Later in that chapter, McCorduck quotes Marvin Minsky as saying:
...we have people who say we've got to solve problems of poverty and famine and so forth, and we shouldn't be working on things like artificial intelligence... [But I think] we should have a certain number of people worrying about... whether artificial intelligence will be a huge disaster some day or be one of the best events in the universe...
...You might be the only one who can help with the disaster that's going to happen [decades from now], and if you don't prepare yourself, and instead just go off into some social welfare project right now, who will do it then? ...Yes, I feel that there's a great enterprise going on which is making the world of the future all right.
...which sounds eerily like a pitch for MIRI.
Unfortunately, Minsky did not then rush to create the MIT AI Safety Lab.
I don't think that's a legitimate "Unfortunately". If you're not inspired and an approach doesn't pop into your head, throwing money at the problem until you get some grad students who couldn't get a postdoc elsewhere is not necessarily going to be productive, can indeed be counterproductive, and Minsky would legitimately know that.
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.