I think even most skeptics would agree that we have had for some time technology worthy of being called "AI". It's not "Artificial General Intelligence" for sur

I think even most skeptics would agree that we have had for some time technology worthy of being called "AI". It's not "Artificial General Intelligence" for sure. And it is to date not materially strong enough to harm large numbers of people. But AI is plausibly 50 years away from harming large numbers of people[1]. By that standard of "years until harm", global warming should have been first publicly discussed in the 1980s or 90s. That is a bit later than it happened, and later than some would like. [1] If researchers develop models that say it's more like 100 or 500 years out, I think that would be great and very helpful. But several researchers have put out credible models which put a crisis in the 40s to 60s. Skepticism about their approaches that identifies specific flaws or produces improved models is good, much better than hand-waved dismissals.