p(doom)
/piː duːm/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.79 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
2
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The probability of existentially catastrophic outcomes (doom) as a result of misaligned artificial intelligence, especially one's personal estimate for such an outcome, usually given as a percentage value.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "My p(doom) is 15%."
- "I’ve been to two tech events this year where a stranger has asked for my p(doom) as casually as if they were asking for directions to the bathroom."
- "At gatherings like these, it’s not uncommon to hear someone strike up a conversation by asking, “What are your timelines?” or "What's your p(doom)?”"
- "Those at the extreme end of the AI safety spectrum with the highest levels of p(doom) grew increasingly unsettled by the seeming uncomplicated optimism with which [Sam] Altman and the rest of the company viewed this history."
- "And the cartoonish connotations are apt: just like such fictional battles, p(doom) estimates are based in fantasy rather than data or empirical fact."
- "Mountainhead plays out less like a drama between four tenuously connected, very rich friends, and more like a random word generator of tech and finance bro jargon – decel (deceleration, as in AI), p(doom) (the probability of an AI apocalypse), first principles."
Etymology
Mathematical notation for the probability (p) of an event (more formally written as P(doom)). Originated on the LessWrong message board around 2010, later popularized by Eliezer Yudkowsky and other AI safety researchers.