Doom Debates!

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

Doom Debates! is a technology podcast hosted by Liron Shapira, with 182 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Liron Shapira hosts Doom Debates!, a technology show with 182 episodes published.

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  Doom Debates!

  Top Mathematicians Face Irrelevance, a 7-Year-Old's P(Doom) + The “Off Switch" Debate — Livestream May 29

  May 30, 20262h 30mS0

  <p>Liron explains the 80-year-old Erdős conjecture that a GPT model breakthrough, Scott Aaronson ponders "the last days of human relevance”, multiple live callers debate me, plus my 7-year-old son drops in to share his P(Doom)!</p><p>Timestamps</p><p>00:00:00 — Cold Open</p><p>00:00:42 — First Donation & “Why Is a Duck?”</p><p>00:02:54 — Can AI Draw “Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously”?</p><p>00:08:26 — Doom Debates Sponsors Less Online — Be Our Intern</p><p>00:10:43 — Who We Still Need to Get on the Show</p><p>00:26:44 — Claude Opus 4.8 & the Rising Waterline of Intelligence</p><p>00:28:48 — The 80-Year-Old Geometry Conjecture a GPT Model Cracked</p><p>00...

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  Doom Debates!

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

  May 23, 20262h 21mS0

  <p>***ATTENTION: We’re looking for paid help at LessOnline from June 5-7. Apply now!***</p><p>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!</p><p>Doom Debates Paid Gig in Berkeley!</p><p>Doom Debates is proudly sponsoring The LessOnline 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...

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  Doom Debates!

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

  May 21, 20262h 37mS0

  <p>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!</p><p>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.</p><p>From my perspective, Martin’s problem is that he nee...

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  Doom Debates!

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

  May 19, 20262h 3mS0

  <p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>Timestamps</p><p>00:00:00 — Cold Open</p><p>00:00:59 — Introducing Dr. Ben Goertzel</p><p>00:04:11 — How Did Ben Get Interested in AGI?</p><p>00:08:26 — Early AGI Enthusiast Community: Extropians & SL4</p><p>00:15:15 — Is There Headroom Abo...

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  Doom Debates!

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

  May 15, 20262h 16mS0

  <p>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.</p><p>Timestamps</p><p>00:00:00 — Cold Open</p><p>00:03:09 — Dr. Mike Israetel Round 2 Recap</p><p>00:14:34 — A Viewer Accuses Liron of Rationalizing</p><p>00:34:20 — Is Sam Altman Any Worse than a Typical Tech CEO?</p><p>00:45:15 — What Would Lower P(Doom) Below 10%?</p><p>00:53:25 — Can We Disconnect an ASI from the Internet?</p><p>01:05:00 — Should Doomers Boycott AI?</p><p>01:16:27 — Liron Reacts to...

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