Thanks, I follow you now. 

I don't quite follow, can you spell out the reasoning a bit more? 

They way to deal with the vagueness of "AGI" is to think about substitutability for human labour in an imaginary world where no regulatory barriers prevent this. 

What made you convinced the threat is serious? 

The expert survey results are also just compatible with "short timelines", strictly speaking, if that means "AI that can do any work a human can for similar cost". If economists think that even that won't produce explosive growth but just a modest speed up, then they will not necessarily predict super-high growth by 2050 even if you specify that AGI arrives in 2030. 

What about the risk we spread wild animal suffering to other planets? 

One reason to think we might not find anything morally valuable that distinct from what we already know about is that our concept of morality is made to fit with the stuff we already know about. 

I have a much more positive feelings about EAs than rationalists, and I think this is quite normal for people who came to EA from outside rationalism. I mean, I actually liked the vast majority of rationalists I've met a lot-when I worked in a rationalist office in Prague it had a lovely culture-but I think only about .5 of rationalists like EA as an idea, and my suspicion is that "dislikes EA" amongst rationalists correlates fairly heavily with "has political views that make me uncomfortable". 

One thing it might be useful for people to look at here when reflecting on the causes of the failure was how much experience the HR team had of working outside of EA organizations. If the answer is "very little" then maybe bringing in more experienced non-EA pros would help, but if the answer is "a decent amount" it's less likely that will prevent future errors on its own. 

Might they just be lying about the numbers?