I'm starting to think SIAI might have to jettison the "singularity" terminology (for the intelligence explosion thesis) if it's going to stand on its own. It's a cool word, and it would be a shame to lose it, but it's become associated too much with utopian futurist storytelling for it to accurately describe what SIAI is actually working on.
Edit: Look at this Facebook group. This sort of thing is just embarrassing to be associated with. "If you are feeling brave, you can approach a stranger in the street and speak your message!" Seriously, this practically is religion. People should be raising awareness of singularity issues not as a prophecy but as a very serious and difficult research goal. It doesn't do any good to have people going around telling stories about the magical Future-Land while knowing nothing about existential risks or cognitive biases or friendly AI issues.
I'm not sure that your criticism completely holds water. Friendly AI is simply put only a worry that has convinced some Singularitarians. One might not be deeply concerned about that (Possible example reasons: 1) You expect uploading to come well before general AI. 2) you think that the probable technical path to AI will force a lot more stages of AI of much lower intelligence which will be likely to give us good data for solving the problem)
I agree that this Facebook group does look very much like something one would expect out of a missonizing religion...
The title says it all.