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by Liron Shapira
It's time to talk about the end of the world. With your host, Liron Shapira.
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- 3 days ago56 min
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 policymakers, and has earned a reputation for challenging top luminaries to come expose their ideas for critical analysis.In this episode, Producer Ori and I recap our strategy, impact, and what we need to finish 2026 strong. Welcome to the first annual Doom Debates State of the Show!---Timestamps00:00:00 — Cold Open00:01:38 — The Mission & the Urgency Gap00:04:41 — Year Two: From Couch to Platform00:06:08 — Going Pro & the Numbers00:08:50 — Why This Show Exists00:12:14 — The Flywheel & Dwarkesh00:15:14 — The Guest List00:18:55 — What People Are Saying00:21:57 — Tegmark vs. Ball: 90% vs. 0.01%00:24:03 — Duvenaud’s 85% P(Doom)00:26:19 — Holding the Powerful to Account00:30:56 — Changing Minds, Including Destiny’s00:31:56 — The Team00:33:36 — Why Liron Draws Zero Salary00:36:36 — The $200K Budget00:41:41 — The Donor Who Made Year Two Possible00:45:11 — The Ask: $50K & Donation Tiers00:48:25 — Why Doom Debates Is One of a Kind00:54:59 — Wrap-UpLinks👉 DONATE (tax-deductible via Manifund) — https://manifund.org/projects/doom-debates---podcast--debate-show-to-help-ai-x-risk-discourse-go-mainstreamBecome a Mission Partner (full writeup) — https://lironshapira.substack.com/p/become-a-mission-partnerDiscord — https://discord.gg/yADCEYTS95Merch — https://shop.doomdebates.com Get full access to Doom Debates at lironshapira.substack.com/subscribe
- 4 days ago29 min
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/2081337793070952595?s=20I break down the two problems with the tweet:* 1. It leaves all of us guessing whether Demis actually speaks for Google DeepMind on pause coordination;* 2. It contains a salient depiction of violence.Listen to this episode and get the full breakdown on this viral controversy and how it could Watch on YouTubeTimestamps00:00:00 — Cold Open00:00:22 — Introducing the Special Report: AI Pause Coordination00:00:33 — Demis Hassabis on AI Pause00:01:46 — Dario, Elon & Sam Altman on AI Pause00:02:14 — Roon’s “Magic Button” Tweet00:03:58 — Seb Krier’s Reply00:04:36 — Unpacking Krier’s Meme00:06:48 — Issue #1: Contradicting Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis00:12:11 — Issue #2: Depiction of Menacing Violence00:19:19 — Good Faith vs. Bad Faith Critiques00:22:39 — Krier Goes Private Instead of Deleting the Post00:28:45 — Wrap-UpLinksMy original reaction to Seb’s meme: https://x.com/liron/status/2081337793070952595?s=20Seb Krier on X (account now private): https://x.com/sebkrierRoon on X: https://x.com/tszzlFull Bloomberg interview with Emily Chang (Davos, Jan 2026): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2026-01-20/robotics-nearing-physical-ai-breakthrough-deepmind-ceo-videoOpenAI’s charter containg stop & assist AGI clause — https://openai.com/charter/Holly Elmore, PauseAI US on X — https://x.com/ilex_ulmusHugging Face security incident disclosure (July 2026) — https://huggingface.co/blog/security-incident-july-2026PauseAI Global — https://pauseai.infoPauseAI US — https://www.pauseai-us.orgPoe’s Law (Wikipedia) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_lawDoom 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
- 1 weeks ago50 min
