This Top Economist's P(Doom) Just Shot Up 10x! Noah Smith Returns To Explain His Update

This Top Economist's P(Doom) Just Shot Up 10x! Noah Smith Returns To Explain His Update

From Doom Debates! by Liron Shapira

March 17, 2026 · 48 min

About this episode

Noah Smith returns to discuss a significant update to his P(Doom) and the implications of AI on society.

Noah Smith is an economist and author of Noahpinion, one of the most popular Substacks in the world. He returns to Doom Debates to share a massive update to his P(Doom), and things get a little heated. Timestamps 00:00:00 — Cold Open 00:00:41 — Welcome Back Noah Smith! 00:01:40 — Noah's P(Doom) Update 00:03:57 — The Chatbot-Genie-God Framework 00:05:14 — What's Your P(Doom)™ 00:09:59 — Unpacking Noah's Update 00:16:56 — Why Incidents of Rogue AI Lower P(Doom) 00:20:04 — Noah's Mainline Doom Scenario: Much Worse Than COVID-19 00:23:29 — Society Responds After Growing Pains 00:29:25 — Agentic AI Contributed to Noah's Position 00:31:35 — Should Yudkowsky Get Bayesian Credit? 00:33:59 — Are We Communicating the Right Way with Policymakers? 00:40:16 — Finding Common Ground on AI Policy 00:47:07 — Wrap-Up: People Need to Be More Scared Links Doom Debate with Noah Smith — Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwmJ-OnK2I4 Noah’s Twitter — https://x.com/noahpinion Noah’s Substack — https://noahpinion.blog Doom Debates’ Mission is to raise mainstream awareness of imminent extinction from AGI and build the social infrastructure for high-quality debate. Support the mission by subscribing…

People in this episode

Host: Liron Shapira

Guest: Noah Smith

Topics covered

  • economics
  • AI policy
  • P(Doom) update
  • risk assessment
  • societal response
  • agentic AI

Keywords

  • P(Doom)
  • Noah Smith
  • Doom Debates
  • AI
  • economics
  • risk
  • policy
  • COVID-19
  • agentic AI

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Noahpinion, Doom Debates, Substack, YouTube

More episodes of Doom Debates!

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Doom Debates! podcast page.