Jeremie Harris Physicist-turned AI startup founder who co-founded the AI safety company Gladstone AI and the AI mentorship marketplace SharpestMinds.

“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%.”

Doom Debates! · AI Research & Frontier Labs · October 2026

Asked for his "P(doom)", the chance that AI goes catastrophically wrong, Harris puts his own estimate at 60 to 70% if things carry on as they are. He then says people at the labs tend to understate their own numbers in public, though he thinks deliberate action can still change the outcome.

Doom Debates! · 2026-10-20 Listen to the episode → More from Jeremie Harris → More AI Research & Frontier Labs quotes →

Transcript

Doom Debates! Around 1:20:52 into the episode

Speaker 3

…say that I think it's starting to matter between 10 and 90%. And the reason I'm saying that is as we contemplate scenarios like the phone call, the sort of Trump she phone call, we actually do have to weigh what is the probability of escalation to nuclear war with our adversaries. And what's that?

Edouard Harris

That's a good point. Yeah. No, you're right. We're in a new regime.

Speaker 3

…say there's the agentic version of this and there's the non-agentic version of this. If we just like in a vacuum, say, you know, things proceed as they appear to be proceeding, like, what's your P doom? I'm pretty goddamn pessimistic. And, you know, some combination of weaponization versus loss of control. I don't know. I might be sitting at like 60, 70%, something like that. By the way, I mean, 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%. And I think that's its own problem. But like agentically, we actually can do stuff. We'll have to surprise ourselves with the level of agency we demonstrate, but I think we absolutely can do it. We've done it before in cases like COVID. And weirdly, and this sounds like it should be priced in. I don't know how to price this in. I expect us to do something super agentic. I hope it's not something…

Liron Shapira

Got it. Got it. Okay. Last question I want to ask you guys is so PAS AI US. I'm a volunteer for that organization. Also Pause AI Global. I'm part of that as well. Do you think that those movements are net positive or negative?

Speaker 3

Ed, do you have a take on this? I need a second to think about this.

Edouard Harris

Um it's very so there was always going to be a focus point for such things, I think. I can't confidently answer the question, I think. I'm not I'm not actually sure.

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

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