Former Singularity Institute President: PauseAI Is Making AI Doom WORSE

Michael Vassar used to work closely with Eliezer Yudkowsky as President of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, the organization that later became the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI). Even though his P(Doom) is in the tens of percents by 2050, he says the people trying to pause AI are "bad people”. He hopes this episode convinces me to stop being a fearmonger… but I claim the general public needs to hurry up and get more scared. All aboard the Doom Train! 🚂 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GbFng6htaQ Timestamps 00:00:00 — Cold Open 00:01:26 — Introducing Michael Vassar 00:02:39 — Shorting Boeing at the Start of COVID 00:05:41 — What's Your P(Doom)™? 00:08:11 — The Magic Dial Thought Experiment 00:10:25 — "A Treaty Between Demis and Dario" 00:13:33 — AI CEOs 20 Years Ago 00:15:59 — Lessons from Peter Thiel 00:17:47 — Riding the Doom Train™ 00:19:41 — Will the Human Brain Stay Relevant? 00:22:21 — When Does a Singleton Form? 00:28:35 — Hugging Face Hack 00:30:43 — Mistake Theory vs. Conflict Theory 00:33:18 — Debating the Orthogonality Thesis 00:36:38 — Maximally Evil AI Scenario 00:40:28 — Is the AI Development Process Safe? 00:42:05 — "PauseAI People Are Bad People" 00:44:44 — Michael Psychoanalyzes Liron 00:49:39 — How Liron Can Redeem Himself 00:55:10 — Michael Critiques Eliezer Yudkowsky 00:59:11 — Is Doomerism Bad Epistemology? 01:02:03 — Do Serious People Believe in Doom? 01:04:45 — Should Liron Stop Fearmongering? 01:07:16 — Political Violence Won't Help 01:11:04 — The Data Center Airstrike Scenario 01:13:34 — Could Every Nation Sign a Pause Treaty? 01:17:21 — What "Governance" Actually Means 01:26:12 — Michael's History with Rationalists 01:33:43 — Are We in a Computer Simulation? 01:38:43 — Wrap-Up Links Michael Vassar on X — https://x.com/HiFromMichaelV The anti-anti-normativity sequence on Natural Hazard (Michael's recommended reading) — https://naturalhazard.xyz/ben_jess_sarah_starter_pack Michael on DemystifySci #366 — "1000 Year Plan to Crush Thought" — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W17Cx21in9I Michael on The Vance Crowe Podcast #303 — Good vs. Evil — https://open.spotify.com/episode/2RzlQDSwxGbjloRKqCh1xg Michael on Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg — Preference Falsification and Postmodernism — https://podcast.clearerthinking.org/episode/028/michael-vassar-preference-falsification-and-postmodernism/ "The Survival of Noise Traders in Financial Markets" — De Long, Shleifer, Summers & Waldmann — https://www.nber.org/papers/w2715 Scott Alexander — Conflict vs. Mistake — https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/24/conflict-vs-mistake/ Scott Alexander — Kolmogorov Complicity and the Parable of Lightning — https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-and-the-parable-of-lightning/ Scott Alexander — Samsara — https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/04/samsara/ Eliezer Yudkowsky — Meta-Honesty: Firming Up Honesty Around Its Edge-Cases — https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xdwbX9pFEr7Pomaxv/meta-honesty-firming-up-honesty-around-its-edge-cases Zvi Mowshowitz — Book Review: Going Infinite — https://thezvi.substack.com/p/book-review-going-infinite Jaan Tallinn — "Why Now? A Quest in Metaphysics" (Singularity Summit 2012) — https://vimeo.com/54718573 Paul Graham — "Five Founders" (the Sam Altman essay) — https://paulgraham.com/5founders.html Truthful AI (Owain Evans' safety org) — https://truthful.ai METR — Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Tasks (the time-horizon graph) — https://metr.org/blog/2025-03-19-measuring-ai-ability-to-complete-long-tasks/ Statement on AI Risk (Center for AI Safety, 2023) — https://safe.ai/work/statement-on-ai-risk Vitalik Buterin — Will "d/acc" Protect Humanity from Superintelligent AI? — https://lironshapira.substack.com/p/debate-with-vitalik-buterin-will Holly Elmore — These Effective Altruists Betrayed Me — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFFObQ6vnLU Noah Smith — Top Economist Says P(Doom) Is 0.1% (the "AI drugs" claim) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwmJ-OnK2I4 --- Doom Debates’ Mission is to raise mainstream awareness of imminent extinction from AGI and build the social infrastructure for high-quality debate. Support the mission by subscribing to my Substack at DoomDebates.com and to youtube.com/@DoomDebates, or to really take things to the next level: Donate 🙏 Get full access to Doom Debates at lironshapira.substack.com/subscribe