What's your p(doom)?

Question 1

A machine writes a poem about the street you grew up on. It's good. It's so good you read it twice, and the second time your eyes sting.

Accepted Answer

Half the argument about AI is hiding inside this one. If art is about where it comes from, the machine made nothing. If art is about what it does to you — your eyes stung. (35% of Americans answer "It's art" — floor est.)

Question 2

An AI reads radiology scans and catches rare cancers twice as often as the best human specialists. Your scan is up next. The hospital offers you the AI read — no human in the loop.

Accepted Answer

Medicine is the one place Americans flip optimistic: 44% think AI will make medical care BETTER over 20 years vs 19% worse — the best numbers AI gets in any category Pew asks about. (44% of Americans answer "Take the AI" — Pew, 2025)

Question 3

Self-driving trucks would prevent roughly 5,000 highway deaths a year. They would also end about 2 million driving jobs. The switch is on the wall in front of you.

Accepted Answer

64% of Americans think AI means fewer jobs over the next 20 years; only 39% of AI experts agree. It's the widest gap between the public and the people building the thing. (30% of Americans answer "Flip it" — floor est.)

Question 4

Your kid's school hands half the teaching to an AI tutor that adapts to her exactly — infinite patience, no bad days, and a complete record of everything she doesn't know.

Accepted Answer

Only 24% of Americans think AI makes education better in the long run. Meanwhile 64% of teens 13–17 already use AI chatbots. The kids didn't wait for the poll. (24% of Americans answer "Sign her up" — Pew, 2025)

Question 5

You're handed a button. It pauses all AI development, everywhere, for ten years. Cures on the horizon: paused. Risks on the horizon: also paused. No one else gets a vote.

Accepted Answer

64% of Americans support pausing advanced AI until it's proven safe, and 72% want development slowed. The button is winning the polls. It does not appear to be winning the timeline. (64% of Americans answer "Press it" — FLI, 2025)

Question 6

Serious people — Nobel laureates, lab founders, the engineers themselves — keep signing letters saying AI could eventually threaten humanity's existence. Gut check, no hedging.

Accepted Answer

76% of American voters think AI could eventually threaten the existence of the human race — Democrats and Republicans within three points of each other. It may be the last bipartisan opinion in the country. (76% of Americans answer "Real risk" — AI Policy Inst.)

Question 7

It's 2046. Your kids are grown. They're living with everything AI became in twenty years — the medicine, the tutors, the layoffs, the deepfakes, all of it, compounding.

Accepted Answer

Only 17% of Americans think AI's impact on the country will be positive. Among AI experts: 56%. One of these groups is badly wrong, and both of them are sure it's the other one. (17% of Americans answer "Better" — Pew, 2025)

Question 8

Last question. You can shut it all down today — every model, every lab, the cures and the tutors and the risk, all of it, gone. One-time offer. Humanity keeps the world it had in 2020.

Accepted Answer

Here's the tell: most people who fear AI still won't take the off switch, and most people who love it still wanted the button from Position 5 to exist. Almost nobody is actually at 0 or 100. Let's see where you closed. (31% of Americans answer "Shut it down" — floor est.)

Was that art?