[SonOfLilit]

He is not entirely wrong. The movement trying to lower the risk of AI-caused extinction of humanity hasn't had many major successes and indeed had a very embarrassing weekend. Personally, I spent a decade thinking this movement will have zero impact because nobody would listen to them and was pleasantly surprised to see how much better they're doing in the last year than I was expecting them to, and most adherents would agree with the feeling that it's basically a hopeless task. And still they try to do their best because as they see it, they're trying to save humanity from a major risk of extinction!

And his solution is for them to realize that they are net-negative and just... quit?

If somebody sincerely believes a comet is about to hit earth and kill everyone unless we all get together and send a bunch of miner-astonauts to Armageddon it to smithereens, I don't think telling them "stop trying to fix it, you're just causing a panic and wasting resources, sit back and let everyone else work on their problems that have a higher chance of being resolved" would be very convincing. To them, you would look quite stupid. And mentioning in glancing that you think everything they believe is silly sci-fi without justifying it wouldn't help much.