My understanding is that Eliezer has expressed different views on the most likely time frame for a foom at different times. Often he has argued about it, almost always on the side of the process being faster, but holding onto uncertainty and not considering it as important as the underlying dynamics. Others have definitely in general shortened their timelines both to reach AGI and on how long things take to get crazy after AGI.
I feel like the debate used to be between him and people saying “No way X happens” where X was fooming, sharp left turn, timelines, etc. He took the contrarian take that people did not make strong enough cases against those X scenarios, and should not be so sure that they’re impossible or even unlikely. Then he gave examples of how such scenarios could unfold, and some people mixed up his appeal to be less certain with him being overly confident in multiple very specific and sometimes mutually exclusive scenarios.
I feel like the debate used to be between him and people saying “No way X happens” where X was fooming, sharp left turn, timelines, etc. He took the contrarian take that people did not make strong enough cases against those X scenarios, and should not be so sure that they’re impossible or even unlikely. Then he gave examples of how such scenarios could unfold, and some people mixed up his appeal to be less certain with him being overly confident in multiple very specific and sometimes mutually exclusive scenarios.