Doom Debates — Serious AI X-Risk Debates as Mainstream Infotainment

New York and San Francisco

Doom Debates is a modern "infotainment" show that functions as a mainstream-accessible forum for top thinkers to have a high-quality conversation & debate about AI extinction risk.

Endorsed by

Ryan+2

Doom Debates is a modern "infotainment" show that functions as a mainstream-accessible forum for top thinkers to have a high-quality conversation & debate about AI extinction risk.

Endorsed by

Ryan+2

Project Details

We engage with top intellectuals on AI extinction risk publicly & substantively

Doom Debates hosts discussions & debates with prominent intellectuals and media personalities. These help move the Overton window to where everyone is expected to have a thoughtful position on AI extinction risk, and ideally one that doesn’t dismiss it as meaningless or <1% chance.

Since 2024, we’ve been building society-wide common knowledge that experts, leaders, and famous people of every kind are taking AI extinction risk seriously.

Doom Debates Team

Host: Liron Shapira

Producer: Ori Nagel

Producer Interns: Alfred Churchill and Ronak Saxena

Our guests have included:

Max Tegmark
Dean Ball
Vitalik Buterin
Emad Mostaque
Gary Marcus
Tristan Harris
Michael Levitt (Nobel Prize)
Moshe Vardi (Turing Award)
Noah Smith
Roman Yampolskiy
Carl Feynman
Emmett Shear
Richard Hanania
Holly Elmore
Robin Hanson
Scott Sumner
Keith Duggar (Machine Learning Street Talk)
Daniel Holz (Chair of the Doomsday Clock organization)
Ken Stanley
Audrey Tang
George Hotz
Bentham's Bulldog
Roon
Eliezer Yudkowsky (interview on separate channel)

I’ve also been invited to appear on or collaborate with:

Dr. Phil, Jubilee "Middle Ground", Destiny, Mike Israetel, Rob Miles, Siliconversations, Wes Roth, Robert Wright, Steve Bannon's War Room, Prepper News, The Cognitive Revolution, The Bayesian Conspiracy, The Cosmopolatin Globalist, Universe Today, Primer

Praise for Doom Debates

Nathan Labenz
- “I generally don’t like debates as a format, but by getting such outstanding guests as Max [Tegmark] and Dean [Ball] to focus in on what is very plausibly the most important question of our time, that is, how likely is it that advanced AI will in fact go catastrophically wrong, Liron is making the format work, and I definitely encourage everyone to subscribe.”
Scott Aaronson
- “Liron Shapira created a point-by-point video response to my podcast with Liv Boeree, focused on the parts about AI safety. I finally had a chance to watch it today. The response is great, including the many parts where Liron tears me a new asshole! Highly recommended.”
Tristan Harris
- “Liron, deeply appreciate how you've been trying to deepen the discourse about AI risk in the public sector. You've had a diversity of great minds on here, and honored for what you're doing and appreciate what you're doing.”
Bentham’s Bulldog
- “I highly recommend Liron Shapira’s show!”
Zvi Mowshowitz
- “These are strong guests… I do love that he is doing this”
Canadian Prepper
- The YouTube channel Doom Debates: quickly becoming one of my favorite sources for information with respect to the developments in artificial intelligence…You're a great science communicator.”
The Cosmopolitan Globalist
- "I highly recommend this newsletter, and the author's YouTube channel, for vigorous debates about the risks of AI. You'll find all views represented and rigorously debated, doomer & accelerationist alike, by people in an excellent position to know what they're talking about. Whenever you're told that only ninnies worry about AI risk, check to see whether that argument has been discussed here and see what you make of the rebuttals."
Joe Allen, Host of Bannon’s War Room
- “What I really appreciate about your show is that you're not just simply berating people. You're not necessarily an evangelist. You are holding your ideas and other people's ideas up to scrutiny.…I cannot recommend enough the Doom Debate platform.”
Liv Boeree
- “You're having really important conversations on a very narrow topic in a way that no one else is really doing, so it's awesome.”

Audience Growth

The show gets over 20,000 YouTube watch-hours/month and over 10,000 podcast downloads/month.

Since we’re anticipating a rapid increase in mainstream interest in the topic of AI extinction risk, we believe Doom Debates is well positioned to grow these metrics by 10-100x in the next 1-3 years. (For comparison, Dwarkesh Podcast is currently about 25x ahead of Doom Debates in terms of watch & listen time.)

Theory of Impact

We plan to help millions gain a deeper, more nuanced, more useful, and more actionable understanding of AI extinction risk.

