P(doom)

In the AI safety field, P(doom) is the probability of existentially catastrophic outcomes (so-called "doomsday scenarios") as a result of artificial intelligence. The exact outcomes in question differ from one prediction to another, but generally allude to the existential risk from artificial intelligence. Economic analyses show that even small existential risks due to AI would justify substantial investments in AI safety and alignment research.

The term was initially used as a shorthand for communication in the rationalist community (presumably first used by programmer Tim Tyler in a 2009 comment on LessWrong) and among AI researchers. It came to prominence in 2023 following the release of GPT-4, as high-profile figures such as Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio began to warn of the risks of AI. In a 2023 survey, AI researchers were asked to estimate the probability that future AI advancements could lead to human extinction or similarly severe and permanent disempowerment within the next 100 years. The mean value from the responses was 14.4%, with a median value of 5%.

Some have criticized the concept of P(doom), arguing that the term is ambiguous and can alienate general audiences from AI risk discussions. Points of ambiguity include what scenarios qualify as "doom", the time frame that the probability covers, and the conditions that are assumed.

Notable P(doom) values

Name Image P(doom) Date Notes Ref.
15 15 <1% 2026-09-10 American computer scientist and software engineer, founder of 15.ai
Scott Aaronson Scott Aaronson 5-50% 2026-10-27 American theoretical computer scientist and Schlumberger Centennial Chair of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin
Sam Altman Sam Altman >0% 2025-10-01 CEO of OpenAI
Dario Amodei Dario Amodei 10-25% 2025-09-17 CEO of Anthropic
Marc Andreessen Marc Andreessen 0% 2024-06-19 Co-founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz
Yoshua Bengio Yoshua Bengio 20% 2023-07-15 Computer scientist, director of the Mila institute, and the Turing award winner
Grady Booch Grady Booch c. 0% 2023-12-07 American software engineer
Vitalik Buterin Vitalik Buterin 12% 2025-08-12 Co-founder of Ethereum
Paul Christiano Paul Christiano 50% 2023-05-03 Former Head of research at the US AI Safety Institute
Andrew Critch 85% 2024-11-15 Founder of the Center for Applied Rationality
Destiny Destiny 5% 2026-02-17 American live streamer and political commentator
David Duvenaud 85% 2025-04-18 Canadian computer scientist specializing in probabilistic machine learning, generative AI, and AI safety. He is a CIFAR AI chair since 2021 and a Schwartz Reisman Chair in Technology and Society at the University of Toronto since 2024.
Lex Fridman Lex Fridman 10% 2025-06-05 American computer scientist and host of Lex Fridman Podcast
Demis Hassabis Demis Hassabis >0% 2024-02-23 Co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs and 2024 Nobel Prize laureate in Chemistry
Dan Hendrycks Dan Hendrycks >80% 2023-12-07 Director of Center for AI Safety
Geoffrey Hinton Geoffrey Hinton
  • 10-20% (all-things-considered)
  • >50% (independent impression)
 2024-06-27 "Godfather of AI" and 2024 Nobel Prize laureate in Physics, University Professor emeritus at the University of Toronto
Evan Hubinger >10% 2026-09-08 Alignment lead at Anthropic
Geoffrey Irving 50% 2026-10-15 Computer Scientist worked at OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and the United Kingdom's AI Safety Institute
Holden Karnofsky Holden Karnofsky 10-90% 2022-08-29 Former Executive Director of Open Philanthropy
Lina Khan Lina Khan c. 15% Former chair of the Federal Trade Commission
Daniel Kokotajlo 70–80% 2025-04-03 AI researcher and founder of AI Futures Project, formerly of OpenAI
David Krueger 75% American machine learning professor and advocate for the reduction of risks related to artificial intelligence.
Connor Leahy Connor Leahy 90%+ 2024-11-22 German-American AI researcher; cofounder of EleutherAI.
Yann LeCun Yann LeCun <0.01% 2024-04-07 Previously chief AI Scientist at Meta
Shane Legg Shane Legg c. 5–50% 2025-05-23 Co-founder and Chief AGI Scientist of Google DeepMind
Jan Leike 10–90% 2023-07-12 AI alignment researcher at Anthropic, formerly of DeepMind and OpenAI
William MacAskill William MacAskill 1-10% Scottish philosopher and author of What We Owe the Future
Benjamin Mann 0–10% 2025-07-22 Co-founder of Anthropic
Emad Mostaque Emad Mostaque 50% 2024-12-04 Co-founder of Stability AI
Zvi Mowshowitz Zvi Mowshowitz 70% 2025-09-06 Writer on artificial intelligence, director on the board of the Center for Applied Rationality, former competitive Magic: The Gathering player
Elon Musk Elon Musk c. 10–30% Businessman and CEO of X, Tesla, and SpaceX
Casey Newton Casey Newton 5% American technology journalist
Toby Ord Toby Ord 10% 2023-10-08 Australian philosopher and author of The Precipice
Kevin Roose Kevin Roose 5-15% American technology journalist
Emmett Shear Emmett Shear 5–50% Co-founder of Twitch and former interim CEO of OpenAI
Nate Silver Nate Silver 5–10% 2025-01-27 Statistician, founder of FiveThirtyEight
Max Tegmark Max Tegmark >90% 2025-04-30 Swedish-American physicist, machine learning researcher, and author, best known for theorising the mathematical universe hypothesis and co-founding the Future of Life Institute.
Roman Yampolskiy Roman Yampolskiy 99.9%–99.999999% Latvian computer scientist, formerly a research advisor of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, and an AI safety fellow of the Foresight Institute
Eliezer Yudkowsky Eliezer Yudkowsky >95% Founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, author of If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies.

