#7: (Scientific) Doomsday Track Records Aren't That Bad
Historically, the vast majority of doomsday claims are based on religious beliefs, whereas only a small minority have been supported by a large fraction of relevant subject matter experts. If we consider only the latter, we find:
A) Malthusian crisis: false...but not really a doomsday prediction per se.
B) Hole in the ozone layer: true, but averted because of global cooperation in response to early warnings.
C) Climate change: probably true if we did absolutely nothing; probably mostly averted because of moderate, distributed efforts to mitigate (i.e. high investment in alternative energy sources and modest coordination).
D) Nuclear war: true, but averted because of global cooperation, with several terrifying near-misses...and could still happen.
This is not an exhaustive list as I am operating entirely from memory, but I am including everything I can think of and not deliberately cherry-picking examples--in fact, part of the reason I included (A) was to err on the side of stretching to include counter-examples. Also, the interpretations obviously contain a fair bit of subjectivity / lack of rigor. Nonetheless, in this informal survey, we see a clear pattern where, more often than not, doomsday scenarios that are supported by many leading relevant experts depict actual threats to human existence and the reason we are still around is because of active global efforts to prevent these threats from being realized.
Given all of the above counterarguments (especially #6), there is strong reason to categorize x-risk from AI alongside major environmental and nuclear threats. We should therefore assume by default that it is real and will only be averted if there is an active global effort to prevent it from being realized.
Just saw this, sure!