Doom Debates!

Asian Dad Energy is a former big tech developer with an Ivy League education. We have a lot in common. We’re both:
* Software engineers;
* New-(ish) YouTube creators covering AI;
* Dads with a lot of existential angst.
But while I dread AI extincting humanity, Asian Dad has other concerns. We debate the risk of the AI bubble popping, a “techno-feudalism” scenario, and whether AI will outperform a human CEO in the near future.
Let’s find out where he gets off the Doom Train™.
Timestamps
00:00:00 — Cold Open
00:00:54 — Introducing Asian Dad Energy
00:03:36 — Asian Dad’s Career in Tech
00:09:06 — Getting Laid Off: The Job Market Is a “Hellscape”
00:12:29 — Software Engineering in 2026 vs. 2021
00:17:03 — Why Are They Investing Trillions in AI?
00:24:37 — Debate: AI Is Different Than Other Tech Bubbles
00:33:54 — Debate: AI Is Not Truly Intelligent
00:41:12 — Intellidynamics: Judge AI by Its Outputs
00:48:53 — Debate: Could AI Outperform a Human CEO?
00:56:33 — Asian Dad: AI Can’t Do Genuine Innovation
01:08:14 — What’s Your P(Doom)?™
01:13:17 — “Are You Calling Me a Scammer?”
01:14:41 — Asian Dad’s Mainline AI Doom Scenario
01:20:53 — Will AI Wipe Out Humanity by 2050?
01:29:29 — Why Is AI Doomerism “Getting Out of Control”?
01:33:11 — Debate: AI Lacks Agency
01:42:13 — Asian Dad Warns of “Techno-Feudalism” & Transhumanism
01:48:12 — Wrap-Up
Links
Asian Dad Energy (YouTube channel) — https://www.youtube.com/@AsianDadEnergy
Asian Dad Energy, “AI Doomerism Is Getting Out of Control” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bnzaG9QRG4David Deutsch, The Fabric of Reality (Amazon) — https://www.amazon.com/Fabric-Reality-Parallel-Universes-Implications/dp/014027541X
Robert Wright, The God Test (Amazon) — https://www.amazon.com/God-Test-Artificial-Intelligence-Reckoning/dp/1668061651
OpenAI model disproves the Erdős unit distance conjecture — https://openai.com/index/model-disproves-discrete-geometry-conjecture/
METR, Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Tasks — https://metr.org/blog/2025-03-19-measuring-ai-ability-to-complete-long-tasks/
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

Peter Clarke (Team Futurism) invited me on his podcast to probe the worldview of a Yudkowskian, and I ended up explaining how my 50% P(Doom) and 10% P(Foom) informs my choices.
Peter and I met at LessOnline 2026, where he was one of the participants in a live Jubilee-style debate about x-risk. This one’s a little tamer, but we still cover plenty of ground, like:
Why nuclear risk is underrated yet AI doom overshadows it;
Why nobody at AI summits is appropriately freaked out;
How Yudkowsky’s data center “airstrike” claim gets mischaracterized;
Why a superintelligence that doesn’t already value humanity won’t spare us;
And the “Icarus curve”, my techno-optimist forecast pre-superintelligence.
Subscribe to the Team Futurism podcast —https://www.youtube.com/@teamfuturism3554

Timestamps
00:00:00 — Welcoming Liron on Team Futurism
00:00:38 — How Liron Got Yudkowsky-Pilled
00:04:11 — AI 2027 and the Next Qualitative Breakthrough
00:05:52 — What’s Your P(Doom)?
00:10:22 — Why Isn’t Everyone Freaked Out?
00:13:09 — How Should We Then Live?
00:16:22 — Setting the Record Straight on Yudkowsky’s “Airstrike” Claims
00:20:54 — Two Doom Buckets: Misuse vs. Rogue AI
00:24:25 — The Bioweapon Kill Scenario
00:29:02 — The “Benevolent God” Cope
00:33:06 — Epistemology: What We’re Allowed to Know
00:40:08 — Dario’s Country of Geniuses in a Data Center
00:44:37 — The Icarus Curve
00:47:17 — Meaning and Purpose in the AI Era
00:49:32 — Wrap-Up
Links
Team Futurism on YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/@teamfuturism3554
Peter Clarke on X — https://x.com/heypeterclarke
Liron vs. 9 Rationalists at LessOnline 2026 (the “Surrounded” debate with Peter) — https://lironshapira.substack.com/p/will-ai-actually-destroy-humanity
AI 2027 — https://ai-2027.com/
“If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies” by Eliezer Yudkowsky & Nate Soares — https://ifanyonebuildsit.com/
Species | Documenting AGI, Drew Spartz’s channel — https://www.youtube.com/@AISpecies
Dario Amodei’s “Machines of Loving Grace” — https://darioamodei.com/essay/machines-of-loving-grace
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

