AI safety can be a Pascal's mugging even if p(doom) is high

By Elliott Thornley (EJT) @ 2026-04-25T16:20 (+29)

People sometimes say that AI safety is a Pascal’s mugging. Other people sometimes reply that AI safety can’t be a Pascal’s mugging, because p(doom) is high. Both these people are wrong.

The second group of people are wrong because Pascal’s muggings are about the probability that you make a difference, not about baseline risk. The first group of people are wrong because the probability that you personally avert AI catastrophe isn’t that small.

Here’s a story to show that Pascal’s muggings are about the probability that you make a difference. Imagine that God will flip a coin at the end of time. If the coin lands heads, He’ll send everyone to heaven. If the coin lands tails, He’ll send everyone to hell. Everyone knows this is what will happen.

In a dark alley, a stranger approaches you and tells you that he can make God’s coin land heads, thereby ensuring that everyone goes to heaven. He says he’ll do it if you give him your wallet. You assign a very low probability to this stranger telling the truth — 1 in a bajillion — but the stranger reminds you that 10 bajillion people will have their fates determined by God’s coin.

‘Hang on,’ you say, ‘This seems a lot like a Pascal’s mugging.’

‘Au contraire,’ says the stranger, ‘It can’t be a Pascal’s mugging. The outcome I’m promising to avert — everyone going to hell — is not low probability at all. p(hell) is 50%.’

Would this reply convince you to hand over your wallet? Of course not. Even though the baseline risk of everyone going to hell is high, the probability that you make a difference — getting everyone to heaven when they otherwise would have gone to hell — is extremely low. And it’s this latter probability that determines whether your situation is a Pascal’s mugging.

So when people say that AI safety is a Pascal’s mugging, you can’t just reply that p(doom) is high. You have to argue that p(you avert doom) is high.

All that said, I think p(you — yes, you — avert doom) is high, or at least high enough. The whole doom situation is really up-in-the-air right now, and you’re at most like 4 degrees of separation from the big players: presidents, lab CEOs, and the like. You can influence someone who influences someone who influences someone. Your chances are way higher than 1 in a bajillion.