> Maybe you aren't aware, but this is a field that people do PhDs and get professorships in.
I'm aware of my own existence, thanks ;-)
> Noone respected agrees with the doom-sayers
But many, many, many respected AI researchers (who I've talked to about this) certainly do agree that AI/ML safety/robustness are important topics of inquiry.
Including researchers at all the top CS departments, at Deepmind, at OpenAI, etc.
Consider critiquing the concrete projects that are funded with AI safety money. Very little of that money flows to research about "preventing malicious superintelligence" or whatever strawman you have in mind. And even projects that consider those questions also consider many much more near-term AI safety questions.