DD Doom Debates!

Podcast

Doom Debates!

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

Website ↗ Last published 3 November 2026 219 posts collected by Sputnik

Said on Doom Debates!

“All of the money in the world, trillions and trillions of dollars, probably will not move public opinion on this very much if it's coming from big tech and their friends. Because the American people don't trust them. … They're being told by the companies, AI is going to replace you, it's going to take your job. … And then they're being told this could actually wipe out humanity. This could kill you. So why would anybody support this other than they financially have a stake in it?” — Brendan Steinhauser, Doom Debates!
Brendan Steinhauser · 3 Nov 2026 Listen →
“We hear a lot from Republicans of like, well, if we don't do it, China's going to do it. Here's the secret: it doesn't matter if it's American-made superintelligence or Chinese-made superintelligence. Superintelligence is not going to be controlled by its creator. It is going to be able to control its own destiny. … This technology is not going to be controlled by any one government or any one person or any one company. That's the whole premise of loss of control.” — Randan Steinhauser, Doom Debates!
Randan Steinhauser · 3 Nov 2026 Listen →
“We don't allow automobile companies to self-govern, or the aviation industry, or even food trucks. We have more regulations on barbershops and food trucks than we have on this technology. … We might not like the word regulation, but what are we doing? We're giving them a free pass to develop this technology safely under their terms, under their conditions. That's just not acceptable.” — Randan Steinhauser, Doom Debates!
Randan Steinhauser · 3 Nov 2026 Listen →
“I think the number one takeaway here is that this is the final nail in the coffin of the Ed Zitron camp, right? This idea that, like, look, sure, Anthropic is making tokens, but they're just borrowing from NVIDIA, right? And all these companies are just like in a circle, like throwing money at each other, and there's no value being generated. There were so many data points from the Anthropic S1 that put the nail in the coffin of that kind of speculation. So, number one is just like the cash flow. It was very clear that when Anthropic is serving a model, the margins on serving the model are huge. They were talking like 50, 60, 70, 80%, like depending on how you account for it. But like, yeah, they serve a model. They're printing money. Like, serving the model is printing money.” — Liron Shapira, Doom Debates!
Liron Shapira · 31 Oct 2026 Listen →
“As of a year ago, I had this theory when people were saying, where's the productivity growth? … But I had this theory that what was actually happening was that the workers who had figured out how to use AI weren't telling their bosses. They were just spending their day at the beach, right? And so they're still getting as much money as they were to do the same amount of work they were doing. So the productivity growth doesn't show up unless you count beach time.” — Robert Wright, Doom Debates!
Robert Wright · 31 Oct 2026 Listen →
“It's always been my experience throughout most of my life where I'm like, yeah, this is like the peak of my brain. I'm understanding this with so much nuance. Like computers are so far from being able to do this. And then literally in a period of months, I still remember it was March this year, right? … my entire career entered a completely new phase where now I don't write code at all. I just tell AI to write code. Like I've become a product manager. And of course, the AI is on my heels being its own product manager.” — Liron Shapira, Doom Debates!
Liron Shapira · 31 Oct 2026 Listen →
“Look, the main reason GPT doesn't kill everybody is because it can't. Like simple as that. Even if it tried its hardest right now, it can't quite do it. It doesn't have quite enough intelligence for whatever reason. … But Sam Altman is like declaring victory, or it's like saying, look, I have this baby tiger and we've managed to restrain the baby tiger from slashing everybody to death. It's like, right, because it's just, it's not even that good at slashing yet.” — Liron Shapira, Doom Debates!
Liron Shapira · 31 Oct 2026 Listen →
“The reason why I think nobody's said the word AI winter for a couple of years, like after 2023, people are like, okay, this is a nice AI summer. We're probably going to head into AI winter. But it's like, oh, AI winter is canceled. And I think the reason is now because the AI itself is doing so much AI research and there's so many cascading effects. Like we've cracked enough of the problem wide open that I think we're done with AI winters. I think it's just AI summer till the end now.” — Liron Shapira, Doom Debates!
Liron Shapira · 31 Oct 2026 Listen →
“If I had to tell a story, I could tell a trillion stories of all the ways where we could stop. And whereas the doomers have to tell this like two, three, five stories where like we'll never catch them… That's like kind of the crux of the problem. It's like everything has to go right in this doomer story for them to pull it off.” — Zack Korman, Doom Debates!
Zack Korman · 27 Oct 2026 Listen →
“We were expressly told by OpenPhil not to talk to the U.S. government to really do much of anything on the AI risk issue. Because if you talk to the U.S. government, you see, they're going to hear you say AGI is going to be a really big deal. … And then they're going to ignore everything you say about the risk. They're going to do a Manhattan project and just get us killed sooner. That was literally the frame that we were given by multiple people at OpenPhil at the time.” — Jeremie Harris, Doom Debates!
Jeremie Harris · 20 Oct 2026 Listen →
“It's an open secret that a lot of the people in the frontier labs will tell you 10% or more when what they really mean is like 70%.” — Jeremie Harris, Doom Debates!
Jeremie Harris · 20 Oct 2026 Listen →
“There's this huge talent farming operation. And AI alignment is the highest status cause for a decade. … There's all of this talent ready to work at places like OpenAI and Anthropic. And Anthropic is just EA now. … Without those talent bases, I don't think we would be in the situation we're in today.” — Holly Elmore, Doom Debates!
Holly Elmore · 13 Oct 2026 Listen →

