Over the last few days, I've read some variant of the following on this website, several times: "You AI pessimists are freaking out over nothing. Some people have always worried about the end of the world, and none of their worst fears have ever come to pass. Just look at nuclear war- people have been saying that nukes would end the world for the past 75 years, but we're still around today. Stop worrying so much!" Ignoring the obvious survivorship bias (if nukes had destroyed us 50 years ago, we wouldn't be around to tweet about it now), do these folks think that nuclear war was avoided in a vacuum? Preventing nuclear war required (1) scientists loudly warning the world, (2) the general public demanding safety, and (3) politicians negotiating treaties to limit nuclear proliferation (often against the wishes of the more rabidly nationalistic factions in their own countries). It didn't just happen. Ditto with other near-catastrophes, like CFCs almost destroying the Ozone Layer before we globally banned them. Good outcomes do not just happen by default. If we want to avoid an AI catastrophe, we are going to have to stop pretending that they do. We need to roll up our sleeves and make the good outcomes happen.