But there is, you said it yourself. A thought leader turns into a dictator. Of course, this can (and will) go awfully wrong at some point, but as a medium-term solution this might be the way.
I'm struggling to come up with examples where one man would consciously steer the mankind into some different direction - closest we have to such "steering committee" is probably UN. So I don't see Paul or any other individual significantly impacting the way AI is adopted (at least not in a way it is portrayed today - as a global game changer / new era enabler).
