What Dario Amodei Misses In "The Adolescence of Technology" — Reaction With MIRI's Harlan Stewart
What Dario Amodei Misses In "The Adolescence of Technology" — Reaction With MIRI's Harlan Stewart  
Podcast: Doom Debates
Published On: Wed Feb 04 2026
Description: Harlan Stewart works in communications for the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI). In this episode, Harlan and I give our honest opinions on Dario Amodei's new essay "The Adolescence of Technology".Timestamps0:00:00 — Cold Open0:00:47 — How Harlan Stewart Got Into AI Safety0:02:30 — What’s Your P(Doom)?™0:04:09 — The “Doomer” Label0:06:13 — Overall Reaction to Dario’s Essay: The Missing Mood0:09:15 — The Rosy Take on Dario’s Essay0:10:42 — Character Assassination & Low Blows0:13:39 — Dario Amodei is Shifting the Overton Window in The Wrong Direction0:15:04 — Object-Level vs. Meta-Level Criticisms0:17:07 — The “Inevitability” Strawman Used by Dario0:19:03 — Dario Refers to Doom as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy0:22:38 — Dismissing Critics as “Too Theoretical”0:43:18 — The Problem with Psychoanalyzing AI0:56:12 — “Intellidynamics” & Reflective Stability1:07:12 — Why Is Dario Dismissing an AI Pause?1:11:45 — Final TakeawaysLinksHarlan’s X — https://x.com/HumanHarlan“The Adolescence of Technology” by Dario Amodei — https://www.darioamodei.com/essay/the-adolescence-of-technologyDoom 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