The Yard, The Sparkly Hat, and The Doomsday Clock
AI doom talk usually comes from two places:
- Titans of industry hyping their own power.
- Abstruse nonprofits predicting apocalypse to keep the lights on.
But what happens when the loudest warnings come from outside those loops?
Enter:
- Freddie deBoer, the skeptic, mocking hype with his “Shitting-in-the-Yard Challenge.”
- Scott Alexander, the rationalist, translates MIRI's doomsday math into metaphors akin to a toddler in a Ferrari.
- Daniel Kokotajlo, the whistleblower, walked away from millions in OpenAI equity to warn about a 2027 AGI arms race.
They’re not all predicting the same future. But their tracks converge on the same station: institutions and incentives utterly unprepared for what we’re building.
When three people with nothing to gain all say “something’s wrong here”—even if they disagree on what—that’s your signal.