Ben Goertzel, who is a bona fide AI researcher and was connected with SIAI/MIRI before a leadership split, has written about the topic: http://multiverseaccord

Ben Goertzel, who is a bona fide AI researcher and was connected with SIAI/MIRI before a leadership split, has written about the topic: http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.com/2010/10/singularity-institutes-scary-idea-and.html http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.com/2010/10/singula... http://jetpress.org/v22/goertzel-pitt.htm http://jetpress.org/v22/goertzel-pitt.htm You might find some other related commentary with the search term "scary idea", which is what Ben has labeled Yudkowsky's side of the FOOM debate typified by the "That Alien Message" story. TL;DR: Goertzel takes friendliness seriously but considers a fast, hard FOOM to be implausible and worrying over it detrimental to the cause. I don't know of anyone else with qualifications to be counted as a "top AI researcher" that has covered these topics in any significant detail. Those few times I have seen the topic mentioned in interviews (with Pei Wang and Hugo de Garis, for example), it's dismissed out of hand as crazy-talk. You may find some discussion of this at the various AGI conferences though (use search terms like "friendly" or "safe" on the youtube channels).