We can do more than one thing at a time. (Or, more to the point, different people can do different things.) We can advocate against misuses of current capabilities, and advocate about the much larger threats of future capabilities.

We really can’t. We are terrible at multitasking.

If you look around you’ll see that there are indeed very many people who are doing very different things from one another and without much centralized coordination.

Parent is likely referring to political/mass pressure behind initiatives.

In which case the lack of a clear singular message, when confronted with a determined and amoral adversary, dissolves into confusion.

Most classically, because the adversary plants PR behind "It's still an open debate among experts."

See: cigarettes, climate change

There's a big fucking difference between people who want to regulate AI because they might become a doomsday terminator paperclip factory (the register-model-with-government-if-they-are-too-big-crowd) and the folks who want to prevent AI being used to indirectly discriminate in hiring and immigration.

Also the potential for massive job losses and even more wealth inequality. I feel a lot of the people who are philosophizing about AI safety are well-off people who are worried about losing their position of influence and power. They don't care about the average guy who will lose his job.