p(doom)

Plain English. Shorthand for a person's estimated probability that AI leads to catastrophe — literally "probability of doom". Someone who says their p(doom) is 10% means they put a one-in-ten chance on a worst-case outcome. It is a feeling expressed as a number: there is no agreed definition of "doom", no timeframe, and no method behind most figures quoted.

Why it moves money. Because these numbers, however soft, are shaping real decisions — hiring, safety spending, which labs researchers will join, and increasingly regulation. When a lab's own staff attach double-digit figures to catastrophe and say so publicly, that is a governance signal an investor should register, not dismiss: it speaks to internal conviction about risk that no earnings call will surface. It also cuts the other way — a field that quantifies its own dread in a coinage this casual is telling you how much of its valuation rests on contested belief rather than measured fact.

What to watch. Whether a stated p(doom) is attached to a mechanism and a timeframe or is a bare vibe. The useful ones name what they mean and what would move them; the rest are mood set in decimals. Treat a number with no method as sentiment, not evidence.

From the signals. An Anthropic researcher resigned saying the labs are 'gambling with our lives' — conviction about catastrophic risk from inside a frontier lab. An SMH op-ed reached for the nuclear-warhead comparison. See also /invest/pilled and /invest/takeoff.