This is relevant, but I tend to think this sort of evidence isn’t really getting at what I want. My main reaction is one that you already said:
Obviously this isn’t an indication that they understand or agree with safety concerns, but directionally suggests people are concerned and thinking about this.
I think many people have a general prior of “we should be careful with wildly important technologies”, and so will say things like “safety is important” and “AGI might be bad”, without having much of an understanding of why.
Also, I don’t expect the specific populations surveyed in those two sources to overlap much with “top AI researchers” as defined in the question, though I have low confidence in that claim.
This is relevant, but I tend to think this sort of evidence isn’t really getting at what I want. My main reaction is one that you already said:
I think many people have a general prior of “we should be careful with wildly important technologies”, and so will say things like “safety is important” and “AGI might be bad”, without having much of an understanding of why.
Also, I don’t expect the specific populations surveyed in those two sources to overlap much with “top AI researchers” as defined in the question, though I have low confidence in that claim.