What led up to this.

Scott Locklin, a quant blogger, has helped me to put some pieces together about the dodgy "futurology" I've followed for awhile. In recent years I've developed an uneasy feeling about the whole "nanotechnology" business which has become increasingly problematic for cryonics, for example, and Locklin's post on Eric Drexler provided the tipping point for my change of opinion about it.

Locklin later expands his critique to vaporware hustlers in general. Locklin writes:

Technology is what allows us our prosperity, and it must be funded and nurtured, but we must also avoid funding and nurturing parasites. Cargo-cult science and technologists are not only wasteful of money, they waste human capital. It makes me sad to see so many young people dedicating their lives to snake oil like “nanotechnology.” They’d be better off starting a business or learning a trade. “Vaporware technologist” would be a horrible epitaph to a misspent life.

I think Locklin would consider "Friendly Artificial Intelligence" another example of vaporware, cargo-cult technology and parasitism on scarce resources. The young men who have gotten seduced by this mirage would do better, as Locklin recommends, to find reality-based jobs which add to the country's GDP.