> All this "AI safety" is purely moat-building for the likes of OpenAI et. al. to prevent upstarts like DeepSeek.

Modern AI safety originated with people like Eliezer Yudkowsky, Nick Bostrom, the LessWrong/rationality movement etc.

They very much were not just talking about it only to build moats for OpenAI. For one thing, OpenAI didn't exist at the time, AI was not anywhere close to where it is today, and almost everyone thought their arguments were ridiculous.

You might not agree with them, but you can't simply dismiss their arguments as only being there to prop up the existing AI players, that's wrong and disingenuous.