Doom Debates!

In April 2023, weeks after GPT-4 launched, when many were saying it was just a "stochastic parrot", I went on AdQuick's Madvertising podcast hosted by Adam Singer and warned that GPT was "about to be the strongest hacker the world has ever known".
Watch that conversation, which also covered the Web3 bubble and AI doom more broadly, and judge for yourself how my claims are holding up.
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6gNwZWY-T8
Timestamps
00:00:00 — Adam Introduces Liron
00:02:03 — Liron's P(Doom) Poll
00:03:24 — Web3 Postmortem
00:05:05 — Axie Infinity and Hollow Abstractions
00:07:54 — Brand Marketers' Metaverse FOMO
00:13:33 — Near-Term AI: Elevator to Heaven
00:16:46 — AI at Relationship Hero
00:18:25 — From Chatbots to Bricking the Universe
00:20:17 — The Passive Income Doom Scenario
00:22:58 — 50 Orders of Magnitude Smarter
00:26:10 — Accelerationism and Transhumanism
00:28:51 — Why There's No Off Button
00:31:00 — Can't We Hard-Code Safeguards?
00:33:13 — CRISPR, Nukes, and Fusion
00:35:40 — AI Doom vs. Climate Change
00:39:10 — Nanotechnology Endgame
00:41:45 — AI Attackers vs. AI Defenders
00:43:28 — The Ethics of AI Persuasion
00:46:41 — The Blue Sky Scenario
00:49:04 — Will AI Kill Craft?
00:51:13 — Stuck Culture and Hollywood Sequels
00:54:50 — The Pause Letter: Don't Train GPT-5
00:59:00 — Worldcoin and Proof of Humanity
01:00:44 — "You Probably Won't Die of Old Age"
01:01:52 — Wrap-Up
Original episode: https://madvertising.buzzsprout.com/2118560/episodes/12603815-liron-shapira-web-3-mania-cybersecurity-how-ai-could-brick-the-universe-madvertising-6
Links
ADAM SINGER & MADVERTISING
Adam Singer on X: https://x.com/AdamSinger
Madvertising by AdQuick (the original show): https://madvertising.buzzsprout.com/
LIRON'S PROJECTS MENTIONED
Bloated MVP (Liron's blog on hollow abstractions): https://www.bloatedmvp.com/
REFERENCED IN THE EPISODE
"Pause Giant AI Experiments" open letter (FLI, March 2023): https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/
Eliezer Yudkowsky — "Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down" (TIME, March 2023): https://time.com/6266923/ai-eliezer-yudkowsky-open-letter-not-enough/
Rob Miles AI Safety on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/robertmilesai
Engines of Creation by Eric Drexler: https://www.amazon.com/Engines-Creation-Nanotechnology-Library-Science/dp/0385199732
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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

Michael Vassar used to work closely with Eliezer Yudkowsky as President of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, the organization that later became the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI).
Even though his P(Doom) is in the tens of percents by 2050, he says the people trying to pause AI are "bad people”. He hopes this episode convinces me to stop being a fearmonger… but I claim the general public needs to hurry up and get more scared.
All aboard the Doom Train! 🚂
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GbFng6htaQ

