The AI Doom Scale, 1 to 10.
Every story on AIpocalypse Now gets a single integer score from 1 to 10. The number is the AI Doom Scale. It is bucketed into four bands and computed by the AIpocalypse Risk-Weighting Framework. A score of 1 is background noise. A score of 10 is the kind of news that makes you reconsider your backup plans.
Tier by tier
Boring at any cost. The story exists. The implications do not.
ExamplesA new AI tutorial site · Another no-code wrapper · Beige product update
Worth reading once. Forget it by lunch.
ExamplesMinor capability bump · Niche academic paper · Local-government AI memo
A weather change, not a storm.
ExamplesOpen-source model release · Funding announcement · Conference policy speech
Pattern starting. Could go either way.
ExamplesIndustry layoffs tied to AI · Regulatory rumblings · New deployment in sensitive context
Active risk surface. Mitigations vague.
ExamplesMisuse incident · Model jailbreak in the wild · Defence contract
Mitigations exist but are not deployed.
ExamplesCapability eval failure · Major content-policy bypass · Lab departure with statement
Real harm at scale, hard to unwind.
ExamplesElection-grade deepfake operation · Autonomous weapon test · Verified safety-team disbanding
Spillover into infrastructure, finance, or governance.
ExamplesCoordinated AI-driven market shock · Critical-system compromise · Mass-firing wave
Recovery becomes a multi-year question.
ExamplesLoss of control over deployed agent · Compounding misuse with state actor · Documented intent to cause mass harm
The kind of news that makes you reconsider your backup plans.
ExamplesReproducible loss-of-alignment incident · Critical-infrastructure cascade · Verified extinction-class capability
How the score is computed
Each story is rated on four dimensions, then combined. The dimensions are: existential criticality (does this involve irreversible systemic failure), probability vectoring (theoretical or active proof of concept), timeline imminence (how close to current deployment), and mitigation gap (is there a known fix). The full math lives on the methodology page.
The same rubric is applied to every story, every day. The doom score is a model opinion held consistently, not a truth claim about the future. Use it the way you would use a Richter scale reading. A 7 is bigger than a 5, but neither tells you exactly what your day looks like.