Computers are radioactive
Radioactive materials constantly emit energy and particles that mess up the structures of the human body. They can make you very sick. We are super careful with them.
Computers today are not so dangerous. They enable surveillance capitalism. If a critical system goes wrong then occassionaly people are harmed. But overall computers are very useful tools and do great things for us.
But now imagine when AI models and computing hardware get to the point where being able to run these models on the chip gives you the capability to unleash a superintelligent agent that could do potentially very dangerous things like manipulate people, escape from your computer and self replicate, hack other computer systems, etc.
At that point, computers would be constantly leaking intelligent actions that mess up lives and infrastructure and we would be super careful with them.
I fear that this might happen soon, and social perception of computation and specifically computer hardware will drastically change. In this possible future, you will not be able to buy GPUs beyond some capability without strictly controlled permits. Businesses that use large amounts of computing will be monitored and regulated like nuclear powerplants. The training and testing of AI systems will be as dangerous as a nuclear test, demanding lots of safety planning and engineering.
This new careful attitude towards computing would seem very weird from today’s eyes, but it might be the seriousness we need to prevent AI harms.