Doom Debates!

I Went On Jubilee's Middle Ground To Warn About AI Extinction!

The popular debate show, Middle Ground by Jubilee, invited me on to take the "anti-AI" side back in April 2024. This highlight reel of the episode shows my experience of the discussion. I'm a lifelong techno-optimist, and it's unnatural for me to represent an anti-tech position. It's just that our AI labs are admitting they're on the path to superintelligence they don't know how to control, which implies we're all about to die and the universe will be robbed of all value forever before our kids grow up. Other than that one little consideration, I'm normally pro-tech! Timestamps 00:00:00 — Why Liron is Worried about AI 00:02:13 — The Nuclear Analogy 00:02:43 — Human Evolution and Neuralink 00:03:14 — The AI Labs’ Own Warnings Links Full episode on YouTube —https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47fGrqzoFr8 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47fGrqzoFr8] 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 [https://doomdebates.com/] and to youtube.com/@DoomDebates [https://youtube.com/@DoomDebates], or to really take things to the next level: Donate [https://doomdebates.com/donate] 🙏 Get full access to Doom Debates at lironshapira.substack.com/subscribe [https://lironshapira.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Liron’s 700% Productivity Increase, Bernie & AOC’s Datacenter Ban, Are We In Full Takeoff? — Live Q&A

Multiple live callers join this month's Q&A as we react to Bernie Sanders and AOC's data center moratorium, the sudden shutdown of SORA 2, and the record breaking "Stop the AI Race" protest. I explain why Claude Code has me claiming a 700% productivity boost, what that means for takeoff timelines and debate instrumental convergence. Timestamps 00:00:00 — Cold Open 00:01:08 — Can AI Train on Its Own Data to Reach Superintelligence? 00:03:42 — Are We in the Takeoff? 700% Faster with Claude Code 00:04:27 — EJJ Joins: Is Instrumental Convergence Really That Dangerous? 00:16:44 — The Positive Feedback Loop Problem 00:20:09 — S-Risk, Consciousness, and Objective Morality 00:22:27 — Futarchy and Prediction Markets 00:24:31 — Low P(Doom) Arguments and Bayesian Updates 00:31:05 — Lee Cyrano Joins: Superintelligence Won’t Matter for Decades 01:02:45 — Lesaun Joins: Are There Adults in the Room? 01:17:39 — Connor Leahy: “There Are No Adults in the Room” 01:19:51 — Bernie Sanders Calls for a Data Center Moratorium 01:24:23 — Claude Code Anecdotes and Audience Q&A 01:35:49 — The Stop the AI Race Protest in San Francisco 01:41:38 — Known Unknowns and Risk Assessment 01:45:03 — From Waymo to Existential Risk 01:51:28 — Closing: The Road to One Million Subscribers Links Quintin Pope vs Liron Shapira debate on Doom Debates — https://lironshapira.substack.com/p/ai-alignment-is-solved-phd-researcher [https://lironshapira.substack.com/p/ai-alignment-is-solved-phd-researcher] CAP theorem, Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem] Google Cloud Spanner, Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanner_(database [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanner_(database]) Newcomb’s problem, Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomb%27s_paradox [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomb%27s_paradox] Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems] 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 [https://doomdebates.com/] and to youtube.com/@DoomDebates [https://youtube.com/@DoomDebates], or to really take things to the next level: Donate [https://doomdebates.com/donate] 🙏 Get full access to Doom Debates at lironshapira.substack.com/subscribe [https://lironshapira.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

AI Alignment Is Solved?! PhD Researcher Quintin Pope vs Liron Shapira (2023 Twitter Debate)

