The p(doom) database · person
Rohin Shah’s p(doom)
1–50%
In their words
Rohin Shah (Research scientist, Google DeepMind) put their p(doom) at 1–50% (things going badly due to misalignment), on a podcast on 2023-06.
Positions like more than 1% and less than 50% all feel pretty justifiable to me.
Source · re-checked against the primary source.
Refuses a point estimate: "these numbers feel particularly made up."
Every number on the record
| Date | p(doom) | Scope | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-06 | 1–50% | things going badly due to misalignment | podcast |
| Dec 8, 2021 | ~4% | existential catastrophe from misaligned power-seeking AI (Carlsmith's argument, his own numbers) · by 2070 | forum |
| Oct 31, 2019 | ≈10% | AI causes human extinction by adversarially optimizing against humans | interview |
In context
Among frontier labs in the database (20 people), the median is 12.5%. 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.