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mushroom comments on Do Earths with slower economic growth have a better chance at FAI? - Less Wrong Discussion
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If a good outcome requires that influential people cooperate and have longer time-preferences, then slower economic growth than expected might increase the likelihood of a bad outcome.
It's true that periods of increasing economic growth haven't always lead to great technology decision-making (Cold War), but I'd expect an economic slowdown, especially in a democratic country, to make people more willingly to take technological risks (to restore economic growth), and less likely to cooperate with or listen to or fund cautious dissenters, (like people who say we should be worried about AI).
One could just as easily argue that an era of slow growth will take technological pessimism seriously, while an era of fast growth is likely to want to go gung-ho full-speed-ahead on everything.
Assuming some link between tech and growth, low-growth pessimism seems more likely to be "technology has mattered less and moved slower than we expected", which is a different flavor.
A culture in which they go gung-ho full-speed-ahead on everything might build autonomous AI into a robot, and it turns out to be unfriendly in some notable way while not also being self-improving.
Seems to me like that would be one of the most reliable paths to getting people to take FAI seriously. A big lossy messy factory recall, lots of media attention, irate customers.