Liron Shapira Host of Doom Debates, the #1 show for high-stakes debate about AI extinction risk.

“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.”

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

Context

Robert Wright says he has not used AI agents much himself, and Liron describes his own experience as a programmer with 20 years of professional experience. He says his work changed from writing code to directing an AI that writes and ships it. He frames it as a gradual slide, with no single day when he stopped needing to show up.

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Transcript

Doom Debates! Around 1:09:08 into the episode

Liron Shapira

…are grains of sand or whatever. Like it doesn't, the numbers just aren't going to work. So you're like secure forever. But if it turns out that there's some other algorithm that's more clever that doesn't need two to the thousand steps, then we're screwed. And that's what may happen right now.

Robert Wright

Okay. Well, that's reassuring. The yeah, it's it's not getting less weird. The funny thing is, I haven't even made that much use of this stuff. I mean, I've been so busy like writing about it and stuff that I am not fully agentized. I need to get more agentic. I

Liron Shapira

mean, I can tell you about my experience. I mean, it's been a bit of a yeah. So I have a lifetime of experience as a computer programmer, 20 years of professional experience. I've spent many hours in front of the computer looking at code. And it's, yeah, I've said this before. It's just, 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? It's still that we're still living in the same year when 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. My day-to-day experience is that I'm able to step back more and more. So back to like the frog boiling side of this…

Robert Wright

Yeah. I mean, I'm in a different line of work. And there are things I'm interested in doing, including big projects, but I haven't gotten all that far. And then the little stuff, you don't know whether it's worth the trouble. Like just today, you know, you and I had been having this conversation…

Liron Shapira

I mean, because look, I have like the pro version of this stuff. And the reason I call it pro is number one, it's like set up in a coding system where it can like download packages and you know, it's got all it's got the full computational capabilities. But the other, the other reason I call it pro…

Robert Wright

good. Yeah, even there. Anyway, how many human hours of work two years ago would it have taken to do that $1,000 worth of work, roughly?

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