I don't doubt he's serious in what he believes. I respect Ilya greatly as a researcher. Do you have notes or a time-point for me to listen to in that podcast? I bemoan the trend toward podcasts-as-references - even a time-point reference (or even multiple!) to the transcript would be greatly desirable!
Ilya is pretty serious about alignment (precisely?) due to his gut instinct: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft0gTO2K85A (2 Nov 2023)