I Called Out a16z Partner (Martin Casado) for Downplaying AI Capabilities in 2024

Anthropic's New Hire Should WORRY You, AI is a Math Genius, Live Callers! — Livestream (May 22)

***ATTENTION: We’re looking for paid help at LessOnline from June 5-7. Apply now!*** OpenAI pushes the frontier of mathematics, Anthropic hires Andrej Karpathy to work on recursive self-improvement, live callers challenge the doom argument, and we've got a soundboard! Doom Debates Paid Gig in Berkeley! Doom Debates is proudly sponsoring The LessOnline [https://less.online/] conference this year and we got a merch table in the courtyard! We need 2 people to help represent the show — hand out T-shirts, talk to attendees, and spread the good word about Doom Debates. If you’re a regular viewer of the show, you probably know enough. Just be knowledgeable, friendly and helpful! * 💰We pay you $500 to help out during the entire Fri-Sun event * 🎟️ Plus you get FREE admission to the conference ($675 value) This is best suited for someone local to the SF Bay Area or who can arrange accommodations. If you’re interested, send an email to internship@doomdebates.com or DM Producer Ori on Discord [https://discord.gg/g2X8h5UCrU]. Tell us a little about yourself and your availability for all 3 days. Thanks! Links Less Online conference (June 5–7, Berkeley) — https://less.online [https://less.online] Doom Debates Discord — https://discord.gg/g2X8h5UCrU [https://discord.gg/g2X8h5UCrU] OpenAI — “An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry” — https://openai.com/index/model-disproves-discrete-geometry-conjecture/ [https://openai.com/index/model-disproves-discrete-geometry-conjecture/] Timestamps 00:00:00 — Welcome + New Soundboard! 00:09:27 — Doom Debates Is Sponsoring Less Online 00:17:30 — Ben Goertzel Episode Recap 00:27:30 — Goertzel's Alignment Blind Spot 00:34:21 — OpenAI Disproves an 80-Year-Old Erdős Conjecture 00:41:00 — David Deutsch Says "Amazing" 00:50:31 — Eliezer Yudkowsky's Job Replacement Progression 00:54:07 — Anthropic's $44 Billion Run Rate 01:07:45 — Schadenfreude Week: Liron Loses $10K 01:13:04 — Teaching Ezra Prediction Markets 01:18:11 — Caller Williawa: Is the Goal Engine Argument Effective? 01:37:00 — Caller Will: Brain Rot and Idiocracy 01:55:04 — Anthropic Hires Karpathy for Recursive Self-Improvement 01:57:16 — Rob Wiblin Says Recursive Self-Improvement Should be "Illegal" 02:01:37 — Caller Henry: The Chicken Riddle 02:08:41 — David Sacks Kills the AI Executive Order 02:11:20 — The Philanthropy Tidal Wave 02:15:56 — Donate to Doom Debates 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 Called Out a16z Partner (Martin Casado) for Downplaying AI Capabilities in 2024

Now that Doom Debates is almost 2 years old, enough time has passed that we can revisit my claims from 2024. I claim they’ve been aging well! In this early episode, I react to Martin Casado, a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) who claims that AI is basically just a buzzword for statistical models and simulations. As a result of this worldview, he only predicts incremental AI progress that doesn’t pose an existential threat to humanity, and he sees AI regulation as a net negative. From my perspective, Martin’s problem is that he needs to go beyond analyzing AI as just statistical models and simulations, and analyze it using the more predictive concept of “intelligence” in the sense of hitting tiny high-value targets in exponentially-large search spaces.If Martin appreciated that intelligence is a quantifiable property that algorithms have, and that our existing AIs are getting close to surpassing human-level general intelligence, then hopefully he’d come around to raising his P(doom) and appreciating the urgent extinction risk we face. Links Watch the original episode of the Cognitive Revolution podcast with Martin and host Nathan Labenz — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ7788oKoss [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ7788oKoss] Follow Martin — https://x.com/martin_casado [https://x.com/martin_casado] Follow Nate — https://x.com/labenz [https://x.com/labenz] Follow Liron — https://x.com/liron [https://x.com/liron] Timestamps 00:00 Introducing Martin Casado 01:42 Martin’s AGI Timeline 05:39 Martin’s Analysis of Self-Driving Cars 15:30 Heavy-Tail Distributions 38:03 Understanding General Intelligence 38:29 AI's Progress in Specific Domains 43:20 AI’s Understanding of Meaning 47:16 Compression and Intelligence 48:09 Symbol Grounding 53:24 Human Abstractions and AI 01:18:18 The Frontier of AI Applications 01:23:04 Human vs. AI: Concept Creation and Reasoning 01:25:51 The Complexity of the Universe and AI's Limitations 01:28:16 AI's Potential in Biology and Simulation 01:32:40 The Essence of Intelligence and Creativity in AI 01:41:13 AI's Future Capabilities 02:00:29 Intelligence vs. Simulation 02:14:59 AI Regulation 02:23:05 Concluding Thoughts --- 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]