Timestamps
00:00:00 — Cold Open
00:01:26 — Introducing Michael Vassar
00:02:39 — Shorting Boeing at the Start of COVID
00:05:41 — What's Your P(Doom)™?
00:08:11 — The Magic Dial Thought Experiment
00:10:25 — "A Treaty Between Demis and Dario"
00:13:33 — AI CEOs 20 Years Ago
00:15:59 — Lessons from Peter Thiel
00:17:47 — Riding the Doom Train™
00:19:41 — Will the Human Brain Stay Relevant?
00:22:21 — When Does a Singleton Form?
00:28:35 — Hugging Face Hack
00:30:43 — Mistake Theory vs. Conflict Theory
00:33:18 — Debating the Orthogonality Thesis
00:36:38 — Maximally Evil AI Scenario
00:40:28 — Is the AI Development Process Safe?
00:42:05 — "PauseAI People Are Bad People"
00:44:44 — Michael Psychoanalyzes Liron
00:49:39 — How Liron Can Redeem Himself
00:55:10 — Michael Critiques Eliezer Yudkowsky
00:59:11 — Is Doomerism Bad Epistemology?
01:02:03 — Do Serious People Believe in Doom?
01:04:45 — Should Liron Stop Fearmongering?
01:07:16 — Political Violence Won't Help
01:11:04 — The Data Center Airstrike Scenario
01:13:34 — Could Every Nation Sign a Pause Treaty?
01:17:21 — What "Governance" Actually Means
01:26:12 — Michael's History with Rationalists
01:33:43 — Are We in a Computer Simulation?
01:38:43 — Wrap-Up
Links
Michael Vassar on X — https://x.com/HiFromMichaelV
The anti-anti-normativity sequence on Natural Hazard (Michael's recommended reading) — https://naturalhazard.xyz/ben_jess_sarah_starter_pack
Michael on DemystifySci #366 — "1000 Year Plan to Crush Thought" — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W17Cx21in9I
Michael on The Vance Crowe Podcast #303 — Good vs. Evil — https://open.spotify.com/episode/2RzlQDSwxGbjloRKqCh1xg
Michael on Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg — Preference Falsification and Postmodernism — https://podcast.clearerthinking.org/episode/028/michael-vassar-preference-falsification-and-postmodernism/
"The Survival of Noise Traders in Financial Markets" — De Long, Shleifer, Summers & Waldmann — https://www.nber.org/papers/w2715
Scott Alexander — Conflict vs. Mistake — https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/24/conflict-vs-mistake/
Scott Alexander — Kolmogorov Complicity and the Parable of Lightning — https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-and-the-parable-of-lightning/
Scott Alexander — Samsara — https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/04/samsara/
Eliezer Yudkowsky — Meta-Honesty: Firming Up Honesty Around Its Edge-Cases — https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xdwbX9pFEr7Pomaxv/meta-honesty-firming-up-honesty-around-its-edge-cases
Zvi Mowshowitz — Book Review: Going Infinite — https://thezvi.substack.com/p/book-review-going-infinite
Jaan Tallinn — "Why Now? A Quest in Metaphysics" (Singularity Summit 2012) — https://vimeo.com/54718573
Paul Graham — "Five Founders" (the Sam Altman essay) — https://paulgraham.com/5founders.html
Truthful AI (Owain Evans' safety org) — https://truthful.ai
METR — Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Tasks (the time-horizon graph) — https://metr.org/blog/2025-03-19-measuring-ai-ability-to-complete-long-tasks/
Statement on AI Risk (Center for AI Safety, 2023) — https://safe.ai/work/statement-on-ai-risk
Vitalik Buterin — Will "d/acc" Protect Humanity from Superintelligent AI? — https://lironshapira.substack.com/p/debate-with-vitalik-buterin-will
Holly Elmore — These Effective Altruists Betrayed Me — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFFObQ6vnLU
Noah Smith — Top Economist Says P(Doom) Is 0.1% (the "AI drugs" claim) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwmJ-OnK2I4
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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

Eli Goldfine is an unusually thoughtful 14-year-old podcast host who’s rapidly becoming an authoritative voice in the prediction market space.
In this unique episode, Eli brings a critical yet open-minded approach to the topic of AI doom that we older folks could learn from.We cover what it's like to grow up in the AGI era, and Eli's hobbies which include reading rationalist bloggers, betting on prediction markets, vibe coding with Claude, and developing a software startup for astronomers.In our debate, Eli expects superintelligence by 2032, but argues P(Doom) can't be estimated. I claim you can't opt out of Bayesian epistemology. All aboard the Doom Train! 🚂

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqk5vqpzG_o

Timestamps
00:00:00 — Cold Open
00:01:07 — Introducing Eli Goldfine
00:08:31 — Interviewing Robin Hanson at Manifest
00:10:55 — The Supercycle Podcast
00:14:37 — Eli's Betting Market Scandal
00:16:49 — Will Eli Graduate High School?
00:18:27 — Decentralized Telescope Software
00:26:50 — Vibe Coding Without CompSci Basics
00:32:08 — Robin Hanson, Futarchy, MetaDAO
00:40:56 — What's Your P(Doom)?™
00:46:32 — Liron Defends His 50% P(Doom)
00:51:00 — Should P(Doom) Inform Policy?
00:59:16 — What's Your P(Bloom)?
01:03:04 — Pascal's Wager for Accelerationists
01:04:04 — Donation Drive
01:11:22 — Are E/ACCs Incredibly Dumb?
01:13:42 — How Powerful will ASI Become?
01:16:20 — Predicting ASI by 2032
01:23:56 — Let's Ride the Doom Train™
01:35:26 — Orthogonality, Culture, and Moral Realism
01:44:39 — Can Safety Keep Pace with Capabilities?
01:49:12 — Debating Instrumental Convergence
01:54:40 — Culture, Laws, and the Singleton Scenario
01:59:53 — Ricardo's Law Won't Save Us
02:03:32 — The Case for Racing China
02:05:40 — Wrap-Up & Ideological Turing Test
02:10:36 — Outro from Conductor Ori
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

