I think a lot of these predictors underestimate prediction itself. To their credit, there is a lot of emphasis on trends in economies or technologies. That's probably the best tool for predicting, but predicting is hard. I think it's hard to really know how complicated "biology" is, from the current perspective of mystery. Who knows what'll be known decades from now.

I like Elon Musk's perspective as a starting point though. The trends that all these predictions rely on are man made. Technology improves, gets more powerful and more prevalent when smart people work on it hard. It's not a physical force, it's caused by people.

Anyway, if you are expecting narrow AI to do so much, who knows what the relationship between that technology and "true" AI (whatever that means exactly) is. It may not matter much, as you say.