To that end, we will continue to:

Produce a consistent stream of high-quality interviews and debates with thought leaders across a wide spectrum of AI x-risk positions
Document, probe and challenge the nuanced & evolving claims and arguments put forward
Provide consistent, timely, mainstream-accessible analysis from an informed and AI-extinction-risk-concerned viewpoint

These impacts scale with the show's audience and caliber of guests. Funding production operations (e.g. research, content prep, editing, guest outreach) accelerates the show's growth & impact snowball, wherein a larger audience attracts higher-caliber guests who attract a larger audience.

I believe funding Doom Debates has a high marginal impact because the show is taking a clear shot at filling a gap in mainstream AI x-risk discourse that could be highly influential and highly positive, and it doesn’t seem like other projects are directly competing with us to fill the same gap.

People

Liron Shapira

Team Member

Funding Details

Start Date: Jun 1, 2024
End Date: -
Expected Duration: -
Funding Raised to Date: -
Annual Budget: -
Monthly Burn Rate: -
Current Runway: -
Funding Goal: -
Funding Stage: Need funding ASAP
Fiscal Sponsor: Manifold for Charity

Grants Received

Add grant

YouTube ad revenue in last 12 months

from YouTube

$5,000

Viewer donations in last 12 months

from Over 70 individuals

$200,000

Funding Asks

grantmaking.ai Launch Round

Applied

Minimum

$50,000

Ideal

$200,000

What this ask is

We engage with top intellectuals on AI extinction risk publicly & substantively

Since 2024, we’ve been building society-wide common knowledge that experts, leaders, and famous people of every kind are taking AI extinction risk seriously.

Doom Debates Team

Host: Liron Shapira

Producer: Ori Nagel

Producer Interns: Alfred Churchill and Ronak Saxena

Our guests have included:

Max Tegmark
Dean Ball
Vitalik Buterin
Emad Mostaque
Gary Marcus
Tristan Harris
Michael Levitt (Nobel Prize)
Moshe Vardi (Turing Award)
Noah Smith
Roman Yampolskiy
Carl Feynman
Emmett Shear
Richard Hanania
Holly Elmore
Robin Hanson
Scott Sumner
Keith Duggar (Machine Learning Street Talk)
Daniel Holz (Chair of the Doomsday Clock organization)
Ken Stanley
Audrey Tang
George Hotz
Bentham's Bulldog
Roon
Eliezer Yudkowsky (interview on separate channel)

I’ve also been invited to appear on or collaborate with:

Praise for Doom Debates

Nathan Labenz
- “I generally don’t like debates as a format, but by getting such outstanding guests as Max [Tegmark] and Dean [Ball] to focus in on what is very plausibly the most important question of our time, that is, how likely is it that advanced AI will in fact go catastrophically wrong, Liron is making the format work, and I definitely encourage everyone to subscribe.”
Scott Aaronson
- “Liron Shapira created a point-by-point video response to my podcast with Liv Boeree, focused on the parts about AI safety. I finally had a chance to watch it today. The response is great, including the many parts where Liron tears me a new asshole! Highly recommended.”
Tristan Harris
- “Liron, deeply appreciate how you've been trying to deepen the discourse about AI risk in the public sector. You've had a diversity of great minds on here, and honored for what you're doing and appreciate what you're doing.”
Bentham’s Bulldog
- “I highly recommend Liron Shapira’s show!”
Zvi Mowshowitz
- “These are strong guests… I do love that he is doing this”
Canadian Prepper
- The YouTube channel Doom Debates: quickly becoming one of my favorite sources for information with respect to the developments in artificial intelligence…You're a great science communicator.”
The Cosmopolitan Globalist
- "I highly recommend this newsletter, and the author's YouTube channel, for vigorous debates about the risks of AI. You'll find all views represented and rigorously debated, doomer & accelerationist alike, by people in an excellent position to know what they're talking about. Whenever you're told that only ninnies worry about AI risk, check to see whether that argument has been discussed here and see what you make of the rebuttals."
Joe Allen, Host of Bannon’s War Room
- “What I really appreciate about your show is that you're not just simply berating people. You're not necessarily an evangelist. You are holding your ideas and other people's ideas up to scrutiny.…I cannot recommend enough the Doom Debate platform.”
Liv Boeree
- “You're having really important conversations on a very narrow topic in a way that no one else is really doing, so it's awesome.”

Audience Growth

The show gets over 20,000 YouTube watch-hours/month and over 10,000 podcast downloads/month.

How the money will be spent

We spend $150k/year on production. $50k gets us to the end of 2026:

Producer salary: $120k
Producer interns and other outside production help: $30k

This doesn't include the value of my (Liron's) time. I have not been drawing any income from Doom Debates in 2024-2025, and commit to also not drawing income from Doom Debates in 2026-2027.

Discussion

Ankur PandeyEndorsement17d

Watched many episodes & loved them. Debates over podcast FTW.

Romain DelégliseEndorsement17d

Excellent show, thanks Liron !