Reminds me that fire is dangerous and making it would have been patent-able today. There is no guarantee that once taken away from the masses, AI research wont continue in walled gardens with only the rich, connected, and powerful having access. Had people been egalitarian or safety oriented, a lot of other things wouldn't have been developed, like nukes, robotics& automation, or self driving cars for example. There wouldn't have been billionaires setting up rules for everyone else.

The only reason this is an issue for "them" is that this tech isn't under their complete control and it seems to threaten the rent extraction model in a bunch of other industries.