You lucked out in terms of your journey, the shortcut through SSC may have saved you a number of years ;)
My only advice on careers would be to strongly consider doing some ML capabilities work rather than pure AI risk. This will make it much easier to get enough qualifications and experience to get to work on risk later on. The risk field is so much smaller (and is less well received in academia) that setting yourself that goal may be too much of a stretch. You can always try to pick thesis topics which are as close to the intersection of risk and capabilities as possible.
You lucked out in terms of your journey, the shortcut through SSC may have saved you a number of years ;)
My only advice on careers would be to strongly consider doing some ML capabilities work rather than pure AI risk. This will make it much easier to get enough qualifications and experience to get to work on risk later on. The risk field is so much smaller (and is less well received in academia) that setting yourself that goal may be too much of a stretch. You can always try to pick thesis topics which are as close to the intersection of risk and capabilities as possible.