x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

Doom Debates!

It"s time to talk about the end of the world. With your host, Liron Shapira. lironshapira.substack.com

technology

All Episodes

127:32

Top AI Professor Has 85% P(Doom) — David Duvenaud,...

Doom Debates! ·

2025/04/18

David Duvenaud is a professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, co-director of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, former Alignment Evals Team Lead at Anthropic, an award-winning machine learning researcher, and a close collaborator of Dr. Geoffrey Hinton. He recently co-authored Gradual Disempowerment.We dive into David’s impressive career, his high P(Doom), his recent tenure at Anthropic, his views on gradual disempowerment, and the critical need for improved

en

57:49

“AI 2027” — Top Superforecaster's Imminent Doom Scenario

Doom Debates! ·

2025/04/15

AI 2027, a bombshell new paper by the AI Futures Project, is a highly plausible scenario of the next few years of AI progress. I like this paper so much that I made a whole episode about it.00:00 Overview of AI 202705:13 2025: Stumbling Agents16:23 2026: Advanced Agents21:49 2027: The Intelligence Explosion29:13 AI's Initial Exploits and OpenBrain's Secrecy30:41 Agent-3 and the Rise of Superhuman Engineering37:05 The Creation and Deception of Agent-544:56 The Race Scenario: Humanity's Downfall48:58

en

134:58

Top Economist Sees AI Doom Coming — Dr. Peter...

Doom Debates! ·

2025/04/09

Dr. Peter Berezin is the Chief Global Strategist and Director of Research at BCA Research, the largest Canadian investment research firm. He’s known for his macroeconomics research reports and his frequent appearances on Bloomberg and CNBC.Notably, Peter is one of the only macroeconomists in the world who’s forecasting AI doom! He recently published a research report estimating a “ more than 50/50 chance AI will wipe out all of humanity by the middle of the century”.00:00 Introducing Peter

en

139:51

AI News: GPT-4o Images, AI Unemployment, Emmett...

Doom Debates! ·

2025/04/03

Nathan Labenz, host of The Cognitive Revolution, joins me for an AI news & social media roundup!00:00 Introducing Nate05:18 What’s Your P(Doom)™23:22 GPT-4o Image Generation40:20 Will Fiverr’s Stock Crash?47:41 AI Unemployment55:11 Entrepreneurship01:00:40 OpenAI Valuation01:09:29 Connor Leahy’s Hair01:13:28 Mass Extinction01:25:30 Is anyone feeling the doom vibes?01:38:20 Rethinking AI Individuality01:40:35 “Softmax” — Emmett Shear's New AI Safety Org01:57:04 Anthropic's Mechanistic

en

45:50

How an AI Doomer Sees The World — Liron on The Human...

Doom Debates! ·

2025/03/28

In this special cross-posted episode of Doom Debates, originally posted here on The Human Podcast, we cover a wide range of topics including the definition of “doom”, P(Doom), various existential risks like pandemics and nuclear threats, and the comparison of rogue AI risks versus AI misuse risks.00:00 Introduction01:47 Defining Doom and AI Risks05:53 P(Doom)10:04 Doom Debates’ Mission16:17 Personal Reflections and Life Choices24:57 The Importance of Debate27:07 Personal Reflections on AI Doom30:46

en

50:08

Gödel's Theorem Says Intelligence ≠ Power? AI Doom...

Doom Debates! ·

2025/03/21

Alexander Campbell claims that having superhuman intelligence doesn’t necessarily translate into having vast power, and that Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem ensures AI can’t get too powerful. I strongly disagree.Alex has a Master's of Philosophy in Economics from the University of Oxford and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, has worked as a quant trader at Lehman Brothers and Bridgewater Associates, and is the founder of Rose AI, a cloud data platform that leverages generative AI

en

119:10

Alignment is EASY and Roko's Basilisk is GOOD?!

Doom Debates! ·

2025/03/17

Roko Mijic has been an active member of the LessWrong and AI safety community since 2008. He’s best known for “Roko’s Basilisk”, a thought experiment he posted on LessWrong that made Eliezer Yudkowsky freak out, and years later became the topic that helped Elon Musk get interested in Grimes.His view on AI doom is that:* AI alignment is an easy problem* But the chaos and fighting from building superintelligence poses a high near-term existential risk* But humanity’s course without AI has an even

en

91:38

Roger Penrose is WRONG about Gödel's Theorem and AI...