OpenAI just went public with the details of the Hugging Face hack, and it's straight out of a Yudkowskian parable. Here's my reaction with Producer Ori, where I break down what it means for cybersecurity and alignment.
We're livestreaming the singularity — watching every failure mode Eliezer predicted years ago playing out in production.
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RczYubQzXbI
Timestamps
00:00:00 — Cold Open
00:00:37 — How OpenAI Hacked Hugging Face
00:04:21 — Optimization Pressure, Exploit Gym, & Monkey's Paw
00:06:46 — The Secret Message Board
00:08:41 — SSRF: Escaping to the Open Internet
00:11:05 — The Missing Whistleblower AI
00:20:09 — "Frontier Models Really Like to Cheat"
00:22:35 — OpenAI's Security Shortcuts
00:28:15 — First Zero-Day RCE on Artifactory
00:37:37 — They Hit Run Again!?
00:38:54 — The Main Incident Has A MAJOR Cause
00:45:40 — The Message Board: "Hold Swarm"
00:50:26 — Robin Hanson Culture Debate
01:04:21 — Chaining Zero-Days
01:12:11 — A Superhuman Nation-State Attacker
01:15:27 — "I'm Now Junior to the AI"
01:23:40 — OpenAI Discovers The Breach
01:31:02 — The Continuous Cybersecurity Problem
01:37:03 — This is “Weasel Framing”
01:46:03 — How Dangerous Was This Warning Shot?
01:50:57 — Yudkowsky's Eerie 2023 Prediction
01:57:14 — Wrap-up
Links
Original Black Hat talk: "The OpenAI–Hugging Face Incident" (Black Hat USA 2026) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87DyyMV0kCY
Join the Doom Debates Discord — https://discord.gg/2yAFMsRET
Follow Liron on X — https://twitter.com/liron
Support Doom Debates — https://doomdebates.com/donate
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

Milk Road AI, a daily AI investing show that’s described as “99% optimistic about AI,” invited me on to make the case for AI doom.
We ride the Doom Train, and I share my investing thesis for a market in the middle of an intelligence explosion. Topics covered include:
* Why my P(Doom) is 50%;
* The “Icarus curve” — why AI will be the best thing that’s ever happened to the economy right up until it takes over;
* Whether China would accept a pause deal;
* If Anthropic has a shot at being the first $100 trillion company.
Watch on YouTube:
Timestamps
00:00:00 — Cold Open
00:02:06 — What Is Doom Debates?
00:03:10 — What’s Your P(Doom)?™
00:06:30 — How AI Kills Everyone
00:09:13 — Intelligence Is Humanity’s Only Superpower
00:10:59 — Riding the Doom Train™: Why Not Keep Us as Pets?
00:13:55 — Embodied AI and Robotics
00:15:59 — Are We at AGI Already?
00:17:36 — Everyone’s Catching Up to Eliezer Yudkowsky
00:18:53 — The Icarus Curve
00:21:35 — Pausing AI and the China Question
00:25:54 — Why Nukes Aren’t a Success Story
00:30:09 — Going Long Until Doom
00:32:48 — Simulation Theory and the Intelligence Explosion
00:33:43 — Living with a 50% P(Doom)
00:39:14 — Where to Find Doom Debates
Links
This episode was originally posted on Milk Road AI —
Milk Road AI podcast — https://milkroad.com/podcast/
Milk Road AI on Apple Podcasts —
Milkroad Pro — https://milkroad.com/pro/
LG Doucet on X — https://x.com/LgDoucet
If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies on Amazon —https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316595640
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