Doom Debates!

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...

AGI timelines, offense/defense balance, evolution vs engineering, how to lower P(Doom), Eliezer Yudkowksy, and much more! Timestamps: 00:00 Trailer 03:10 Is My P(Doom) Lowering? 11:29 First Caller: AI Offense vs Defense Balance 16:50 Superintelligence Skepticism 25:05 Agency and AI Goals 29:06 Communicating AI Risk 36:35 Attack vs Defense Equilibrium 38:22 Can We Solve Outer Alignment? 54:47 What...

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...

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 superintelli...

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 superintellig...

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. Timestamps 0:00 Intro 1:29 Introdu...

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 ha...

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...

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. Timestamps 0:00 In...

Sparks fly in the finale of my series with ex-MIRI researcher Tsvi Benson-Tilsen as we debate his AGI timelines. Tsvi is a champion of using germline engineering to create smarter humans who can solve AI alignment. I support the approach, even though I’m skeptical it’ll gain much traction before AGI arrives. Timestamps 0:00 Debate Preview0:57 Tsvi’s AGI Timeline Prediction 3:03 The Least Impressiv...

Today I’m sharing my AI doom interview on Donal O’Doherty’s podcast. I lay out the case for having a 50% p(doom). Then Donal plays devil’s advocate and tees up every major objection the accelerationists throw at doomers. See if the anti-doom arguments hold up, or if the AI boosters are just serving sophisticated cope. Timestamps 0:00 — Introduction & Liron’s Background 1:29 — Liron’s Worldview: 50...

Tsvi Benson-Tilsen spent seven years tackling the alignment problem at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI). Now he delivers a sobering verdict: humanity has made “basically 0%” progress towards solving it. Tsvi unpacks foundational MIRI research insights like timeless decision theory and corrigibility , which expose just how little humanity actually knows about controlling superinte...

I’m excited to share my recent AI doom interview with Eben Pagan, better known to many by his pen name David DeAngelo! For an entire generation of men, ‘David DeAngelo’ was the authority on dating—and his work transformed my approach to courtship back in the day. Now the roles reverse, as I teach Eben about a very different game, one where the survival of our entire species is at stake. In this in...

Former Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) researcher Tsvi Benson-Tilsen is championing an audacious path to prevent AI doom: engineering smarter humans to tackle AI alignment. I consider this one of the few genuinely viable alignment solutions, and Tsvi is at the forefront of the effort. After seven years at MIRI, he co-founded the Berkeley Genomics Project to advance the human germlin...

Today I'm sharing my interview on Robert Wright's Nonzero Podcast where we unpack Eliezer Yudkowsky's AI doom arguments from his bestselling book, "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies." Bob is an exceptionally thoughtful interviewer who asks sharp questions and pushes me to defend the Yudkowskian position, leading to a rich exploration of the AI doom perspective. I highly recommend getting a premiu...

Today I’m taking a rare break from AI doom to cover the dumbest kind of doom humanity has ever created for itself: climate change. We’re talking about a problem that costs less than $2 billion per year to solve. For context, that’s what the US spent on COVID relief every 7 hours during the pandemic. Bill Gates could literally solve this himself. My guest Andrew Song runs Make Sunsets , which launc...

I’ve been puzzled by David Deutsch’s AI claims for years. Today I finally had the chance to hash it out: Brett Hall , one of the foremost educators of David Deutsch’s ideas around epistemology & science, was brave enough to debate me! Brett has been immersed in Deutsch’s philosophy since 1997 and teaches it on his Theory of Knowledge podcast , which has been praised by tech luminary Naval Ravikant...

We took Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares’s new book, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies , on the streets to see what regular people think. Do people think that artificial intelligence is a serious existential risk? Are they open to considering the argument before it’s too late? Are they hostile to the idea? Are they totally uninterested? Watch this episode to see the full spectrum of reactions fr...

Welcome to the Doom Debates + Wes Roth + Dylan Curious crossover episode! Wes & Dylan’s host a popular YouTube AI news show that’s better than mainstream media. They interview thought leaders like Prof. Nick Bostrom, Dr. Mike Israetel — and now, yours truly! This episode is Part 2, where Wes & Dylan come on Doom Debates to break down the latest AI news. In Part 1, I went on Wes & Dylan’s channel t...

I’m excited to announce the launch of Doom Hut , the official Doom Debates merch store! This isn’t just another merch drop. It’s a way to spread an urgent message that humanity faces an imminent risk from superintelligent AI, and we need to build common knowledge about it now. What We’re Offering The Doom Hut is the premiere source of “high P(doom) fashion.” We’ve got t-shirts in men’s and women’s...

Eliezer Yudkowsky can warn humankind that If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies and get on the New York Times bestseller list, but he won’t get upvoted to the top of LessWrong. According to the leaders of LessWrong, that’s intentional. The rationalist community thinks aggregating community support for important claims is “political fighting”. Unfortunately, the idea that some other community will str...

Ex-Twitch Founder and OpenAI Interim CEO Emmett Shear is one of the rare established tech leaders to lend his name and credibility to Eliezer Yudkowsky’s warnings about AI existential risk. Even though he disagrees on some points, he chose to endorse the new book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: “Soares and Yudkowsky lay out, in plain and easy-to-follow terms, why our current path toward ever-m...

ATTENTION DOOM DEBATES LISTENERS: We interrupt our usual programming to request that you consider supporting the show. Do you want your family, children & friends to continue living life through these next 10-20 years and beyond? Want to experience the good future where we benefit from research advances that make us healthier, happier, wiser, and longer-lived? Want our descendants to continue flou...

Science communicator and poker champion Liv Boeree has been concerned about the existential risk of AI for nearly a decade. In this conversation from my If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies launch party , Liv explains why even a 5% chance of AI extinction is unacceptable, why the industry often buries its head in the sand, and how advocates can actually make an impact. --- Doom Debates’ Mission is t...

Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares just launched their world-changing book, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies . PLEASE BUY YOUR COPY NOW!!! We had an unofficial launch party here on Doom Debates to celebrate the occasion with an incredible group of guests (see timestamps below). Highly recommend watching if you missed it! Timestamps * 00:00 — Cold Open * 00:36 — Max Tegmark, MIT Physicist * 24:58...