DOOM LEVEL
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Latest Headlines
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OpenAI Offers A New Policy Blueprint
via Substack Zvi [999] — Right after a new Executive Order seems like an excellent time to offer OpenAI’s new document: Democratic Governance of Frontier AI: A Blueprint For A Federal Framework.
How Far Did They Go? The Persuasive Tactics of Covert LLM Agents in a Discontinued Field Experiment
via ArXiv cs.AI [5] — This study analyzes a publicly released dataset from a discontinued field experiment on Reddit's r/ChangeMyView. The intervention, conducted by unknown, external researchers and halted following ethical backlash, involved undisclosed AI-generated accounts…
Rohin Shah on AGI Safety
via LessWrong AI [6] — Rohin Shah recently had an interview on 80000 hours on his views on AGI Safety and his work at Google DeepMind. I'm posting the transcript below to encourage further discussion. I think the interview is interesting though I disagree on a bunch of topics,…
Sixteen schemes for AI safety
via LessWrong AI [5] — These days, I often run across whippersnappers excited to do something for AI safety — but aren’t quite sure what. One of the fun things about the Future Fund era were the big lists of project ideas; as we enter a new era of crazy money sloshing around, it…
AI #171: False Flag
via Substack Zvi [999] — This was the week of Claude Opus 4.8.
The Download: AI-generated lawsuits and virtual power plants for data centers
via MIT Technology Review [4] — This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. How courts are coping with a flood of AI-generated lawsuits Most days in her chambers, Judge Maritza…
How courts are coping with a flood of AI-generated lawsuits
via MIT Technology Review [4] — Most days in her chambers, Judge Maritza Braswell, a federal magistrate judge in Colorado, sifts through stacks of documents written by people without a lawyer. Many of them can’t afford to hire a lawyer, and others have cases too weak or too…
The Saturation Trap and the Subjectivity of Intervention Timing: Why Affect-Based Triggers and LLM Judges Fail to Time Interventions on Autonomous Agents
via ArXiv cs.AI [4] — As autonomous AI agents move from conversational systems to long-horizon software execution, runtime safety layers that decide when to interrupt an agent have become essential. We study this timing problem using a continuous 18-dimensional…
Society Explained: a tool for efficiently exploring >100 theories of society
via LessWrong AI [3] — There are many competing theories of how society does and should function, from Karl Marx and Adam Smith to Steven Pinker and Eliezer Yudkowsky. These theories are often hard to understand - you may need to read an entire book (or dozens of articles) to…
Trump Signs Executive Order For AI Testing Prior To Frontier Model Releases
via Substack Zvi [999] — Last week we were expecting an Executive Order on Thursday.
China won’t win the AI race but would it be much worse if it did?
via LessWrong AI [4] — It seems to me accepted wisdom in the West that the US owned labs must “beat” the Chinese labs in the race for AGI/ASI. Even those who don’t think there will be a winner, that essentially the race is to see which country’s AI will kill/disempower us first,…
Why Even Experts Don’t Know What to Do About AI Risk
via LessWrong AI [9] — AI Safety veteran Holden Karnofsky thinks there’s a 49% chance his actions are making things worse.[1]In 2025, Jesse Clifton even stepped down as the executive director of the Center on Long-Term risk because of similar reasons.Even top AI Safety…
Trump signs executive order to review AI models before they’re released
via The Verge AI [3] — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday creating a "voluntary framework" for AI companies to share their frontier models with the federal government before they're released "to promote secure innovation and strengthen the cybersecurity of…
Announcing the ARC White-Box Estimation Challenge
via Alignment Forum [999] — ARC has teamed up with AIcrowd to launch the ARC White-Box Estimation Challenge, a contest to improve upon our estimation algorithms for random MLPs. The warm-up round begins this week, and later rounds will have a total prize pool of at least…
Claude Opus 4.8: Capabilities and Reactions
via Substack Zvi [999] — You need a lot of data points to understand a new model, and what you have.
Rehumanizing global health care with agentic AI
via MIT Technology Review [4] — The global health care sector is under increasing strain. Decades of chronic underinvestment and constraints in recruitment have coincided with a surge in demand for services for aging populations. Gaps in provision are already taking a toll, with…
Advancing youth safety and opportunity through global leadership
via OpenAI Blog [7] — OpenAI calls for global action on youth AI safety through a dedicated AI Safety Institute
"Contagious Humming" to Silence a Room
via LessWrong AI [4] — Often when running meetups you’ll have several lively conversations going at the same time. This is a great problem to have, but it can make it difficult to get everyone’s attention for announcements.Try using “Contagious Humming” when you need to silence…
NYT: Senator Sanders Proposes Gov't Take 50% Ownership of AI Labs
via LessWrong AI [4] — Quoting from Senator Bernie Sanders Op-Ed in the New York Times today:(...) I will soon be introducing the American A.I. Sovereign Wealth Fund Act. This legislation would give the public a direct ownership stake in the largest A.I. companies in our…
Our views on AI policy and political advocacy
via OpenAI Blog [5] — Our approach to AI policy and political advocacy, transparency, support for thoughtful regulation and AI safety, and that no outside political group speaks on the company’s behalf.
Live Doom Meter
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0% — We're fine
100% — GG
The Doom Meter is a composite score derived from prediction markets and feed sentiment, updated daily.
70%
Prediction Markets
Weighted average of Manifold Markets questions on AI catastrophe, AGI timelines, expert surveys, and key figures. Direct doom indicators weighted higher than indirect capability markers.
30%
Feed Sentiment
Percentage of recent headlines containing high-alarm keywords (existential risk, catastrophe, extinction). Higher alarm density = higher score.
This is not a scientific estimate of existential risk. It is an opinionated, transparent signal — a vibes-based thermometer for AI doom discourse.
P(Doom) Scoreboard
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Recent Voices
We are creating something that will be more powerful than us. I don't know a good precedent for a less intelligent thing managing a more intelligent thing.
— Geoffrey Hinton, Nobel Prize Lecture, Dec 2024
If you're not worried about AI safety, you're not paying attention.
— Sen. Blumenthal, Senate AI Hearing, 2024
The probability of doom is high enough that we should be working very hard to reduce it.
— Yoshua Bengio, MILA Talk, 2024