Criticism

P(doom) has described as "unhelpful" as a meaningful measure of risk by academics and in news coverage, in part due to the lack of clarity about whether or not a given prediction is conditional on the existence of artificial general intelligence, the time frame, and the precise meaning of "doom". Instead, it has been proposed that use of the term should be interpreted as a social signal that one is a part of an in-group that has seriously considered the risks of AI.

In 2024, Australian rock band King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard launched their new label, named p(doom) Records.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Refers to “P(humans are extinct by 2100 due to AI)”, factoring in expected human intervention.
  2. ↑ For the classic AGI-doom paperclip-maximizer-like scenario; much higher probability for an existential catastrophe in which AI is causally involved.
  3. ↑ "Big enough to take seriously."
  4. ↑ "Professor Bengio shared his p(doom), saying: "I got around, like, 20 per cent probability that it turns out catastrophic." Professor Bengio arrived at the figure based on several inputs, including a 50 per cent probability that AI would reach human-level capabilities within a decade, and a greater than 50 per cent likelihood that AI or humans themselves would turn the technology against humanity at scale."
  5. ↑ Equivalent to "P(all the oxygen in my room spontaneously moving to a corner thereby suffocating me)".
  6. ↑ c. 50% that "humanity has somehow irreversibly messed up our future within 10 years of building powerful AI". c. 20% each for human extinction and for AI takeover as a result of building powerful AI. (Partly overlapping.) Further details and probabilities are in "My views on 'doom'".
  7. ↑ "Worth researching really carefully."
  8. ↑ Up from ~20% 2 years prior.
  9. ↑ Probability of human extinction "within the next decade" from 2026.
  10. ↑ If artificial superintelligence is created.
  11. ↑ Quote: "Even this 'easier' version of the question (conditional on a nearcast rather than a forecast) is far from easy. At the moment, the main thing I want to emphasize is that I don’t currently have much sympathy for someone who’s highly confident that AI takeover would or would not happen (that is, for anyone who thinks the odds of AI takeover in this nearcast are under 10% or over 90%)."
  12. ↑ "Less likely than an asteroid wiping us out".
  13. ↑ Within the next 100 years.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Railey, Clint (2023-07-12). "P(doom) is AI's latest apocalypse metric. Here's how to calculate your score". Fast Company.
  2. ↑ Thomas, Sean (2024-03-04). "Are we ready for P(doom)?". The Spectator. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  3. 1 2 "It started as a dark in-joke. It could also be one of the most important questions facing humanity". ABC News. 2023-07-14. Retrieved 2024-06-18.
  4. ↑ Jones, Charles I. (2024). "The AI Dilemma: Growth versus Existential Risk". American Economic Review: Insights. 6 (4): 575–590. doi:10.1257/aeri.20230570. ISSN 2640-205X.
  5. ↑ Growiec, Jakub; Prettner, Klaus (2026). "The economics of p(doom): Scenarios of existential risk and economic growth in the age of transformative AI". Economic Modelling. 163 107718. doi:10.1016/j.econmod.2026.107718. ISSN 0264-9993.
  6. ↑ Tim Tyler (25 May 2009). "Comment on "This Failing Earth"". LessWrong.
  7. ↑ Roose, Kevin (6 December 2023). "Silicon Valley Confronts a Grim New A.I. Metric". The New York Times.
  8. ↑ Metz, Cade (2023-05-01). "'The Godfather of A.I.' Leaves Google and Warns of Danger Ahead". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  9. ↑ "One of the "godfathers of AI" airs his concerns". The Economist. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 Roose, Kevin (2023-12-06). "Silicon Valley Confronts a Grim New A.I. Metric". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-06-17.
  11. ↑ Piper, Kelsey (2024-01-10). "Thousands of AI experts are torn about what they've created, new study finds". Vox. Retrieved 2024-09-02.
    Citing:
    "2023 Expert Survey on Progress in AI [AI Impacts Wiki]". wiki.aiimpacts.org. Retrieved 2024-09-02.
  12. 1 2 King, Isaac (2024-01-01). "Stop talking about p(doom)". LessWrong.
  13. ↑ @fifteenai (10 September 2026). "For me, P(humans are extinct by 2100 due to AI) < 1% because I expect humanity will always find ways to intervene even as AI gets much more advanced" (Tweet) – via X (formerly Twitter).