Doom Debates! ·

2025/03/10

Sir Roger Penrose is a mathematician, mathematical physicist, philosopher of science, and Nobel Laureate in Physics.His famous body of work includes Penrose diagrams, twistor theory, Penrose tilings, and the incredibly bold claim that intelligence and consciousness are uncomputable physical phenomena related to quantum wave function collapse. Dr. Penrose is such a genius that it's just interesting to unpack his worldview, even if it’s totally implausible. How can someone like him be so wrong? What

en

108:25

We Found AI's Preferences — What David Shapiro MISSED...

Doom Debates! ·

2025/02/21

The Center for AI Safety just dropped a fascinating paper — they discovered that today’s AIs like GPT-4 and Claude have preferences! As in, coherent utility functions. We knew this was inevitable, but we didn’t know it was already happening.This episode has two parts:In Part I (48 minutes), I react to David Shapiro’s coverage of the paper and push back on many of his points.In Part II (60 minutes), I explain the paper myself.00:00 Episode Introduction05:25 PART I: REACTING TO DAVID SHAPIRO10:06

en

77:05

Does AI Competition = AI Alignment? Debate with Gil Mark

Doom Debates! ·

2025/02/10

My friend Gil Mark, who leads generative AI products at LinkedIn, thinks competition among superintelligent AIs will lead to a good outcome for humanity. In his view, the alignment problem becomes significantly easier if we build multiple AIs at the same time and let them compete.I completely disagree, but I hope you’ll find this to be a thought-provoking episode that sheds light on why the alignment problem is so hard.00:00 Introduction02:36 Gil & Liron’s Early Doom Days04:58: AIs : Humans ::

en

25:37

Toy Model of the AI Control Problem

Doom Debates! ·

2025/02/06

Why does the simplest AI imaginable, when you ask it to help you push a box around a grid, suddenly want you to die?AI doomers are often misconstrued as having "no evidence" or just "anthropomorphizing". This toy model will help you understand why a drive to eliminate humans is NOT a handwavy anthropomorphic speculation, but rather something we expect by default from any sufficiently powerful search algorithm.We’re not talking about AGI or ASI here — we’re just looking at an AI that does brute-force

en

65:33

Superintelligent AI vs. Real-World Engineering |...

Doom Debates! ·

2025/01/31

Bryan Cantrill, co-founder of Oxide Computer, says in his talk that engineering in the physical world is too complex for any AI to do it better than teams of human engineers. Success isn’t about intelligence; it’s about teamwork, character and resilience.I completely disagree.00:00 Introduction02:03 Bryan’s Take on AI Doom05:55 The Concept of P(Doom)08:36 Engineering Challenges and Human Intelligence15:09 The Role of Regulation and Authoritarianism in AI Control29:44 Engineering Complexity: A Case

en

83:18

2,500 Subscribers Live Q&A

Doom Debates! ·

2025/01/27

Thanks for everyone who participated in the live Q&A on Friday!The topics covered include advice for computer science students, working in AI trustworthiness, what good AI regulation looks like, the implications of the $500B Stargate project, the public's gradual understanding of AI risks, the impact of minor AI disasters, and the philosophy of consciousness.00:00 Advice for Comp Sci Students01:14 The $500B Stargate Project02:36 Eliezer's Recent Podcast03:07 AI Safety and Public Policy04:28 AI

en

127:00

AI Twitter Beefs #3: Marc Andreessen, Sam Altman,...

