Ben Goertzel Wants to Build AGI Even FASTER — AI Doom Debate

Ben Goertzel Wants to Build AGI Even FASTER — AI Doom Debate

From Doom Debates! by Liron Shapira

May 19, 2026 · 2h 3m

About this episode

Dr. Ben Goertzel discusses his views on AGI and the future of superintelligence.

Dr. Ben Goertzel is a pioneering AI researcher, entrepreneur, and author who has helped organize AGI as a research field since the 2000s through books, workshops, and conferences. We talk about the early days of AGI research with Yudkowsky, get Ben’s timeline to the singularity, and I try to understand what makes him so optimistic that superintelligence will be beneficial for humanity. Timestamps 00:00:00 — Cold Open 00:00:59 — Introducing Dr. Ben Goertzel 00:04:11 — How Did Ben Get Interested in AGI? 00:08:26 — Early AGI Enthusiast Community: Extropians & SL4 00:15:15 — Is There Headroom Above Human Intelligence? 00:19:53 — Can Superintelligent AI Kill Everyone? 00:28:25 — Ben’s AGI Timeline: 2029 00:36:00 — What Modern AI Is Missing 00:42:01 — AGI to Superintelligence — FOOM in a Matter of Months 00:46:34 — What’s Your P(Doom)?™ 00:53:37 — Ben’s Case for AI Acceleration 01:03:50 — The Orthogonality Thesis Is “Dishonest” 01:13:43 — Liron: Moore’s Law for Goal Achievement 01:23:50 — Ben: Alignment Is Just Good Parenting 01:27:36 — Alignment in Practice: OmegaCLAW 01:35:47 — Creating Stable Goals Under Self-Modification 01:45:22 — SingularityNET, OpenBGI, and the ASI Alliance…

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