I think many of the skeptics here are focusing too much on the "agent out of control" skynet style scenario and not thinking hard enough about malicious actors

I think many of the skeptics here are focusing too much on the "agent out of control" skynet style scenario and not thinking hard enough about malicious actors using advanced AI to do large amounts of damage faster than it can be mitigated. Even with proper "guardrails" and alignment, the second and third order impacts of e.g. open source models getting better and more usable for cyber attacks could have some pretty scary possibilities. The comparisons to nuclear and biological weapons seem to me pretty apt, and I don't think we should be so easy to discount the fears of people with a lot of inside knowledge and expertise on how things are progressing and where they might be headed.