Gary Marcus’s p(doom)
In their words
Gary Marcus (Cognitive scientist, NYU emeritus) put their p(doom) at ≈3% (humans literally go extinct at the hands of AI), in an article on Jul 15, 2025.
I am at maybe 3% now, much higher than a month ago.
Source · re-checked against the primary source.
"Still lower than most industry people's." Sept 9, 2026 on X, asked "what's your p(doom)?": "very low. but my p(catastrophe) is at least 10%." (words for doom, so no new row) https://x.com/GaryMarcus
In context
Among academics in the database (22 people), the median is 15%. Across all 223 people it is 10%. How the medians and the index are built.
A p(doom) is a personal, subjective estimate of the probability that advanced AI ends in human extinction or a comparable, irreversible catastrophe. Scope and timeframe differ from person to person, so compare with care: why p(doom) numbers disagree.