Strongly agree. To my utter bewilderment, Eliezer appears to be exacerbating this vulnerability by making no efforts whatsoever to appear credible to the casual person.
In nearly all of his public showings in the last 2 years, he has:
Rocked up in a trilby
Failed to adequately introduce himself
Spoken in condescending, aloof and cryptic tones; and
Failed to articulate the central concerns in an intuitive manner
As a result, to the layperson, he comes off as an egotistical, pessimistic nerd with fringe views—a perfect clown from which to retreat to a “middle ground”, perhaps offered by the eminently reasonable-sounding Yann LeCun—who, after all, is Meta’s chief AI scientist.
The alignment community is dominated by introverted, cerebral rationalists and academics, and consequently, a common failure is to ignore the significance of image as either a distraction or an afterthought.
I would happily play the role of B.
I do not have an established FIDE rating, but my strength is approximately 1850 FIDE currently (based on playing against FIDE rated players OTB quite often, as well as maintaining 2100-2200 blitz ratings on Lichess & Chess.com, and 2200-2300 bullet). I’d be available after 6:30 pm (UTC+10) until ~12:00 pm (UTC+10). Alternatively, weekends are very flexible. I could do a few hours per week.
I agree short/long time controls are a relevant, because speed is a skill that is almost entirely independent of conceptual knowledge and is mostly a function of baseline playing ability.
Edit: Would also be fine with C