/wasn't able to read the whole article as i don't have a WSJ subscription
"AI Safety" covers a lot of things.
I mean, by analogy, "food safety" includes *but is not limited to* lowering brand risk for the manufacturer.
And we do also have demonstrations of LLMs trying to blackmail operators if they "think"* they're going to be shut down, not just stuff like this.
* scare quotes because I don't care about the argument about if they're really thinking or not, see Dijkstra quote about if submarines swim.
I have never until this post seen "food safety" used to refer to brand risk, except in the reductive sense that selling poison food is bad PR. As an example, the extensive wiki article doesn't even mention brand risk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_safety
Yes, and?
Saying "AI may literally kill all of us" is bad PR, irregardless of if the product is or isn't safe. AI encouraging psychotic breaks is bad PR in the reductive sense, because it gets in the news for this. AI being used by hackers or scammers, likewise.
But also consider PR battles about which ingredients are safe. Which additives, which sweeteners, GMOs, vat-grown actual-meat, vat-grown mycoprotein meat substitute, sugar free, fat free, high protein, soy, nuts, organic, etc., many of which are fought on the basis of if the contents is as safe as it's marketed as.
Or at least, I thought saying "it will kill us all if we get this wrong" was bad PR, until I saw this quote from a senator interviewing Altman, which just goes to show that even being extraordinarily blunt somehow still goes over the heads of important people:
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Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT):
I alluded in my opening remarks to the jobs issue, the economic effects on employment. I think you have said in fact, and I'm gonna quote, development of superhuman machine intelligence is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity. End quote. You may have had in mind the effect on, on jobs, which is really my biggest nightmare in the long term. Let me ask you what your biggest nightmare is, and whether you share that concern,
- https://www.techpolicy.press/transcript-senate-judiciary-sub...
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So, while I still roll my eyes at the idea this was just a PR stunt… if people expected reactions like Blumenthal's, that's compatible with it just being a PR stunt.