This discussion started around 2006-ish, before any of the "actual AI problems that currently exist" were actual problems currently existing, and has its eye on keeping humanity alive for a longer timespan still, because there will be more problems down the road as more discoveries are made.

Today's immediate short-term problems are also important and nobody is denying that. But to some extent, you have to skate where the puck is going to be, not where it is.