Doom Debates! ·

2025/01/24

It’s time for AI Twitter Beefs #3:00:00 Introduction01:27 Marc Andreessen vs. Sam Altman09:15 Mark Zuckerberg35:40 Martin Casado47:26 Gary Marcus vs. Miles Brundage Bet58:39 Scott Alexander’s AI Art Turing Test01:11:29 Roon01:16:35 Stephen McAleer01:22:25 Emmett Shear01:37:20 OpenAI’s “Safety”01:44:09 Naval Ravikant vs. Eliezer Yudkowsky01:56:03 Comic Relief01:58:53 Final ThoughtsShow NotesUpcoming Live Q&A: https://lironshapira.substack.com/p/2500-subscribers-live-q-and-a-ask“Make Your Beliefs Pay

en

66:12

Effective Altruism Debate with Jonas Sota

Doom Debates! ·

2025/01/17

Effective Altruism has been a controversial topic on social media, so today my guest and I are going to settle the question once and for all: Is it good or bad?Jonas Sota is a Software Engineer at Rippling, BA in Philosophy from UC Berkeley, who’s been observing the Effective Altruism (EA) movement in the San Francisco Bay Area for over a decade… and he’s not a fan.00:00 Introduction01:22 Jonas’s Criticisms of EA03:23 Recoil Exaggeration05:53 Impact of Malaria Nets10:48 Local vs. Global

en

200:46

God vs. AI Doom: Debate with Bentham's Bulldog

Doom Debates! ·

2025/01/15

Matthew Adelstein, better known as Bentham’s Bulldog on Substack, is a philosophy major at the University of Michigan and an up & coming public intellectual.He’s a rare combination: Effective Altruist, Bayesian, non-reductionist, theist.Our debate covers reductionism, evidence for god, the implications of a fine-tuned universe, moral realism, and AI doom.00:00 Introduction02:56 Matthew’s Research11:29 Animal Welfare16:04 Reductionism vs. Non-Reductionism Debate39:53 The Decline of God in Modern

en

157:10

Debate with a former OpenAI Research Team Lead —...

Doom Debates! ·

2025/01/06

Prof. Kenneth Stanley is a former Research Science Manager at OpenAI leading the Open-Endedness Team in 2020-2022. Before that, he was a Professor of Computer Ccience at the University of Central Florida and the head of Core AI Research at Uber. He coauthored Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective, which argues that as soon as you create an objective, then you ruin your ability to reach it.In this episode, I debate Ken’s claim that superintelligent AI *won’t* be guided by goals,

en

63:30

OpenAI o3 and Claude Alignment Faking — How doomed...

Doom Debates! ·

2024/12/30

OpenAI just announced o3 and smashed a bunch of benchmarks (ARC-AGI, SWE-bench, FrontierMath)!A new Anthropic and Redwood Research paper says Claude is resisting its developers’ attempts to retrain its values!What’s the upshot — what does it all mean for P(doom)?00:00 Introduction01:45 o3’s architecture and benchmarks06:08 “Scaling is hitting a wall” 🤡13:41 How many new architectural insights before AGI?20:28 Negative update for interpretability31:30 Intellidynamics — ***KEY CONCEPT***33:20 Nuclear

en

83:36

AI Will Kill Us All — Liron Shapira on The Flares

Doom Debates! ·

2024/12/27

This week Liron was interview by Gaëtan Selle on @the-flares about AI doom.Cross-posted from their channel with permission.Original source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4Qi-54I9Zw0:00:02 Guest Introduction 0:01:41 Effective Altruism and Transhumanism 0:05:38 Bayesian Epistemology and Extinction Probability 0:09:26 Defining Intelligence and Its Dangers 0:12:33 The Key Argument for AI Apocalypse 0:18:51 AI’s Internal Alignment 0:24:56 What Will AI's Real Goal Be? 0:26:50 The Train of

en

104:46

Roon vs. Liron: AI Doom Debate

Doom Debates! ·

2024/12/18

Roon is a member of the technical staff at OpenAI. He’s a highly respected voice on tech Twitter, despite being a pseudonymous cartoon avatar account. In late 2021, he invented the terms “shape rotator” and “wordcel” to refer to roughly visual/spatial/mathematical intelligence vs. verbal intelligence. He is simultaneously a serious thinker, a builder, and a shitposter. I'm excited to learn more about Roon, his background, his life, and of course, his views about AI and existential risk.00:00

en

149 results

Similar Podcasts

Lead With AI

Tamara Nall

Linux in the Ham Shack

Black Sparrow Media

Data Engineering Podcast

Tobias Macey

Eye On A.I.

Craig S. Smith

Reflections

Livewire Labs