Nobody thinks we won't notice when it's more imminent; the concern is that capability research has always been faster than safety research. If we wait until it's imminent, we risk having no chance of catching up in time. Why not devote a tiny fraction of our funding to starting the research now, so we can be ready on time? Worst case we're early... which in this context is a lot better than being late.
Worst case the safety research ends up causing the AGI to be actively antagonistic. Slightly less worst case it never leads anywhere and AGI ends up turning us into mouthless slugs anyway. Third-ish worst it makes AGI suborn-able and whoever gets to it first becomes our god-king.
many many worse situations later we get to:
It never leads anywhere but AGI never happens anyway and it just ends up being welfare-for-future-phobes instead of curing debilitating disease or buying every homeless person in a city a new pair of shoes or whatever.
"we're early" is in fact the best possible scenario, actually it's basically the only positive scenario.
