
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
Podzilla Summary coming soon
Sign up to get notified when the full AI-powered summary is ready.
Free forever for up to 3 podcasts. No credit card required.

Doom Debates State of the Show 2026

Special Report: Google DeepMind's Frontier AI Policy Lead Makes Controversial Sh*tpost

Where Do YOU Get Off the Doom Train? Live Debate at Manifest 2026

Debating College Students About AI Extinction
Free AI-powered recaps of Doom Debates! and your other favorite podcasts, delivered to your inbox.
Free forever for up to 3 podcasts. No credit card required.