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) positions. Even without me or Eliezer in the room, there are plenty of Yudkowskians to push back on the accelerationist claims.Watch along and decide where YOU get off, or if you ride all the way to doomtown with us. Also, grab the Doom Train framework down below so you can get to the crux of disagreement in your own AI x-risk conversations.Timestamps00:00:00 — Cold Open00:00:25 — Liron Introduces Producer Ori’s Manifest Session00:02:30 — Previewing the Doom Train™ Stops00:03:38 — Audience P(Doom) Poll00:05:00 — Stop 1: AGI Isn’t Coming Soon00:10:43 — Stop 2: AI Can’t Go Far Beyond Human Intelligence00:15:05 — Stop 3: AI Won’t Be a Physical Threat00:18:14 — Stop 4: Intelligence Yields Moral Goodness00:21:38 — Will ASI Behave Because Alien ASIs Are Watching?00:26:01 — Stop 5: We Have a Safe AI Development Process00:28:33 — Stop 6: AI Capabilities Will Rise at a Manageable Pace00:30:08 — Stop 7: AI Won’t Try to Conquer the Universe00:34:22 — Stop 8: Superalignment Is a Tractable Problem00:38:01 — Stop 9: Once We Solve Superalignment, We’ll Enjoy Peace00:41:14 — Stop 10: Unaligned ASI Will Spare Us00:47:35 — Stop 11: AI Doomerism Is Bad Epistemology00:49:02 — Bonus Stops and Wrap-UpThe Doom Train FrameworkStops on the Doom TrainAGI isn’t coming soon* No consciousness* No emotions* No creativity — AIs are limited to copying patterns in their training data, they can’t “generate new knowledge”* AIs aren’t even as smart as dogs right now, never mind humans* AIs constantly make dumb mistakes, they can’t even do simple arithmetic reliably* LLM performance is hitting a wall — GPT 4.5 is barely better than GPT 4.1 despite being larger scale* No genuine reasoning* No microtubules exploiting uncomputable quantum effects* No soul* We’ll need to build tons of data centers and power before we get to AGI* No agency* This is just another AI hype cycle, every 25 years people think AGI is coming soon and they’re wrongArtificial intelligence can’t go far beyond human intelligence* “Superhuman intelligence” is a meaningless concept* Human engineering already is coming close to the laws of physics* Coordinating a large engineering project can’t happen much faster than humans do it* No individual human is that smart compared to humanity as a whole, including our culture, corporations, and other institutions. Similarly no individual AI will ever be that smart compared to the sum of human culture and other institutions.AI won’t be a physical threat* AI doesn’t have arms or legs, it has zero control over the real world* An AI with a robot body can’t fight better than a human soldier* We can just disconnect an AI’s power to stop it* We can just turn off the internet to stop it* We can just shoot it with a gun* It’s just math* Any supposed chain of events where AI kills humans is far-fetched science fictionIntelligence yields moral goodness* More intelligence is correlated with more morality* Smarter people commit fewer crimes* The orthogonality thesis is false* AIs will discover moral realism* If we made AIs so smart, and we were trying to make them moral, then they’ll be smart enough to debug their own morality* Positive-sum cooperation was the outcome of natural selectionWe have a safe AI development process* Just like every new technology, we’ll figure it out as we go* We don’t know what problems need to be fixed until we build the AI and test it out* If an AI causes problems, we’ll be able to turn it off and release another version* We have safeguards to make sure AI doesn’t get uncontrollable/unstoppable* If we accidentally build an AI that stops accepting our shutoff commands, it won’t manage to copy versions of itself outside our firewalls which then proceed to spread exponentially like a computer virus* If we accidentally build an AI that escapes our data center and spreads exponentially like a computer virus, it won’t do too much damage in the world before we can somehow disable or neutralize all its copies* If we can’t disable or neutralize copies of rogue AIs, we’ll rapidly build other AIs that can do that job
- 1 weeks ago17 min
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 would even agree with me on the conceptual benefits of an AI pause. But the sense of urgency was missing.Timestamps00:00:00 — Cold Open00:00:31 — Why I Returned to UC Berkeley00:02:08 — Jack: Chinese Room Argument00:03:23 — Richard: “Who Would Build That?”00:03:54 — Karthik: An Economist’s Lens00:05:20 — Jack: The Politics Are Unclear00:06:10 — Yvonne: Why Powerful AI is Risky00:07:06 — Robin: Doom Is the Wrong Priority00:10:36 — Dexter: Sam Altman’s Motive00:10:57 — Christine: AI Is Just a Tool00:12:32 — What’s Your P(Doom)™00:13:19 — Jackson: Supporting a PauseAI Treaty00:14:19 — Why Cal Students Don’t Take AI X-Risk Seriously00:15:19 — Rachel: Humans Are Irreplaceable00:16:14 — Two Hours Later00:16:35 — Wrap-UpLinksJoin the Doom Debates Discord — https://discord.gg/j4zQ8UaQw2PauseAI — 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
- 3 weeks ago1h 49m
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 human CEO in the near future.Let’s find out where he gets off the Doom Train™.Timestamps00:00:00 — Cold Open00:00:54 — Introducing Asian Dad Energy00:03:36 — Asian Dad’s Career in Tech00:09:06 — Getting Laid Off: The Job Market Is a “Hellscape”00:12:29 — Software Engineering in 2026 vs. 202100:17:03 — Why Are They Investing Trillions in AI?00:24:37 — Debate: AI Is Different Than Other Tech Bubbles00:33:54 — Debate: AI Is Not Truly Intelligent00:41:12 — Intellidynamics: Judge AI by Its Outputs00:48:53 — Debate: Could AI Outperform a Human CEO?00:56:33 — Asian Dad: AI Can’t Do Genuine Innovation01:08:14 — What’s Your P(Doom)?™01:13:17 — “Are You Calling Me a Scammer?”01:14:41 — Asian Dad’s Mainline AI Doom Scenario01:20:53 — Will AI Wipe Out Humanity by 2050?01:29:29 — Why Is AI Doomerism “Getting Out of Control”?01:33:11 — Debate: AI Lacks Agency01:42:13 — Asian Dad Warns of “Techno-Feudalism” & Transhumanism01:48:12 — Wrap-UpLinksAsian Dad Energy (YouTube channel) — https://www.youtube.com/@AsianDadEnergyAsian Dad Energy, “AI Doomerism Is Getting Out of Control” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bnzaG9QRG4David Deutsch, The Fabric of Reality (Amazon) — https://www.amazon.com/Fabric-Reality-Parallel-Universes-Implications/dp/014027541XRobert Wright, The God Test (Amazon) — https://www.amazon.com/God-Test-Artificial-Intelligence-Reckoning/dp/1668061651OpenAI model disproves the Erdős unit distance conjecture — https://openai.com/index/model-disproves-discrete-geometry-conjecture/METR, Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Tasks — https://metr.org/blog/2025-03-19-measuring-ai-ability-to-complete-long-tasks/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
- Jul 2, 202649 min
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 AI doom overshadows it; Why nobody at AI summits is appropriately freaked out;How Yudkowsky’s data center “airstrike” claim gets mischaracterized;Why a superintelligence that doesn’t already value humanity won’t spare us;And the “Icarus curve”, my techno-optimist forecast pre-superintelligence.Subscribe to the Team Futurism podcast —https://www.youtube.com/@teamfuturism3554Timestamps00:00:00 — Welcoming Liron on Team Futurism00:00:38 — How Liron Got Yudkowsky-Pilled00:04:11 — AI 2027 and the Next Qualitative Breakthrough00:05:52 — What’s Your P(Doom)?00:10:22 — Why Isn’t Everyone Freaked Out?00:13:09 — How Should We Then Live?00:16:22 — Setting the Record Straight on Yudkowsky’s “Airstrike” Claims00:20:54 — Two Doom Buckets: Misuse vs. Rogue AI00:24:25 — The Bioweapon Kill Scenario00:29:02 — The “Benevolent God” Cope00:33:06 — Epistemology: What We’re Allowed to Know00:40:08 — Dario’s Country of Geniuses in a Data Center00:44:37 — The Icarus Curve00:47:17 — Meaning and Purpose in the AI Era00:49:32 — Wrap-UpLinksTeam