[the8472]

The practical AI field is obviously growing today, more money is put into it every year. It's only a question when you want to start your safety research and how much resources to allocate to it. You don't need to allocate billions of dollars of friendly-AI research this year or the next year because anything approaching AGI is at least decades away (and might be a "fusion is only 30 years away" situation).

You could also compare this to climate change. The effect and eventual risk of greenhouse gases has been known for more than half a century. But initially it was mostly a theoretical concern and later even when it was realized to be a real problem the effects still seemed far away in the future. But people still did basic research, even decades ago. Nobody poured billions of dollars into sustainable businesses, but not doing business is not the same as not doing research.