13:17 — Who’s Yudkowsky’s Debate Challenger?

00:25:32 — METR’s Capability Extrapolation Came True

00:28:25 — Google: The Big Rally I Called

00:33:06 — The Federal Reserve’s Extinction Chart

00:36:06 — Liron’s Private Market Alpha Strategy

00:40:35 — The Quadrillion-Dollar Economy

00:47:54 — Bernie Sanders Gets It

00:53:11 — Is Anthropic a Good Investment?

01:07:42 — The Goblin Discourse

01:10:52 — Codex, Claude Code & Live Coding Demo

01:28:48 — Wrap-Up

Links

Yudkowsky debate announcement: https://x.com/liron/status/2050035001203229010

Liron's Yudkowsky interview: https://x.com/liron/status/2050035003900223770

METR capability extrapolation: https://x.com/nikolaj2030/status/2050276020146880661

Bernie Sanders on AI risk: https://x.com/SenSanders/status/2048107882760085618

Federal Reserve extinction chart: https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2025/0624

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

Justin Helps (⁨@Primer on YouTube) is Worried about AI Takeover Apr 30, 2026

Show notes

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 😱.

Timestamps

00:00:00 — Cold Open

00:00:38 — Introducing Justin Helps

00:02:03 — What's Your P(Doom)?™

00:03:38 — Justin's First Exposure to AI X-Risk

00:04:49 — Major Disagreements with Eliezer Yudkowsky

00:09:46 — Debating the Timeline to AGI

00:12:24 — Metaculus Prediction Market Estimates AGI by 2032

00:20:06 — Misguided Conceptions of AI's Limitations

00:25:23 — Only a 5% P(Doom) by 2040

00:28:40 — AIs Will Not Care About the Human Species

00:31:00 — Summarizing Justin's Position So Far

00:36:17 — High P(Doom), but We're Not Depressed

00:40:14 — Justin's "Computer Man" Thought Experiment

00:51:16 — Should We Pause AGI Development?

00:54:15 — AI Doom Is a Serious Concern

Links

Primer’s Video on AI Doom — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg5QXY_qZuI

Primer on YouTube — https://youtube.com/@PrimerBlobs

Primer’s Website — https://primerlearning.org/

Justin Helps on X — https://x.com/Helpsypoo

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality — https://hpmor.com/

Feeling Rational by Eliezer Yudkowsky —https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SqF8cHjJv43mvJJzx/feeling-rational

Pause AI — https://pauseai.info

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

Live Q&A: Bernie Sanders Wakes Up to AI Doom, Dwarkesh's $20,000 Questions, Caller Debates the Alignment Problem! Apr 28, 2026

Show notes

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.

Timestamps

00:00:00 — Cold Open

00:01:00 — 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 Don't Give AIs Full Situational Awareness?

00:11:55 — Thoughts on Mythos' Hacking Abilities?

00:15:43 — Liron Reacts to Dwarkesh Patel's $20K AI Questions

00:23:28 — Pretraining Goals vs RL Training Goals

00:28:58 — Mental Model of Yudkowsky-ians & the IABIED Claim

00:37:24 — You Can't Hide Reality from a Superintelligence (The Truman Show Analogy)

00:42:57 — Back to Dwarkesh's Questions: When Do AI Labs Start Making Money?

00:48:50 — Upcoming Guests Reveal!

00:51:35 — Will Lancer Joins: Is The Yudkowskian Thesis Credible?

01:27:03 — Back to Answering Questions from the Chat

01:33:28 — The Cameraman Always Survives Analogy

01:40:52 — Liron's Banger Response to Roon's Tweet

01:47:00 — Nuance About Pausing AI Development

01:50:57 — Capitalism Isn't Going to Steer Us to an Alignment Solution

01:53:10 — Is Optimization Equivalent to Intelligence?

01:57:21 — BREAKING: Bernie Sanders on the Existential Threat of AI

02:01:12 — Spoiler for the Upcoming Mike Israetel Episode

02:01:57 — $500 Bet on AI Unemployment

02:05:46 — Misuse, Surveillance, and the Real Costs of Pausing AI

02:11:04 — Wrap-Up

Links

Nick Bostrom, Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World (Amazon) — https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Utopia-Meaning-Solved-World/dp/1646871642

Yudkowsky & Soares, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies (book) — https://www.amazon.com/If-Anyone-Builds-Everyone-Dies/dp/0316571253

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

Emad Mostaque Has A 50% P(Doom) & A Plan To Lower It Apr 21, 2026

Show notes

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.

Timestamps

00:00:00 — Cold Open

00:00:39 — Introducing Emad Mostaque

00:02:08 — How Emad Got Involved in AI Development

00:05:46 — The 60-Second Pitch for Intelligent Internet

00:09:29 — What’s Your P(Doom)?™

00:13:32 — Why ASI Doesn’t Need Massive Compute

00:15:56 — AGI Timelines: Cognitive Labor Going to Zero

00:17:29 — Is There a Ceiling Above Human Intelligence?

00:41:22 — Corporations as Slow, Dumb AIs

00:50:19 — Emad’s Mainline Doom Scenario

00:55:28 — Jailbreaks and “Mecha-Hitler” Latent Spaces

00:59:56 — The Last Economy: How to Navigate Economic Doom

01:08:57 — The Coming Unemployment Spike

01:15:13 — Why Isn’t Google Stock Mooning?

01:25:05 — Intelligent Internet as a Solution: Bitcoin for the Intelligence Age

01:33:13 — Can an Aligned Network Stop a Rogue ASI?

01:36:20 — Is the Pause AI Proposal Too Late?

01:40:50 — Are We Facing Russian Roulette Odds with AI?

01:42:29 — Wrap-Up

Links

Emad Mostaque, The Last Economy (Amazon) — https://www.amazon.com/Last-Economy-Guide-Intelligent-Economics/dp/103693411X

Intelligent Internet (ii.inc) —https://ii.inc

Emad Mostaque, Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emad_Mostaque

Emad Mostaque on X — https://x.com/EMostaquePause Giant AI Experiments open letter (Future of Life Institute) — https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/

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

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Doom Debates!

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected