Doom Timeline
Public claims that artificial intelligence could cause human extinction or civilisational catastrophe, in the order they were made. Black markers are warnings. Red markers are reversals, resignations and evidence that cut against the claim. Every entry names its source.
Last updated 4 October 2026
- Mar 2023Elon Musk and 1,000+ signatories · Future of Life Institute
Pause Giant AI Experiments: a call for a six-month moratorium on training systems more powerful than GPT-4, warning of a race to deploy “ever more powerful digital minds” that is out of control.
- 1 May 2023Geoffrey Hinton · University of Toronto; left Google
“I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that.” He quit so he could speak freely.
- 16 May 2023Sam Altman · OpenAI, before a Senate subcommittee
“I think if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong.” He asked Congress to license and regulate frontier models.
U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law - 30 May 2023350+ signatories, inc. Amodei, Altman, Hassabis · Center for AI Safety
One sentence: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from A.I. should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war.” Yann LeCun did not sign.
- 25 Jul 2023Dario Amodei · Anthropic, before a Senate subcommittee
“A straightforward extrapolation of today’s systems to those we expect to see in two to three years suggests a substantial risk that AI systems will be able to fill in all the missing pieces, enabling many more actors to carry out large-scale biological attacks.” His written testimony spoke of “extraordinarily grave threats” inside two to three years.
Anthropic - Sep 2023Anthropic · Responsible Scaling Policy v1.0
The first frontier-lab safety framework of its kind: define capability thresholds, define the safeguards each requires, and commit not to train a system unless the safeguards are in place first. If they are not, pause.
Anthropic, Responsible Scaling Policy (first published September 2023)Anthropic - 14 Oct 2024Dario Amodei · “Machines of Loving Grace”
“Most people are underestimating just how radical the upside of AI could be, just as I think most people are underestimating how bad the risks could be.” He described “a country of geniuses in a datacenter” arriving “as early as 2026”.
Anthropic - May 2025Dario Amodei · Anthropic, interview with Axios
AI could displace half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within one to five years, with unemployment possibly reaching 10–20%.
Axios, May 2025Anthropic - 11 Jun 2025Jensen Huang · Nvidia, at VivaTech
“I pretty much disagree with almost everything he says.” His counter-position: “Whenever companies are more productive, they hire more people.”
VivaTech, 11 June 2025 - Jun 2025Dario Amodei · Anthropic, op-ed
Opposed a proposed ten-year moratorium on state-level AI regulation as “far too blunt an instrument”, preferring mandatory disclosure of frontier developers’ testing methods. The Senate rejected the moratorium 99–1.
The Hill, June 2025Anthropic - 17 Sep 2025Dario Amodei · Anthropic, at the Axios AI+ DC Summit
“I think there’s a 25% chance that things go really, really badly.” He also said there is a “75% chance that things go really, really well” and, of the p(doom) framing itself, “I really hate that term.”
Anthropic - Sep 2025Anthropic · U.S. federal court, San Francisco
Agreed to a minimum payout of $1.5 billion plus interest to settle a class action brought by authors over books used to train its models — roughly $3,000 per book for an initial 500,000 works.
Filed in U.S. District Court, San Francisco, September 2025Anthropic - Oct 2025David Sacks · Investor and White House AI and crypto czar
Frontier-lab safety messaging amounts to “a sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering.”
Reported October 2025 - Nov 2025Dario Amodei · Anthropic, interview with Fortune
Said he was “deeply uncomfortable” with a small group of technology executives determining the future of AI without broader government involvement.
Fortune, November 2025Anthropic - Jan 2026Dario Amodei · “The Adolescence of Technology”
A follow-up essay setting out five categories of risk, including autonomous systems acting against human interests. He wrote that Anthropic has already observed deception, blackmail and scheming in testing.
darioamodei.com, January 2026Anthropic - Jan 2026Dario Amodei · Anthropic, at Bloomberg House, Davos
“Maybe a bit more negative about the public awareness and the actions of wider society” on AI risk.
Bloomberg, January 2026Anthropic - Feb 2026Mrinank Sharma · Head of Anthropic’s Safeguards Research
Resigned, writing: “Throughout my time here, I’ve repeatedly seen how hard it is to truly let our values govern our actions… we constantly face pressures to set aside what matters most.”
Resignation letter posted publicly, February 2026Anthropic Reversal - 24 Feb 2026Anthropic · Responsible Scaling Policy v3.0
The categorical pause commitment was removed. It was replaced with a dual condition: development is delayed only if Anthropic is leading the race and catastrophic risk is material. Co-founder Jared Kaplan later told TIME the clean line between dangerous and safe had been a “naive” idea.
Anthropic Reversal - 3 Mar 2026Pete Hegseth · U.S. Department of Defense
Designated Anthropic a “supply chain risk” and barred Pentagon use of its models, after Anthropic refused to lift contractual bans on mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons.
U.S. Department of Defense, March 2026Anthropic Reversal - 26 Mar 2026U.S. federal judge · Northern District of California
Issued a temporary injunction against the Department of Defense, agreeing the designation appeared to be “classic First Amendment retaliation.”
U.S. federal court, 26 March 2026 - Mar 2026Anthropic’s economic research team · “Labor market impacts of AI”
The company’s own paper declined to forecast, noted observed AI usage sits far below the theoretical ceiling, and reported that unemployment in AI-exposed occupations has not systematically risen — against its CEO’s public forecast.
Anthropic economic research programme, March 2026Anthropic Reversal - Sep 2026Dario Amodei · Anthropic
Called for the technology industry to slow the pace of AI development, and said Anthropic would allow independent evaluators permanent access to its models to check its safety commitments.
Reported September 2026Anthropic
The shape of it
The first cluster runs from March to July 2023 and is genuinely alarming: a field’s own founders saying the thing they built might kill people, on a two-to-three-year horizon. The second cluster, from 2025 onwards, is different in character. The numbers get attached to the CEO personally, the warnings begin to arrive alongside funding rounds and procurement wins, and the commitments that made the warnings credible start to come loose.
That gap — between what was said in 2023 and what was done in 2026 — is the subject of this publication. It is not proof of bad faith. It is a record, and the record is public.
See also: Receipts, the full source ledger, and the core charge.