Dr. Holly Elmore, executive director of PauseAI US, is done giving AI insiders the benefit of the doubt.
In this spicy episode, Holly calls out a number of respected figures in the AI safety community for allegedly “selling out” the cause: Effective Altruists, Anthropic & OpenAI employees, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Zvi Mowshowitz—and even yours truly!
Holly isn’t afraid to psychoanalyze her subjects, which I push back on, but I can’t deny she has a track record of pushing the Overton window and surfacing uncomfortable truths.
Does Holly’s approach risk burning bridges with allies for little benefit, or does AI safety need a moral conscience willing to call out the rot nobody else will?
Timestamps
00:00:00 — Cold Open
00:00:48 — Introducing Holly Elmore
00:02:20 — Why Holly Moved to DC
00:06:03 — What’s Your P(Doom)?™
00:07:18 — How We Got Here: EA, Rationality, AI Alignment
00:16:32 — “If Anyone Builds It” and LessWrong’s Missing Mood
00:21:47 — Holly Supports the Government’s Fable Crackdown
00:33:39 — Beef: Dean Ball (OpenAI)
00:53:09 — Beef: Eliezer Yudkowsky
00:56:14 — Beef: Zvi Mowshowitz
01:11:50 — Beef: Liron Shapira!
01:16:15 — Beef: Nirit Weiss-Blatt (Dr. Techlash) Being “Bad Faith”
01:19:31 — Anthropic Took Over EA
01:22:04 — Holly’s Basilisk: What If Building Superintelligence Becomes a Crime?
01:32:35 — Beef: Amanda Askell, the “Mother of Claude”
01:39:05 — Beef: Daniela Amodei, Co-Founder of Anthropic
01:40:23 — Beef: Joe Carlsmith, Member of Technical Staff at Anthropic
01:49:39 — Beef: Open Philanthropy / Coefficient Giving, Ben Goldhaber
01:54:28 — Wrap-Up
Links
* Support PauseAI US: https://www.pauseai-us.org/
* Holly on Twitter/X: https://x.com/ilex_ulmus
* Joe Carlsmith’s “Leaving Open Philanthropy, going to Anthropic” post: https://joecarlsmith.com/2025/11/03/leaving-open-philanthropy-going-to-anthropic/
* Dean Ball joins OpenAI announcement (FAI post): https://www.thefai.org/posts/dean-ball-joins-openai-as-head-of-strategic-futures
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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

Casey Muratori is one of the top programming educators on YouTube, with a four-decade career building videogames and popular videogame software.
We cover his positions on crypto, programming, AI’s impact on programming, and whether he takes the AI doom threat seriously.
Casey’s instinct is to break technology down like an engineer until he knows exactly how it’ll operate. Does that approach break down in the modern AI paradigm?
This is a ride on the Doom Train™ that lands on a wholly unexpected destination.
Timestamps:
00:00:00 — Cold Open
00:00:31 — Introducing Casey Muratori
00:02:07 — Recap of Crypto Series: Is Crypto Dead?
00:11:46 — On Programming & Why Coding Agents Don't Faze Casey
00:18:51 — Coding Is a Craft: Drum Machine Example
00:36:24 — Pivoting to AI: Can We Forecast Its Capabilities?
00:43:36 — Debating if AI Can Acquire Taste
00:54:59 — What's Your P(Doom)™?
01:04:11 — Even 0.1% X-Risk Is Unacceptable
01:07:34 — Modeling Uncertainty: Bayesianism vs "Tie Goes to the Catastrophe"
01:09:34 — Is This Pascal's Wager?
01:17:12 — Casey's (Cynical) Mainline Scenario
01:24:22 — Would You Un-Invent the Internet?
01:27:18 — Let's Ride the Doom Train 🚂
01:27:51 — Can AI Become Ridiculously Powerful?
01:29:11 — Will AI Preserve Humanity (Orthogonality Thesis)?
01:32:26 — Will AI Seek Power (Instrumental Convergence)?
01:36:06 — Wrap-Up
Links
Casey’s podcast, Wading Through AI (with Demetri Spanos) — https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEMXAbCVnmY6U_pA-7GKuP9xiv9utLaP4
Casey’s YouTube channel, Molly Rocket — https://www.youtube.com/@MollyRocket
@cmuratori (Casey Muratori) on X — https://x.com/cmuratori
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

Bestselling author Robert Wright has landed on a sobering conclusion: on our current trajectory, AI dystopia is likely within eight years.
We get into his P(Doom), his case for slowing down, why racing China could backfire into authoritarianism here at home, and why he thinks evolution itself might have a purpose.
Bob is the author of The Moral Animal and Nonzero, a Pulitzer finalist, and hosts the excellent Nonzero podcast.
Get his new book, The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning.
Timestamps
00:00:00 — Cold Open
00:00:50 — Introducing Robert Wright
00:03:21 — What Is The God Test?
00:04:59 — AI as Evolutionary Force, Not Normal Technology
00:07:34 — AI Heaven vs AI Hell
00:09:09 — Bob's Background: From Hinton in 1983 to Today
00:16:09 — What's Your P(Doom)?™
00:20:09 — The Mainline Scenario: Dystopia in 8 Years
00:22:04 — Destabilization and the Road to Authoritarianism
00:25:35 — Why Racing China Backfires
00:28:37 — Slowing Down AI + Would Bob Support PauseAI?
00:32:38 — Intellidynamics and Why AIs Collude
00:44:44 — Hinton's Warning and How LLMs Discover Meaning
00:53:48 — Symbol Grounding and Killing Searle's Chinese Room
01:02:03 — Let's Talk About God
01:10:14 — Orthogonality, Power, and the Concentration Problem
01:16:31 — Wrap-Up
Links
Get Bob’s new book, “The God Test” — https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-God-Test/Robert-Wright/9781668061657
Follow Bob on X — https://x.com/robertwrighter
“If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies” by Eliezer Yudkowsky & Nate Soares (referenced) — https://ifanyonebuildsit.com
Join the Doom Debates Discord — https://discord.gg/g2X8h5UCrU
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