So, no, the blanks have not been filled in then. Because, for those in Toner's camp, that middle ground is just "progress from GPT to T-1000, but slowly", right? Yudkowsky talks about AIs 3D printing themselves into biological entities and killing us all because humans are an inefficient use of matter. It's not a strong position to me because it sounds ridiculous, not because there's greed involved.

It takes some level of delusion of grandeur to think half a board of a single non profit that just happens to be the first mover can stop the full forces of American capitalism - although I kind of respect the drive/purpose.

They could easily lose any power they had to guide the industry, it was a huge gamble. I remember reading a Harvard business school study showing the first mover advantage repeatedly turned out to be ineffective in the tech industry as there is a looong series of early winners dying out to later market entrants like Friendster->FB, Google, a bunch of dotcom era Ecommerce companies predating Amazon, etc.

They need full industry/society buy in - at an ideological level - to win this battle, they won't win through backroom dealing in a boardroom while losing 90% of their own staff.