Are you saying that the internet at large could pose a 'legitimate risk to human life such that we would go extinct in the near future,' or do you disagree that AI, when used as a tool by humans, could pose such a risk?
Just take the recent events alone - COVID-19 would not have been as much of a threat to humanity if some people wouldn't have built echo chambers on the internet with tremendous influence over others where they would share their unfounded conspiracy theories and miracle cures (or miracle alternatives to protecting oneself).
But there is a lot more. The data collection through the internet has enabled politicians who have no clue how to lead to be elected through just saying the right things to the largest demographic they can appeal to. Total populism and appeasing the masses has always been an effective strategy for politicians, but at least they could not execute it effectively. Now, everyone with enough money can. And this definitely stifles human progress and enshrines a level of regression in our institutions. Potentially dangerous regression, especially when it involves prejudice against a group or stripping away rights, just because people talk about it in their DMs on social media and get binned into related affinity buckets for ads.
Then there is the aspect of the internet creating tremendous time-wasters for a very large proportion of the population, robbing humanity of at least a million man-years of productivity a day. It is too addictive.
It has also been used to facilitate genocides, severe prejudice in large populations, and other things that are extremely dangerous.
High risk? Maybe not. A risk, though, for sure. Life was significantly more positive, happier and more productive before the internet. But the negative impact internet has had on our lives and human progress isn't all that it could have had. When a senile meme president gets the nuclear codes thanks in part to a funny frog picture on the internet, I think that is enough to say it poses a risk to extinction.
The internet could have been used as a tool to mobilise people against gross government negligence involved in handling COVID-19 response in many countries, but instead most critical pieces of government response were just consumed as outrage porn they were, in part, written to be.
Overall, I have learned nothing useful about the pandemic from the internet, and I have been consuming a lot of what was on there, reading all the major news outlets and big forums daily like a lot of us. This is not to say that one could not possibly use internet for good in COVID-19, just that it hasn't been used that way, generally.
if AI actually is a threat, then it can be regulated. it's not a threat now, period. preemptively regulating something is silly and a waste of energy and political capital.