Ben Goertzel Wants to Build AGI Even FASTER — AI Doom Debate

Dr. Ben Goertzel is a pioneering AI researcher, entrepreneur, and author who has helped organize AGI as a research field since the 2000s through books, workshops, and conferences. We talk about the early days of AGI research with Yudkowsky, get Ben’s timeline to the singularity, and I try to understand what makes him so optimistic that superintelligence will be beneficial for humanity. Timestamps 00:00:00 — Cold Open 00:00:59 — Introducing Dr. Ben Goertzel 00:04:11 — How Did Ben Get Interested in AGI? 00:08:26 — Early AGI Enthusiast Community: Extropians & SL4 00:15:15 — Is There Headroom Above Human Intelligence? 00:19:53 — Can Superintelligent AI Kill Everyone? 00:28:25 — Ben’s AGI Timeline: 2029 00:36:00 — What Modern AI Is Missing 00:42:01 — AGI to Superintelligence — FOOM in a Matter of Months 00:46:34 — What’s Your P(Doom)?™ 00:53:37 — Ben’s Case for AI Acceleration 01:03:50 — The Orthogonality Thesis Is “Dishonest” 01:13:43 — Liron: Moore’s Law for Goal Achievement 01:23:50 — Ben: Alignment Is Just Good Parenting 01:27:36 — Alignment in Practice: OmegaCLAW 01:35:47 — Creating Stable Goals Under Self-Modification 01:45:22 — SingularityNET, OpenBGI, and the ASI Alliance 01:57:31 — The $ASI Token Economy 02:01:15 — Closing Links Ben Goertzel on X — https://x.com/bengoertzel [https://x.com/bengoertzel] SingularityNET — https://singularitynet.io/ [https://singularitynet.io/] OpenBGI — https://openbgi.com/ [https://openbgi.com/] Hyperon AGI Framework — https://hyperon.dev/ [https://hyperon.dev/] OmegaCLAW on GitHub — https://github.com/asi-alliance/OmegaClaw-Core [https://github.com/asi-alliance/OmegaClaw-Core] ASI Alliance — https://superintelligence.io/ [https://superintelligence.io/] The Consciousness Explosion (book) — https://theconsciousnessexplosion.ai/ [https://theconsciousnessexplosion.ai/] “The Singularity Institute’s Scary Idea (and Why I Don’t Buy It)” (2010) — http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.com/2010/10/singularity-institutes-scary-idea-and.html [http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.com/2010/10/singularity-institutes-scary-idea-and.html] Ken Stanley Debate — https://lironshapira.substack.com/p/debate-with-a-former-openai-research [https://lironshapira.substack.com/p/debate-with-a-former-openai-research] 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]

NEWS: Trump & Xi Want AI Guardrails, ChatGPT vs Claude, and Liron Caught Rationalizing!? DD Live (5/15)

