Reading AI safety articles like this one, I always find myself nodding along in agreement. The conclusions simply follow from the premises, and the premises are so reasonable. Yet by the end, I always feel futility and frustration. Anyone who wanted to argue that AI safety was a hopeless program wouldn't need to look any further than the AI safety literature! I'm not just referring to "death with dignity". What fills me with dread and despair is paragraphs like this:
...However, optimists often take a very empiricist frame, so they are likely to be interested
Here is the real chasm between the AI safety movement and the ML industry/academia. One field is entirely driven by experimental results; the other is dominated so totally by theory that its own practitioners deny that there can be any meaningful empirical aspect to it, at least, not until the moment when it's too late to make any difference.
To put a finer point on my view on theory vs empirics in alignment:
You mention that you're surprised to have not seen "more vigorous commercialization of language models" recently beyond mere "novelty". Can you say more about what particular applications you had in mind? Also, do you consider AI companionship as useful or merely novel?
I expect the first killer app that goes mainstream will mark the PONR, i.e. the final test of whether the market prefers capabilities or safety.