The problem is we don't know. It might be current-grade LLMs plateauing for 50 years, and it might be AGI in 5 weeks, with exponential growth to the singularity

The problem is we don't know. It might be current-grade LLMs plateauing for 50 years, and it might be AGI in 5 weeks, with exponential growth to the singularity. Heck, we're split on whether current GPT is a glorified autocomplete, a friend, or an alien intelligence, or a half-dozen other theories. It's a black box. Most people can't handle uncertainty, so they're in some camp, and all the camps are crazy and stupid. Ditto for covid, for that matter. In early 2020, it could have been anything from a glorified flu to a civilization-ending plague. Ditto for global warming, for that matter. All the models are speculation and extrapolation from limited data. Ditto for a half-dozen other things. Personally, I think we should play it safe for all of those, but reasonable people can differ. What reasonable people can't do is argue for certainty before we have data coming in or a reasonable understanding of the underlying threat. Edit: If people could handle uncertainty (and understand value differences are okay), we'd also have a lot less political polarization. A lot of this is simply about believing the other side _might_ be right. If I believe something with 10% odds, and you with 90%, it's often possible to compromise, where with a categorical split, it's not.