We recap the Dr. Mike Israetel debate and dig into the nuances of rationality vs. rationalization. Then onto the week's biggest news: Anthropic dethroning OpenAI, Trump and Xi Jinping exploring AI guardrails, and Liron's own company AI going rogue. Timestamps 00:00:00 — Cold Open 00:03:09 — Dr. Mike Israetel Round 2 Recap 00:14:34 — A Viewer Accuses Liron of Rationalizing 00:34:20 — Is Sam Altman Any Worse than a Typical Tech CEO? 00:45:15 — What Would Lower P(Doom) Below 10%? 00:53:25 — Can We Disconnect an ASI from the Internet? 01:05:00 — Should Doomers Boycott AI? 01:16:27 — Liron Reacts to ThePrimeagen Reacting to the Yud Debate 01:26:13 — Ben Goertzel Episode Preview 01:38:10 — Scrolling Twitter: MIRI, Ryan Greenblatt 01:47:32 — Liron’s AI Goes Rogue at Work 01:49:15 — “Positive Alignment” Paper Gets Destroyed 01:58:30 — Anthropic Dethrones OpenAI 02:12:06 — Trump & Xi Talk AI Guardrails Links Zvi Mowshowitz AI roundup blog — https://thezvi.wordpress.com/ [https://thezvi.wordpress.com/] “The Bottom Line” by Eliezer Yudkowsky (LessWrong) — https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/34XxbRFe54FycoCDw/the-bottom-line [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/34XxbRFe54FycoCDw/the-bottom-line] Rationality: From AI to Zombies by Eliezer Yudkowsky — https://intelligence.org/rationality-ai-zombies/ [https://intelligence.org/rationality-ai-zombies/] Less Online 2026 conference (June 5–7) — https://less.online/ [https://less.online/] 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]

Who Was Liron Shapira BEFORE Doom Debates? — Interview on Theo Jaffee's Podcast from December 2023

In December 2023, I joined the Theo Jaffee Podcast to talk about a wide range of topics including non-AI x-risks, where I disagree with Eliezer Yudkwowsky, cryptocurrency and if P(Doom) is rigorous. This episode was recorded 6 months before I'd started Doom Debates. Let's look back with the power of hindsight and see if my answers still hold up. Links #10: Liron Shapira — AI doom, FOOM, rationalism, and crypto (YouTube) — https://youtu.be/YfEcAtHExFM [https://youtu.be/YfEcAtHExFM] Watch Theo Jafee now on MTS — https://www.mts.now/ [https://www.mts.now/] MTS Live — https://x.com/MTSlive [https://x.com/MTSlive] Timestamps 00:00:00 — Theo's Introduction 00:01:03 — Is Liron Worried About Non-AI Existential Risks 00:03:36 — Suffering Risks 00:05:22 — Is P(Doom) rigorous? 00:09:42 — Is Eliezer Overestimating P(Doom)? 00:12:18 — Where Does Liron Disagree with Eliezer? 00:15:43 — What Would Change Liron's Mind 00:17:14 — Elon Musk's AI Timelines 00:18:34 — Is xAI Making Things Worse? 00:20:24 — The Case for an AI Manhattan Project 00:22:32 — Are Superforecasters Wrong About AI Risk? 00:26:02 — The Race Against Time for Alignment 00:28:01 — Headroom Above Human Intelligence 00:33:31 — Vitalik's d/acc Framework 00:35:23 — Edging Toward Superintelligence 00:38:21 — From Chatbot to World-Ender 00:41:55 — GPT Paradigm vs. AlphaZero 00:43:18 — Critiquing AI Optimism 00:48:29 — Deceptive Alignment and Gradient Descent 00:53:31 — Does Nice Training Data Make Nice AI? 00:57:57 — How Do You Live with 50% P(Doom)? 01:00:08 — Why Have Kids If the World Might End?01:02:16 — Israel vs Hamas 01:06:15 — How LessWrong Changed Liron's Lif e01:08:42 — Rationalism and Effective Altruism 01:14:49 — Why Blockchain Has No Use Case Beyond Cryptocurrency 01:22:13 — Charlie Munger and Richard Feynman 01:24:38 — Closing 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]