Former Singularity Institute President: PauseAI Is Making AI Doom WORSE
Former Singularity Institute President: PauseAI Is Making AI Doom WORSE  
Podcast: Doom Debates!
Published On: Tue Aug 18 2026
Description: 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=4GbFng6htaQTimestamps00:00:00 — Cold Open00:01:26 — Introducing Michael Vassar00:02:39 — Shorting Boeing at the Start of COVID00:05:41 — What's Your P(Doom)™?00:08:11 — The Magic Dial Thought Experiment00:10:25 — "A Treaty Between Demis and Dario"00:13:33 — AI CEOs 20 Years Ago00:15:59 — Lessons from Peter Thiel00:17:47 — 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 Hack00:30:43 — Mistake Theory vs. Conflict Theory00:33:18 — Debating the Orthogonality Thesis00:36:38 — Maximally Evil AI Scenario00:40:28 — Is the AI Development Process Safe?00:42:05 — "PauseAI People Are Bad People"00:44:44 — Michael Psychoanalyzes Liron00:49:39 — How Liron Can Redeem Himself00:55:10 — Michael Critiques Eliezer Yudkowsky00:59:11 — 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 Help01:11:04 — The Data Center Airstrike Scenario01:13:34 — Could Every Nation Sign a Pause Treaty?01:17:21 — What "Governance" Actually Means01:26:12 — Michael's History with Rationalists01:33:43 — Are We in a Computer Simulation?01:38:43 — Wrap-UpLinksMichael Vassar on X — https://x.com/HiFromMichaelVThe anti-anti-normativity sequence on Natural Hazard (Michael's recommended reading) — https://naturalhazard.xyz/ben_jess_sarah_starter_packMichael on DemystifySci #366 — "1000 Year Plan to Crush Thought" — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W17Cx21in9IMichael on The Vance Crowe Podcast #303 — Good vs. Evil — https://open.spotify.com/episode/2RzlQDSwxGbjloRKqCh1xgMichael 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/w2715Scott 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-casesZvi Mowshowitz — Book Review: Going Infinite — https://thezvi.substack.com/p/book-review-going-infiniteJaan Tallinn — "Why Now? A Quest in Metaphysics" (Singularity Summit 2012) — https://vimeo.com/54718573Paul Graham — "Five Founders" (the Sam Altman essay) — https://paulgraham.com/5founders.htmlTruthful AI (Owain Evans' safety org) — https://truthful.aiMETR — 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-riskVitalik Buterin — Will "d/acc" Protect Humanity from Superintelligent AI? — https://lironshapira.substack.com/p/debate-with-vitalik-buterin-willHolly Elmore — These Effective Altruists Betrayed Me — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFFObQ6vnLUNoah 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