It's more of a smear. If you're the one arguing from an AI safety standpoint, it means your opponent is not being safe and is dangerous.
You should be expected to articulate why your position is "safer" and how "safe" is defined.
In my opinion most AI safety arguments are about vaguely defined variables like speed: "it's going too fast" - to who? who defines what fast is? do you slow down 2x or 10x? do competitors and/or rival nations less concerned zip by and the end result is still the same?
There is some validity to the discussion if AI is being "racist" or "biased" (again however you define these) but again competitors and/or rival nations may be less concerned and the end result may still be the same.
If anything the "safest" option is to define what your concerns are, then race ahead to try to be the canonical solution or defined standard in order to set standards for the rest to follow or be bound by.
Otherwise I don't see what this means now; that the LLMs e.g. dont use racist terms? ok, great, nice, but how is that anything more than what you need to do on the web now anyway? how's that related to "AI" at all?
What I'd love to see is that this gambit backfires and instead we start talking about "tech safety" and that creates actual regulations with teeth that cut down the techzillas a bit (or a lot).