Do public facing AI safety people ever purposely stagger their timelines as a credibility-saving mechanism in case an early prediction is wrong?

IMHO, I think AI-2027 people do not do this. My sense from them is that different predictions stem from honest differences in modeling/priors. To the extent they have coalesced around a single date (they are named AI 2027 after all), I think they hope that their communications about the inherent uncertainty preserves their credibility in the event later timelines are correct (e.g., AGI by 2035).

In any event, if we don't have AGI by 2027 (or 2028 per Daniel's updated timeline), then I expect we'll inevitably hear a "doomers were all wrong narrative" from several different camps.