Gary Marcus vs. Liron Shapira — AI Doom Debate

Prof. Gary Marcus is a scientist, bestselling author and entrepreneur, well known as one of the most influential voices in AI. He is Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Neuroscience at NYU.  He was founder and CEO of Geometric Intelligence, a machine learning company acquired by Uber in 2016. Gary co-authored the 2019 book, Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust, and the 2024 book, Taming Silicon Valley: How We Can Ensure That AI Works for Us. He played an important role in the 2023 Senate Judiciary Subcommittee Hearing on Oversight of AI, testifying with Sam Altman. In this episode, Gary and I have a lively debate about whether P(doom) is approximately 50%, or if it’s less than 1%! 00:00 Introducing Gary Marcus 02:33 Gary’s AI Skepticism 09:08 The Human Brain is a Kluge 23:16 The 2023 Senate Judiciary Subcommittee Hearing 28:46 What’s Your P(Doom)™ 44:27 AI Timelines 51:03 Is Superintelligence Real? 01:00:35 Humanity’s Immune System 01:12:46 Potential for Recursive Self-Improvement 01:26:12 AI Catastrophe Scenarios 01:34:09 Defining AI Agency 01:37:43 Gary’s AI Predictions 01:44:13 The NYTimes Obituary Test 01:51:11 Recap and Final Thoughts 01:53:35 Liron’s Outro 01:55:34 Eliezer Yudkowsky’s New Book! 01:59:49 AI Doom Concept of the Day Show Notes Gary’s Substack — https://garymarcus.substack.com Gary’s Twitter — https://x.com/garymarcus If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares — https://ifanyonebuildsit.com --- Come to the Less Online conference on May 30 - Jun 1, 2025: https://less.online Hope to see you there! --- Watch the Lethal Intelligence Guide, the ultimate introduction to AI x-risk! https://www.youtube.com/@lethal-intelligence PauseAI, the volunteer organization I’m part of: https://pauseai.info Join the PauseAI Discord — https://discord.gg/2XXWXvErfA — and say hi to me in the #doom-debates-podcast channel! --- 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 to my Substack at https://doomdebates.com and to https://youtube.com/@DoomDebates