Exactly, the idea that AI techniques are risky is a minority viewpoint. There is a community of smart people who are very interested in thinking about and mitig

Exactly, the idea that AI techniques are risky is a minority viewpoint. There is a community of smart people who are very interested in thinking about and mitigating the risk, but it's not something that most ML researchers think much about at all. Most researchers in ML are just interested in pushing the field forwards. The "risks" in improving ML seem equivalent to the risk that Intel will make a processor so powerful that it takes over the world. Researchers are also aware that given the current capabilities of AI techniques (and current AI techniques are not that capable), it's just as likely that the next JavaScript framework drafts the world economy into making paperclips exclusively. The idea that AI development is risky has a few hardcore supporters and is widely popularized, but most people working on it do not feel that it's a problem worth worrying about.