Suppose pro-friendly AI and anti-uncontrolled-AI advocacy and research is not at this point the most effective mitigation of x-risk.

That's not the problem. The problem is that it's not mitigation at all, it's exacerbation. The current state of affairs is not stable (for that matter, it's not even in equilibrium); either we go up or we go down. If we snuff out real research in favor of hopeless feel-good programs to formalize Friendliness with pen and paper, we throw away chances of the former and thereby choose the latter by default.

Remember, it is the way of extinction that what kills the last individual often has nothing to do with the factors that doomed the species. For all anyone knows, the last dodo may have died of old age. I'm confident there will still be at least some people alive in 2100. But whether there still exists a winning move for humanity at that stage may depend on what we choose to support now, in the early decades of the century.