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Doom Index / p(doom) / Eliezer Yudkowsky
Researcher · rank 2 of 22

Eliezer Yudkowsky p(doom)

Eliezer Yudkowsky (Co-founder, Machine Intelligence Research Institute) has put the risk of AI causing human extinction or a comparably bad outcome at 99.5%. That is higher than the 38% median of the experts we track.

Latest stated p(doom)
99.5%
0%Median 38%100%
Stated Sep 12, 2025

Statement history

  • Sep 12, 2025

    99.5%

    “The first time I met Eliezer Yudkowsky, he said there was a 99.5% chance that A.I. was going to kill me.”

    Reported speech: the figure is relayed by the reporter, not quoted directly.

    The New York Times (Kevin Roose)reported speechWording 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 (99.5% here) when computing the expert median.

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Other experts' p(doom)

Roman Yampolskiy 99.999999%Dan Hendrycks >80%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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