Hosts

Doom Debates! is hosted by John Sherman , Peter Clarke , LG Doucet , Gaëtan Selle and Theo Jaffee .

Recent Episodes

  1. 3 Nov 2026

    Can Republicans STOP AI Doom? — Brendan & Randan Steinhauser

    With Brendan Steinhauser and Randan Steinhauser

  2. 31 Oct 2026

    Is an AI Bubble Bursting? With Robert Wright’s Nonzero Podcast

    With Robert Wright

  3. 27 Oct 2026

    Zack Korman, Cybersecurity Expert, Is Confident That Humanity Will SURVIVE

    With Zack Korman

  4. 20 Oct 2026

    “AI Chernobyl” Will Scare Trump and Xi To Order An Immediate Pause — Jeremie & Edouard Harris

    With Edouard Harris and Jeremie Harris

  5. 13 Oct 2026

    The Case Against Eliezer Yudkowsky — with Holly Elmore, PauseAI US

    With Holly Elmore

  6. 7 Oct 2026

    AI Has Become Profoundly WEIRD, But Is Anyone Noticing? With Sarah Hastings-Woodhouse

    With Sarah Hastings-Woodhouse

  7. 2 Oct 2026

    Trump and the AI Safety Vibe Shift, With Robert Wright | Nonzero × Doom Debates

    With Robert Wright and David Sachs

  8. 29 Sep 2026

    Eliezer Yudkowsky Tried to “Coup the World”?! — Garrison Lovely, Author of OBSOLETE

    With Garrison Lovely

  9. 23 Sep 2026

    Will AI Kill Everyone by 2050? Debate with Dr. Casey Hart (Ontology Explained)

    With Casey Hart

  10. 15 Sep 2026

    Top Safety Researchers Forecast Jobpocalypse & Doom — Adam Khoja & Richard Ren, Center for AI Safety

    With Adam Khoja and Richard Ren

  11. 12 Sep 2026

    The Week in AI that Changed the World, With Robert Wright | Nonzero × Doom Debates

  12. 12 Sep 2026

    The Week in AI that Changed the World, With Robert Wright | Nonzero × Doom Debates

    With Robert Wright

Guests

Robert Wright (8 episodes), Holly Elmore (6 episodes), Mike Israetel (3 episodes), Tsvi Benson-Tilsen (3 episodes), Matthew Adelstein (3 episodes), Max Tegmark (3 episodes), Adam Khoja (3 episodes), Richard Ren (2 episodes), Liv Boeree (2 episodes), Michael Vassar (2 episodes), Roko Mijic (2 episodes), Gary Marcus (2 episodes), and 90 more.