Most of the people involved think AI risk is important based on their own reasoning, not based on trusting Eliezer. Personally, I don't really care whether he's qualified, because I consider myself qualified enough to judge his arguments (or anonymous arguments) directly.

As someone who is still acquiring a basic education I have to rely on some amount of intuition and trust in peer-review. Here I give a lot of weight to actual, provable success, recognition, and substantial evidence in the form of a real world demonstration of intelligence and skill.

The Less Wrong sequences and upvotes by unknown and anonymous strangers are not enough to prove the expertise and intelligence that I consider necessary to lend enough support to such extraordinary ideas as the possibility of risks from artificial general intelligences undergoing explosive recursive self-improvement. At least not enough to disregard other risks that have been deemed important by a world-wide network of professionals with a track record of previous achievements.

I do not intent to be derogatory, but who are you, why would I trust your judgement or that of other people on Less Wrong? This is a blog on the Internet created by an organisation with a few papers that lack a lot of mathematical rigor and technical details.

What may be throwing you off is that he's extremely visible - he's the public face of SIAI to a lot of people...

What is bothering me is that I haven't seen much evidence that he is qualified and intelligent enough to just believe him. People don't even believe Roger Penrose when he is making up extraordinary claims outside his realm of expertise. And Roger Penrose achieved a lot more than Eliezer Yudkowsky and has demonstrated his superior intellect.