72:00 - Hanson cites the AAAI white paper which rails against alarmism.

That seems more likely to be a tussle over funding. If the panic-stricken screechers make enough noise, it might adversely affect their member's funding. Something rather like that has happened before:

It was rumoured in some of the UK national press of the time that Margaret Thatcher watched Professor Fredkin being interviewed on a late night TV science programme. Fredkin explained that superintelligent machines were destined to surpass the human race in intelligence quite soon, and that if we were lucky they might find human beings interesting enough to keep us around as pets. The rumour is that Margaret Thatcher decided that the ``artificial intelligentsia'' whom she was just proposing to give lots of research funds under the Alvey Initiative were seriously deranged.

• http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/Robots_Wont_Rule2.shtml#Bad