Dr. Quintin Pope, PhD, is one of the few critics of AI doomerism who is truly fluent in the concepts and arguments. In Oct, 2023 he joined me for a debate in Twitter Spaces where he argued that AI alignment was basically already solved. His “inside view” on machine-learning forced me to update my position, but could he knock me off the doom train? Timestamps 00:00:00 — Cold Open 00:00:43 — Introductions 00:01:22 — Quintin's Opening Statement 00:02:32 — Liron's Opening Statement 00:05:10 — Has RLHF Solved the Alignment Problem? 00:07:52 — AI Capabilities Are Constrained by Training Data 00:10:52 — Defining ASI and Could RLHF Align a Superintelligence? 00:13:13 — Quintin Is More Optimistic Than OpenAI 00:14:16 — What Is ASI in Your Mind? 00:15:57 — AI in 5 Years (2028) & AI Coding Agents 00:19:05 — Continuous or Discontinuous Capability Gains? 00:19:39 — DEBATE: General Intelligence Algorithm in Humans 00:30:02 — The Only Coherent Explanation of Humans Going to the Moon 00:34:01 — Are We "Fully Cooked" as a General Optimizer? 00:35:53 — Common Mistake in Forecasting Superintelligence 00:42:22 — 'Neat' vs 'Scruffy': Will Interpretable Structure Emerge Inside Neural Nets? 00:48:57 — Does This Disagreement Actually Matter for P(Doom)? 00:54:33 — Thought Experiment: Could You Have Predicted a Species Would Go to the Moon? 00:57:26 — The Basin of Attraction for Superintelligence 00:59:35 — Does a Superintelligence Even Exist in Algorithm Space? 01:09:59 — Closing Statements 01:12:40 — Audience Q&A 01:19:35 — Wrap Up Links Original Twitter Spaces debate (Quintin Pope vs. Liron Shapira) — https://x.com/i/spaces/1YpJkwOzOqEJj/peek [https://x.com/i/spaces/1YpJkwOzOqEJj/peek] Quintin Pope on Twitter/X — https://twitter.com/QuintinPope5 [https://twitter.com/QuintinPope5] Quintin Pope, Alignment Forum profile — https://www.alignmentforum.org/users/quintin-pope [https://www.alignmentforum.org/users/quintin-pope] InstructGPT, Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InstructGPT [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InstructGPT] AIXI, Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIXI [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIXI] AlphaZero, Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaZero [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaZero] MuZero, Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MuZero [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MuZero] DeepMind AlphaZero and MuZero page — https://deepmind.google/research/alphazero-and-muzero/ [https://deepmind.google/research/alphazero-and-muzero/] Midjourney — https://www.midjourney.com/ [https://www.midjourney.com/] DALL-E, Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DALL-E [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DALL-E] OpenAI Superalignment announcement — https://openai.com/index/introducing-superalignment/ [https://openai.com/index/introducing-superalignment/] Shard Theory sequence on LessWrong — https://www.lesswrong.com/s/nyEFg3AuJpdAozmoX [https://www.lesswrong.com/s/nyEFg3AuJpdAozmoX] “Evolution Provides No Evidence for the Sharp Left Turn” — https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hvz9qjWyv8cLX9JJR/evolution-provides-no-evidence-for-the-sharp-left-turn [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hvz9qjWyv8cLX9JJR/evolution-provides-no-evidence-for-the-sharp-left-turn] “My Objections to ‘We’re All Gonna Die with Eliezer Yudkowsky’” — https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wAczufCpMdaamF9fy/my-objections-to-we-re-all-gonna-die-with-eliezer-yudkowsky [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wAczufCpMdaamF9fy/my-objections-to-we-re-all-gonna-die-with-eliezer-yudkowsky] “AI is Centralizing by Default; Let’s Not Make It Worse” — https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zd5inbT4kYKivincm/ai-is-centralizing-by-default-let-s-not-make-it-worse [https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zd5inbT4kYKivincm/ai-is-centralizing-by-default-let-s-not-make-it-worse] Singular Learning Theory, Alignment Forum sequence — https://www.alignmentforum.org/s/mqwA5FcL6SrHEQzox [https://www.alignmentforum.org/s/mqwA5FcL6SrHEQzox] 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 [https://doomdebates.com/] and to youtube.com/@DoomDebates [https://youtube.com/@DoomDebates], or to really take things to the next level: Donate [https://doomdebates.com/donate] 🙏 Get full access to Doom Debates at lironshapira.substack.com/subscribe [https://lironshapira.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

