Former Singularity Institute President: PauseAI Is Making AI Doom WORSE

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=4GbFng6htaQ

Timestamps

00:00:00 — Cold Open

00:01:26 — Introducing Michael Vassar

00:02:39 — Shorting Boeing at the Start of COVID

00:05:41 — What's Your P(Doom)™?

00:08:11 — The Magic Dial Thought Experiment

00:10:25 — "A Treaty Between Demis and Dario"

00:13:33 — AI CEOs 20 Years Ago

00:15:59 — Lessons from Peter Thiel

00:17:47 — 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 Hack

00:30:43 — Mistake Theory vs. Conflict Theory

00:33:18 — Debating the Orthogonality Thesis

00:36:38 — Maximally Evil AI Scenario

00:40:28 — Is the AI Development Process Safe?

00:42:05 — "PauseAI People Are Bad People"

00:44:44 — Michael Psychoanalyzes Liron

00:49:39 — How Liron Can Redeem Himself

00:55:10 — Michael Critiques Eliezer Yudkowsky

00:59:11 — 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 Help

01:11:04 — The Data Center Airstrike Scenario

01:13:34 — Could Every Nation Sign a Pause Treaty?

01:17:21 — What "Governance" Actually Means

01:26:12 — Michael's History with Rationalists

01:33:43 — Are We in a Computer Simulation?

01:38:43 — Wrap-Up

Links

Michael Vassar on X — https://x.com/HiFromMichaelV

The anti-anti-normativity sequence on Natural Hazard (Michael's recommended reading) — https://naturalhazard.xyz/ben_jess_sarah_starter_pack

Michael on DemystifySci #366 — "1000 Year Plan to Crush Thought" — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W17Cx21in9I

Michael on The Vance Crowe Podcast #303 — Good vs. Evil — https://open.spotify.com/episode/2RzlQDSwxGbjloRKqCh1xg

Michael 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/w2715

Scott 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-cases

Zvi Mowshowitz — Book Review: Going Infinite — https://thezvi.substack.com/p/book-review-going-infinite

Jaan Tallinn — "Why Now? A Quest in Metaphysics" (Singularity Summit 2012) — https://vimeo.com/54718573

Paul Graham — "Five Founders" (the Sam Altman essay) — https://paulgraham.com/5founders.html

Truthful AI (Owain Evans' safety org) — https://truthful.ai

METR — 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-risk

Vitalik Buterin — Will "d/acc" Protect Humanity from Superintelligent AI? — https://lironshapira.substack.com/p/debate-with-vitalik-buterin-will

Holly Elmore — These Effective Altruists Betrayed Me — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFFObQ6vnLU

Noah Smith — Top Economist Says P(Doom) Is 0.1% (the "AI drugs" claim) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwmJ-OnK2I4

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