Noah Smith vs. Liron Shapira — Will AI spare our lives AND our jobs?
Noah Smith vs. Liron Shapira — Will AI spare our lives AND our jobs?  
Podcast: Doom Debates
Published On: Mon Jan 05 2026
Description: Economist Noah Smith is the author of Noahpinion, one of the most popular Substacks in the world.Far from worrying about human extinction from superintelligent AI, Noah is optimistic AI will create a world where humans still have plentiful, high-paying jobs!In this debate, I stress-test his rosy outlook. Let’s see if Noah can instill us with more confidence about humanity’s rapidly approaching AI future.Timestamps00:00:00 - Episode Preview00:01:41 - Introducing Noah Smith00:03:19 - What’s Your P(Doom)™00:04:40 - Good vs. Bad Transhumanist Outcomes00:15:17 - Catastrophe vs. Total Extinction00:17:15 - Mechanisms of Doom00:27:16 - The AI Persuasion Risk00:36:20 - Instrumental Convergence vs. Peace00:53:08 - The “One AI” Breakout Scenario01:01:18 - The “Stoner AI” Theory01:08:49 - Importance of Reflective Stability01:14:50 - Orthogonality & The Waymo Argument01:21:18 - Comparative Advantage & Jobs01:27:43 - Wealth Distribution & Robot Lords01:34:34 - Supply Curves & Resource Constraints01:43:38 - Policy of Reserving Human Resources01:48:28 - Closing: The Case for OptimismLinksNoah’s Substack — https://noahpinion.blog“Plentiful, high-paying jobs in the age of AI” — https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/plentiful-high-paying-jobs-in-the“My thoughts on AI safety” — https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/my-thoughts-on-ai-safetyNoah’s Twitter — https://x.com/noahpinion---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