Characterization
What did a named person say in words, without a number?
8 records of kind characterization are on the Doom Number as of September 2026: 3 verified, 5 reported, 0 announced, 0 absent, 0 open. By jurisdiction: United States 7, Canada 1.
Characterization
8 records, newest first
Jack Clark: we have seen warning shots and that gives us a window to act, September 2026
United States · verified 16 September 2026
NPR Morning Edition, 15 September 2026 (Steve Inskeep and Majd Al-Waheidi): Clark said we are not saying the threat to the world is here today; we have seen warning shots, and that gives us a window in which we can act.
Walter Isaacson: this is the first thing that just totally scares me, July 2026
United States · verified 16 September 2026
24/7 Wall St (carried by Yahoo Tech), 22 July 2026, by Omor Ibne Ehsan, quotes Isaacson on Squawk Box: this is the first thing that just totally scares me.
Sam Altman: the pacing of AI development should be slower than it otherwise could be, September 2026
United States · verified 16 September 2026
AP (via ABC News), 14 September 2026, by Alex Veiga: Altman wrote that the pacing of AI development should be slower than it otherwise could be.
Eliezer Yudkowsky: the most likely result of building superhumanly smart AI is that everyone dies, March 2023
United States · verified 16 September 2026
Time, 29 March 2023, by Eliezer Yudkowsky, titled Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down.
Yoshua Bengio: even a 1 percent chance of something going really bad is not acceptable, April 2026
Canada · verified 16 September 2026
The 80,000 Hours transcript, published 16 April 2026, quotes Bengio: even a 1 percent chance of something going really, really bad is not acceptable to me.
Dario Amodei: we must slow the pace at which we improve AI capabilities, September 2026
United States · verified 16 September 2026
The essay on darioamodei.com states: we must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models, progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.
Adam Khoja: current models are basically nation state level hackers, September 2026
United States · verified 16 September 2026
The Las Vegas Sun piece of 11 September 2026 quotes Khoja: at this point, the models are basically nation state level hackers.
Jacob Coxon: labs are racing to self improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives, September 2026
United States · verified 16 September 2026
Time dates the resignation to 8 September 2026 and describes roughly three years of pretraining research at OpenAI and then Anthropic, which he joined earlier in 2026.
Every surface
Cut the ledger another way
By kind
By jurisdiction
Cite this page
Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0, with attribution.
- In a sentence
- According to the GAGE Doom Number (as of 16 September 2026), characterization: doom number.
- APA
- GAGE (Global Academy of Generative-AI Education). (2026). Characterization: Doom Number. Doom Number. Retrieved 16 September 2026, from https://www.gage.academy/tools/doom-number/kinds/characterization
- MLA
- "Characterization: Doom Number." Doom Number, GAGE (Global Academy of Generative-AI Education), 16 September 2026, https://www.gage.academy/tools/doom-number/kinds/characterization.
- Chicago
- GAGE (Global Academy of Generative-AI Education). "Characterization: Doom Number." Doom Number. Last modified 16 September 2026. https://www.gage.academy/tools/doom-number/kinds/characterization.
- Permalink
- https://www.gage.academy/tools/doom-number/kinds/characterization
Last updated . Every record re verified . The ledger is checked weekly, every Monday, and the same day a named person states a new figure in public.
Back to the full ledger and every characterization record.
GAGE briefings tell you which AI regulation deadlines are coming, what they actually require of you, and when a program opens.