Futurism on YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/@teamfuturism3554Peter Clarke on X — https://x.com/heypeterclarkeLiron vs. 9 Rationalists at LessOnline 2026 (the “Surrounded” debate with Peter) — https://lironshapira.substack.com/p/will-ai-actually-destroy-humanityAI 2027 — https://ai-2027.com/“If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies” by Eliezer Yudkowsky & Nate Soares — https://ifanyonebuildsit.com/Species | Documenting AGI, Drew Spartz’s channel — https://www.youtube.com/@AISpeciesDario Amodei’s “Machines of Loving Grace” — https://darioamodei.com/essay/machines-of-loving-graceDoom 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
- Jun 30, 20261h 56m
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, which I push back on, but I can’t deny she has a track record of pushing the Overton window and surfacing uncomfortable truths.Does Holly’s approach risk burning bridges with allies for little benefit, or does AI safety need a moral conscience willing to call out the rot nobody else will?Timestamps00:00:00 — Cold Open00:00:48 — Introducing Holly Elmore00:02:20 — Why Holly Moved to DC00:06:03 — What’s Your P(Doom)?™00:07:18 — How We Got Here: EA, Rationality, AI Alignment00:16:32 — “If Anyone Builds It” and LessWrong’s Missing Mood00:21:47 — Holly Supports the Government’s Fable Crackdown00:33:39 — Beef: Dean Ball (OpenAI)00:53:09 — Beef: Eliezer Yudkowsky00:56:14 — Beef: Zvi Mowshowitz01:11:50 — Beef: Liron Shapira!01:16:15 — Beef: Nirit Weiss-Blatt (Dr. Techlash) Being “Bad Faith”01:19:31 — Anthropic Took Over EA01:22:04 — Holly’s Basilisk: What If Building Superintelligence Becomes a Crime?01:32:35 — Beef: Amanda Askell, the “Mother of Claude”01:39:05 — Beef: Daniela Amodei, Co-Founder of Anthropic01:40:23 — Beef: Joe Carlsmith, Member of Technical Staff at Anthropic01:49:39 — Beef: Open Philanthropy / Coefficient Giving, Ben Goldhaber01:54:28 — Wrap-UpLinks* Support PauseAI US: https://www.pauseai-us.org/* Holly on Twitter/X: https://x.com/ilex_ulmus* Joe Carlsmith’s “Leaving Open Philanthropy, going to Anthropic” post: https://joecarlsmith.com/2025/11/03/leaving-open-philanthropy-going-to-anthropic/* Dean Ball joins OpenAI announcement (FAI post): https://www.thefai.org/posts/dean-ball-joins-openai-as-head-of-strategic-futures---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
- Jun 25, 20261h 37m
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 down in the modern AI paradigm?This is a ride on the Doom Train™ that lands on a wholly unexpected destination.Timestamps:00:00:00 — Cold Open00:00:31 — Introducing Casey Muratori00:02:07 — Recap of Crypto Series: Is Crypto Dead?00:11:46 — On Programming & Why Coding Agents Don't Faze Casey00:18:51 — Coding Is a Craft: Drum Machine Example00:36:24 — Pivoting to AI: Can We Forecast Its Capabilities?00:43:36 — Debating if AI Can Acquire Taste00:54:59 — What's Your P(Doom)™?01:04:11 — Even 0.1% X-Risk Is Unacceptable01:07:34 — Modeling Uncertainty: Bayesianism vs "Tie Goes to the Catastrophe"01:09:34 — Is This Pascal's Wager?01:17:12 — Casey's (Cynical) Mainline Scenario01:24:22 — Would You Un-Invent the Internet?01:27:18 — Let's Ride the Doom Train 🚂01:27:51 — Can AI Become Ridiculously Powerful?01:29:11 — Will AI Preserve Humanity (Orthogonality Thesis)?01:32:26 — Will AI Seek Power (Instrumental Convergence)?01:36:06 — Wrap-UpLinksCasey’s podcast, Wading Through AI (with Demetri Spanos) — https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEMXAbCVnmY6U_pA-7GKuP9xiv9utLaP4Casey’s YouTube channel, Molly Rocket — https://www.youtube.com/@MollyRocket@cmuratori (Casey Muratori) on X — https://x.com/cmuratoriDoom 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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