Doom Index / p(doom) / Scott Alexander
Commentator · rank 12 of 22
Scott Alexander p(doom)
Scott Alexander (Writer, Astral Codex Ten) has put the risk of AI causing human extinction or a comparably bad outcome at 33%. That is lower than the 38% median of the experts we track.
Latest stated p(doom)
33%
0%Median 38%100%
Stated Mar 14, 2023
Statement history
- Mar 14, 2023
33%
“I go back and forth more than I can really justify, but if you force me to give an estimate it's probably around 33%”
Astral Codex TenVerified 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 (33% here) when computing the expert median.
See the full leaderboardOther experts' p(doom)
Roman Yampolskiy 99.999999%Eliezer Yudkowsky 99.5%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%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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