About this episode
ATTENTION DOOM DEBATES LISTENERS:We interrupt our usual programming to request that you consider supporting the show.Do you want your family, children & friends to continue living life through these next 10-20 years and beyond? Want to experience the good future where we benefit from research advances that make us healthier, happier, wiser, and longer-lived? Want our descendants to continue flourishing for trillions of millennia?I sure as hell do. I’m thrilled and inspired by the grand future within our reach… Sadly, I’m VERY worried that artificial intelligence may soon cause human extinction, leaving the future permanently devoid of the incredible potential value it once had.I want to safeguard humanity’s chance at participating in the expansive future. I want to swerve away from a premature “GAME OVER” ending. That’s why I started Doom Debates.The MissionDoom Debates’s mission is twofold:* Raise awareness of AI existential risk* Raise the quality of discourse that people can engage with and trustThe mission is achieved when the average person realizes AI is life-threatening.Until the average person on Earth sees unaligned, uncontrollable superintelligent AI as life-threatening — that is, an imminent threat to their life and to everything they hold dear — it won’t be feasible for leaders to drive major decisive action to protect us from extinction from superintelligent AI. That’s why raising mainstream awareness of AI x-risk is Doom Debates’s point of highest leverage.Encouragingly, surveys already show that mainstream opinion is already on our side about the level and severity of AI x-risk. What’s missing is urgency. Moving the average person’s opinion from “worried, but in an abstract long-term way” to “alarmed, in an urgent way” creates grassroots demand for drastically better AI policy, and drastically better-informed policymakers.We needed this shift to happen yesterday; it feels late to have to drive it now. But we have no choice.By providing high-quality interviews and debates with mainstream appeal, we’ll make millions of people realize as soon as possible: “Hey, P(doom) is too damn high RIGHT NOW. And we need to do something about it URGENTLY!”One Weird Trick You Can Do To HelpIf you care about the show’s mission, the #1 way you can help right now is by donating some of your hard-earned cash money ?.Spending on production & marketing accelerates the show’s growth, which achieves our mission faster (hopefully before it’s too late). Read on for more details.Where Does The Money Go?I don’t make money from Doom Debates. My “real job” is running an online relationship coaching service, and my passion project is making this show. Any income from Doom Debates, i.e. viewer donations and ad revenue,