Comment by ACCount37

In the AI scene, everyone knows everyone.

It used to be a small group of people who mostly just believed that AI is a very important technology overlooked by most. Now, they're vindicated, the importance of AI is widely understood, and the headcount in the industry is up x100. But those people who were on the ground floor are still there, they all know each other, and many keep in touch. And many who entered the field during the boom were those already on the periphery of the same core group.

Which is how you get various researchers and executives who don't see eye to eye anymore but still agree on many of the fundamentals - or even things that appear to an outsider as extreme views. They may have agreed on them back in year 2010.

"AGI is possible, powerful, dangerous" is a fringe view in the public opinion - but in the AI scene, it's the mainstream view. They argue the specifics, not the premise.