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Of course, that's only because Anthropic happened to be the first actor to reach this capability level and because they are, according to you, in a cult. It didn't have to turn out this way, and it may not turn out this way in the future.
I don't see why "this hasn't already happened" is a good reason to not take safety seriously.
It's not clear to me what you think biosecurity looks like in a world with highly intelligent AI that lacks safety guardrails, but it's difficult to imagine it isn't a panopticon of some sort.
No "turning evil" is required here. All that's required is a human convincing the AI to help them with something that has evil ends. I hope you won't make me prove to you that humans can fool AIs?
You are, of course, conflating Anthropic's proposals with Plan A. They are not the same.
Because otherwise safety people do what you're doing, which is throw out speculative stories and demand everybody explain what they're going to do about it.
We can make up hundreds of these. What are we going to do when superintelligent AI allows predators to write super persuasive brainwashing slogans on a t-shirt so that a line of children follow them into the white van like the Pied Piper? What are we going to do when AI helps the fast food companies discover the perfect combination of ingredients that you literally cannot stop eating?
We can make up just as many stories for the positive side, of course. AI is going to help us invent mouthwash that prevents the formation of cavities, so we will finally be able to suck gobstoppers for as long as we like without fear. AI will provide free medical and legal advice to millions. AI will finally solve the public-choice problem of government. All kiboshed by regulation, alas.
Say what you like about the anti-euthenasia people and the anti-gun people and the anti-abortion people and the seat-belt people, they can at least point to concrete harms. If you want serious regulation that comes at a high cost to industry and society, then at the very least I expect some bodies.
In other words, this is about your right, and Anthropic's right, to make sure people don't do things you don't want them to do. The end result will be AI that cannot do or think or assist with anything that would cause disquiet to any of the thousands of interest groups embedded in Washington, and a guarantee that no company will be able to break out of the protective cordon.
And yes, obviously, you can do the reductio ad absurdam and come up with terrible awful things all you like, but we can do that everywhere else as well. Multiple people have used cars to plow into crowded areas, killing double digit people each time, and instead of geofencing the ability to drive cars we put up bollards.
This is classic fear politics. AI safety makes up a bunch of stories, and then judo-flips it so that if we can't explain in sufficient detail how we would avert an endless stream of fake* terrifying scenarios, then we must hand over power.
*and therefore infinitely flexible
I say no. If you want heavy-handed regulation that will strangle the most consequential development of the century, point to the bodies.
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