Many people probably have pdooms not dissimilar to coxon but view the upside as sufficiently good enough that it’s probably worth their time, career, personal success to see it through.
The choice is whether to scale up the current tech as fast as possible, or wait until we know what we're doing before each step. The latter has virtually as much upside long-term, but more chance of it.
AI labs now are working on roughly the former. Working on the latter