More often than not, my flatmate and I get home from work and have something to chat about that we read online or heard at work that turns into a longer than planned kitchen discussion on AI doomerism, accelerationism, and all the beautiful and terrifying outcomes in between. So when I saw a tweet that Doomers, Matthew Gasda's boardroom drama inspired by the 2023 Sam Altman departure from OpenAI, was back playing in NYC, I wanted to see if we were not alone in our existential dilemma around AI.

I'd been familiar with Gasda's work. I heard about Dimes Square, the play that became an underground hit about the downtown media types, and caught a few table reads of Last Days of Downtown, the final installment in that series. But I was curious how he would approach writing a play about AI.

I caught the first night in the new Manhattan space. The play is set in a San Francisco apartment, loosely drawn from the November 2023 coup attempt at OpenAI following the board's sudden firing of Sam Altman, the forty-eight hour implosion, the staff ultimatum, and the quiet rehiring. Act 1 follows Seth's inner circle scrambling after the firing from MindMesh, and Act 2 shifts to the board in similar disarray. Both acts carry a Succession-esque war room intensity, corporate jargon and witty banter that capture the chaos of the event. Altman's inspired character Seth, played by Sam Hyrkin, takes Machiavellian measures to hold the room, supported by Myra, played by Nikol Tsvetanova, loosely based on former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati.

"I was fired for creating miracles," Seth says at one point.

On the other side, ethicist officer Alina, played by Anastasia Wolfe, and Stanford AI lawyer Sanjay, played by Yousuf Shah, raise the moral stakes while the rest of the room stays largely apathetic to the realities of what they are building. Each character shows flickers of genuine idealism but ultimately succumbs to self-interest and cynicism.

In the second act, the Celsius-fueled board scrambles to contain what is brewing inside the company. Near the end, the doomer Substack writer Eli, played by Zach Hendrickson, prompts the MindMesh chatbot to provide an allegory of itself. The response, comparing itself to the "Gardener of Babylon," breaks the fourth wall in a sense. That monologue was actually generated by Anthropic's Claude chatbot, which is why both Claude and ChatGPT receive dramaturg credits in the program. AI-generated hypotheticals already feel overdone in art, and Doomers leans into this, letting the AI narrate its own mythology inside the drama as a bit of comedic relief.

As it ended, my flatmate turned to me: "that felt like a synthesis of our kitchen conversations." The girl sitting behind us laughed at that comment, but the kind of laugh that you do while cringing inside knowing that others spend their free time debating AI futures over tea before bed. There's something funny about watching a play about a very niche online event at a very niche theater. From the outside one would think this shouldn't work, but it does.

Doomers reveals the uncanny side of tech culture and human psychology. The character Sanjay at one point complains that he is "a humanist in a town full of transhumanists," which hits home for anyone working in tech who actually likes the beautiful mess of humans. The glimmers of empathy the characters show, followed almost immediately by something only a sociopath would say, leaves the audience wondering how the incredibly smart yet socially inept people shaping the future of technology actually see the rest of us "midwits."

It has been over two years since the events the play portrays and AGI has not killed us yet, but the mood is not hopeful either. Nick Land coming out of the shadows to do meetups in the Bay Area in 2026 to a warm reception, while other countries continue tightening their grip on AI regulation, shows that the AI discourse is continuing to splinter. The play does not resolve, which could be a reflection of Gasda's own thoughts on AI. He is someone that uses a flip phone and then semi-ironically lists Claude and ChatGPT as dramaturgs in the credits. I like contradictions and the play is full of contradictions. The discussions are much more nuanced than either taking a pro-tech or degrowth stance. It's a play that takes the AI discourse seriously with philosophical range, genuine technical literacy, and the right amount of irony for the room it's playing to.

Doomers is playing until February 27th at the Center for Theatre Research in Manhattan.

This piece is published in the Permaweb Journal. Press materials from the Center for Theatre Research have been preserved on Arweave as part of the journal's ongoing effort to archive ephemeral cultural documentation.

