p(doom) Tracker

What you get

• A number on your taskbar. Hover it for details; click it to open the window.
• The window shows the current number and how it moved this week, a trend chart, a plain-language breakdown of who pulls the number up and down, and recent AI-safety headlines for context. It follows your Windows light or dark theme.
• Every source, in the open. The Sources tab lists each estimate as it was stated, how it was counted and why it carries the weight it does. The Event log shows every estimate that was added, revised or removed, and how far it moved the number.

It’s free, needs no account or sign-in, and sends nothing about you anywhere. It only downloads public pages (Wikipedia and a few AI-safety news feeds), twice a day, and uses almost no power while it waits.

Install it

1. Download the zip (66 MB). Nothing else to install: everything it needs is inside.
2. Unzip it somewhere you’ll keep it, for example Documents\p(doom).
3. Double-click PDoomTray.exe.
4. Windows may say “Windows protected your PC.” That’s because this small project isn’t code-signed. Click More info, then Run anyway.
5. The window opens and takes its first reading within a few seconds.

Keep the number on your taskbar

Windows hides new taskbar icons under the ^ arrow next to the clock. Click ^and drag the number onto the taskbar; Windows remembers it. Click the number to open the window, and minimize or close the window to put it back. Right-click the number for Update now,Settings, Start with Windows and Quit.

How the number is made

1. Gather estimates. Named people’s estimates come from Wikipedia’s P(doom) article, read from a version at least a day old to guard against vandalism. Two published studies are added: the 2023 AI Impacts survey of AI researchers and the Existential Risk Persuasion Tournament.
2. Weigh each one. Simple, visible rules score each source on track record, expertise, method and independence (leading an AI company or an AI-risk organization lowers it). Older statements count for less, large studies count for more, and newcomers count for half in their first four weeks.
3. Pool them. The estimates are combined as a weighted average on the log-odds scale, a standard way to average probabilities.
4. Show the reasons. Every rule that touched an estimate appears in the Sources tab, so you can judge for yourself.

Headlines are there for context and never change the number. Prediction markets were left out on purpose: AI-extinction markets can’t pay out, so their prices aren’t real probabilities.

A note on the number

p(doom) estimates are subjective, and people define them differently and over different time spans. The app summarizes what people have said publicly; it isn’t a forecast or a measurement. The How it workstab in the app explains every rule.

Remove it

1. Right-click the number. If Start with Windows is ticked, untick it.
2. Choose Quit.
3. Delete the folder you unzipped, and the folder %LOCALAPPDATA%\PDoomTray (paste that into File Explorer’s address bar).

Estimates: Wikipedia’s P(doom) article (CC BY-SA 4.0) and published studies. Headlines: Transformer, AI Safety Newsletter, Import AI, Hacker News and GDELT.