I'm Watching AI Take Everyone's Job | Liron on Robert Wright's NonZero Podcast

My new interview on Robert Wright's Nonzero Podcast where we dive into the agentic AI explosion. Bob is an exceptionally sharp interviewer who connects the dots between job displacement and AI doom. I highly recommend becoming a premium subscriber to Bob’s Nonzero Newsletter so you can watch the Overtime segment in every interview he does — https://nonzero.org Our discussion continues in Overtime for premium subscribers — https://www.nonzero.org/p/early-access-the-allure-and-danger [https://www.nonzero.org/p/early-access-the-allure-and-danger] Links Nonzero Podcast on YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/@nonzero [https://www.youtube.com/@nonzero] Robert Wright, The God Test (book, Amazon) — https://www.amazon.com/God-Test-Artificial-Intelligence-Reckoning/dp/1668061651 [https://www.amazon.com/God-Test-Artificial-Intelligence-Reckoning/dp/1668061651] Timestamps 00:00:00 — Introduction and Today's Topics 00:03:22 — Vibe Coding and the Agentic Revolution 00:08:57 — The Future of Employment 00:17:57 — Agents and What They Can Do 00:27:59 — The "Can It" and "Will It" Framework for AI Doom 00:30:27 — OpenClaw and Liron's Experience with AI Agents 00:36:45 — The Case for Slowing Down AI Development 00:43:28 — Anthropic, the Pentagon, and AI Politics 00:48:37 — AI Safety Leadership Concerns 00:52:06 — Closing and Overtime Tease 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 [https://doomdebates.com/] and to youtube.com/@DoomDebates [https://youtube.com/@DoomDebates], or to really take things to the next level: Donate [https://doomdebates.com/donate] 🙏 Get full access to Doom Debates at lironshapira.substack.com/subscribe [https://lironshapira.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

This Top Economist's P(Doom) Just Shot Up 10x! Noah Smith Returns To Explain His Update

Noah Smith is an economist and author of Noahpinion, one of the most popular Substacks in the world. He returns to Doom Debates to share a massive update to his P(Doom), and things get a little heated. Timestamps 00:00:00 — Cold Open 00:00:41 — Welcome Back Noah Smith! 00:01:40 — Noah's P(Doom) Update 00:03:57 — The Chatbot-Genie-God Framework 00:05:14 — What's Your P(Doom)™ 00:09:59 — Unpacking Noah's Update 00:16:56 — Why Incidents of Rogue AI Lower P(Doom) 00:20:04 — Noah's Mainline Doom Scenario: Much Worse Than COVID-19 00:23:29 — Society Responds After Growing Pains 00:29:25 — Agentic AI Contributed to Noah's Position 00:31:35 — Should Yudkowsky Get Bayesian Credit? 00:33:59 — Are We Communicating the Right Way with Policymakers? 00:40:16 — Finding Common Ground on AI Policy 00:47:07 — Wrap-Up: People Need to Be More Scared Links Doom Debate with Noah Smith — Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwmJ-OnK2I4 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwmJ-OnK2I4] Noah’s Twitter — https://x.com/noahpinion [https://x.com/noahpinion] Noah’s Substack — https://noahpinion.blog [https://noahpinion.blog] 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 [https://doomdebates.com/] and to youtube.com/@DoomDebates [https://youtube.com/@DoomDebates], or to really take things to the next level: Donate [https://doomdebates.com/donate] 🙏 Get full access to Doom Debates at lironshapira.substack.com/subscribe [https://lironshapira.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]