More often than not, my flatmate and I get home from work and have something to chat about that we read online or heard at work that turns into a longer than planned kitchen discussion on AI doomerism, accelerationism, and all the beautiful and terrifying outcomes in between. So when I saw a tweet that Doomers, Matthew Gasda's boardroom drama inspired by the 2023 Sam Altman departure from OpenAI, was back playing in NYC, I wanted to see if we were not alone in our existential dilemma around AI.

I'd been familiar with Gasda's work. I heard about Dimes Square, the play that became an underground hit about the downtown media types, and caught a few table reads of Last Days of Downtown, the final installment in that series. But I was curious how he would approach writing a play about AI.

I caught the first night in the new Manhattan space. The play is set in a San Francisco apartment, loosely drawn from the November 2023 coup attempt at OpenAI following the board's sudden firing of Sam Altman, the forty-eight hour implosion, the staff ultimatum, and the quiet rehiring. Act 1 follows Seth's inner circle scrambling after the firing from MindMesh, and Act 2 shifts to the board in similar disarray. Both acts carry a Succession-esque war room intensity, corporate jargon and witty banter that capture the chaos of the event. Altman's inspired character Seth, played by Sam Hyrkin, takes Machiavellian measures to hold the room, supported by Myra, played by Nikol Tsvetanova, loosely based on former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati.

"I was fired for creating miracles," Seth says at one point.

On the other side, ethicist officer Alina, played by Anastasia Wolfe, and Stanford AI lawyer Sanjay, played by Yousuf Shah, raise the moral stakes while the rest of the room stays largely apathetic to the realities of what they are building. Each character shows flickers of genuine idealism but ultimately succumbs to self-interest and cynicism.

In the second act, the Celsius-fueled board scrambles to contain what is brewing inside the company. Near the end, the doomer Substack writer Eli, played by Zach Hendrickson, prompts the MindMesh chatbot to provide an allegory of itself. The response, comparing itself to the "Gardener of Babylon," breaks the fourth wall in a sense. That monologue was actually generated by Anthropic's Claude chatbot, which is why both Claude and ChatGPT receive dramaturg credits in the program. AI-generated hypotheticals already feel overdone in art, and Doomers leans into this, letting the AI narrate its own mythology inside the drama as a bit of comedic relief.

As it ended, my flatmate turned to me: "that felt like a synthesis of our kitchen conversations." The girl sitting behind us laughed at that comment, but the kind of laugh that you do while cringing inside knowing that others spend their free time debating AI futures over tea before bed. There's something funny about watching a play about a very niche online event at a very niche theater. From the outside one would think this shouldn't work, but it does.

Doomers reveals the uncanny side of tech culture and human psychology. The character Sanjay at one point complains that he is "a humanist in a town full of transhumanists," which hits home for anyone working in tech who actually likes the beautiful mess of humans. The glimmers of empathy the characters show, followed almost immediately by something only a sociopath would say, leaves the audience wondering how the incredibly smart yet socially inept people shaping the future of technology actually see the rest of us "midwits."

It has been over two years since the events the play portrays and AGI has not killed us yet, but the mood is not hopeful either. Nick Land coming out of the shadows to do meetups in the Bay Area in 2026 to a warm reception, while other countries continue tightening their grip on AI regulation, shows that the AI discourse is continuing to splinter. The play does not resolve, which could be a reflection of Gasda's own thoughts on AI. He is someone that uses a flip phone and then semi-ironically lists Claude and ChatGPT as dramaturgs in the credits. I like contradictions and the play is full of contradictions. The discussions are much more nuanced than either taking a pro-tech or degrowth stance. It's a play that takes the AI discourse seriously with philosophical range, genuine technical literacy, and the right amount of irony for the room it's playing to.

Doomers is playing until February 27th at the Center for Theatre Research in Manhattan.

This piece is published in the Permaweb Journal. Press materials from the Center for Theatre Research have been preserved on Arweave as part of the journal's ongoing effort to archive ephemeral cultural documentation.