  14. ↑ @fifteenai (9 September 2026). "<1% My P(doom) hasn't changed much. The Navier-Stokes proof is awesome but I don't really buy the doomsday "hype" surrounding it" (Tweet) – via X (formerly Twitter).
  15. ↑ AI Is SOLVING MATH Problems That Went Unsolved for CENTURIES| Scott Aaronson. Retrieved 2026-11-02.
  16. ↑ "OpenAI CEO Sam Altman: AI Warfare, Freedom & Immortality | MD MEETS Episode #1". YouTube. October 1, 2025.
  17. ↑ Morrone, Megan. "Amodei on AI: "There's a 25% chance that things go really, really badly"". Axios. Retrieved 19 September 2025.
  18. ↑ Marantz, Andrew (2024-03-11). "Among the A.I. Doomsayers". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  19. ↑ Shapira, Liron (2025-08-12). "VITALIK vs. AI DOOMER — Will "d/acc" Protect Humanity from Superintelligent AI?". YouTube. Retrieved 2025-10-03.
  20. ↑ "ChatGPT creator says there's 50% chance AI ends in 'doom'". The Independent. 2023-05-03. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  21. ↑ Christiano, Paul (2023-04-27). "My views on "doom"". Medium. Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  22. ↑ Doom Debates (2024-11-15). Andrew Critch vs. Liron Shapira: Will AI Extinction Be Fast Or Slow?. Retrieved 2025-05-31 – via YouTube.
  23. ↑ Shapira, Liron (2026-02-17). "Destiny Raises His P(Doom) At The End". Doom Debates. Transcript, 0:59:37–0:59:52.
  24. ↑ Liron, Shapira. "Top AI Professor Has 85% P(Doom) — David Duvenaud, Fmr. Anthropic Safety Team Lead". Doom Debates.
  25. ↑ "Archives: sundar-pichai-transcript". Lex Fridman. 2025-06-05. Retrieved 2025-06-06.
  26. ↑ "Demis Hassabis on Chatbots to AGI | EP 71". YouTube. 23 February 2024. Retrieved 8 October 2024.
  27. ↑ METR (Model Evaluation & Threat Research) (2024-06-27). Q&A with Geoffrey Hinton. Retrieved 2025-02-07 – via YouTube.
  28. ↑ "Experts weigh in as researcher says AI has more than 10% chance of 'killing all humans'". CNBC. 2026-09-09. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
  29. ↑ Irving, Geoffrey. "Geoffrey Irving". X.
  30. ↑ Karnofsky, Holden (2022-08-29). "How might we align transformative Al if it's developed very soon?". Alignment Forum. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  31. ↑ Kokotajlo, Daniel (April 3, 2025). "2027 Intelligence Explosion Month-by-Month Model". youtube.com.
  32. ↑ Krueger, David. ""AI Will Be The Last Mistake Humanity Ever Makes..." | David Krueger | 8:10". The Smart Cookies Podcast.
  33. ↑ Future of Life Institute (2024-11-22). Connor Leahy on Why Humanity Risks Extinction from AGI. Retrieved 2025-05-31 – via YouTube.
  34. ↑ Wayne Williams (2024-04-07). "Top AI researcher says AI will end humanity and we should stop developing it now — but don't worry, Elon Musk disagrees". TechRadar. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  35. ↑ "Q&A with Shane Legg on risks from AI". Less Wrong. 2011-05-17. Retrieved 2025-05-23.
  36. ↑ MacAskill, William. "Will MacAskill on AI causing a "century in a decade" — and how we're completely unprepared | 80,000 Hours". 80000hours.org. The grand superintelligence challenges [00:57:39].
  37. ↑ Lenny's Podcast (2025-07-20). Anthropic co-founder: AGI predictions, leaving OpenAI, what keeps him up at night | Ben Mann. Retrieved 2025-07-22 – via YouTube.
  38. ↑ Mostaque, Emad [@EMostaque] (2024-12-04). "My P(doom) is 50%" (Tweet). Retrieved 2025-05-31 – via X (formerly Twitter).
  39. ↑ "Zvi Mowshowitz on Longer Timelines, RL-induced Doom, and Why China is Refusing H20s". The Cognitive Revolution. September 6, 2025.
  40. ↑ Tangalakis-Lippert, Katherine. "Elon Musk says there could be a 20% chance AI destroys humanity — but we should do it anyway". Business Insider. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  41. ↑ "Is there really a 1 in 6 chance of human extinction this century?". ABC News. 2023-10-08. Retrieved 2024-09-01.
  42. ↑ "It's time to come to grips with AI". Silver Bulletin. 2025-01-27. Retrieved 2025-02-03.
  43. ↑ Tegmark, Max (30 April 2025). "My P(doom) Estimate". X (formerly Twitter). Archived from the original on 2025-05-02. Retrieved 2025-05-31.
  44. ↑ Altchek, Ana. "Why this AI researcher thinks there's a 99.9% chance AI wipes us out". Business Insider. Retrieved 2024-06-18.
  45. ↑ Yampolskiy, Roman [@romanyam] (12 March 2024). "I am at 99.999999% https://pauseai.info/pdoom" (Tweet) – via X (formerly Twitter).
  46. ↑ "GUM & Ambrose Kenny-Smith are teaming up again for new collaborative album 'III Times'". DIY. 2024-05-07. Retrieved 2024-06-19.