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Doom Index / p(doom) / Dan Hendrycks
Researcher · rank 3 of 22

Dan Hendrycks p(doom)

Dan Hendrycks (Director, Center for AI Safety) has put the risk of AI causing human extinction or a comparably bad outcome at >80%. That is higher than the 38% median of the experts we track.

Latest stated p(doom)
>80%
0%Median 38%100%
Stated Apr 2, 2023

Statement history

  • Apr 2, 2023

    >80%

    “As it happens, my p(doom) > 80%, but it has been lower in the past. Two years ago it was ~20%.”

    Stated as a lower bound; counted as 80%.

    X (@DanHendrycks)Wording checked against the primary sourceVerified Oct 21, 2026

Context

“p(doom)” is shorthand for the probability that advanced AI leads to human extinction or a similarly irreversible catastrophe. Speakers rarely share one definition or time horizon, so compare numbers with care.

The Doom Index uses the midpoint of each person's latest stated range (80% here) when computing the expert median.

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Other experts' p(doom)

Roman Yampolskiy 99.999999%Eliezer Yudkowsky 99.5%Daniel Kokotajlo 70%Zvi Mowshowitz 70%Emad Mostaque 50%Holden Karnofsky 10–90%Jan Leike 10–90%Paul Christiano 46%Joep Meindertsma 40%Eli Lifland 35–40%Scott Alexander 33%Emmett Shear 5–50%Dario Amodei 25%Yoshua Bengio 20%Elon Musk 20%Reid Hoffman 2 / 10Lina Khan 15%Vitalik Buterin 12%Geoffrey Hinton ~10%Nate Silver 5–10%Yann LeCun ≈0%
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