FWIW, I have seen a decent amount of flip-flopping on this question. My current guess is that most of the time when people say this, they don’t mean either of those things but have some other reason for the belief, and choose the justification that they think will be most likely compelling to their interlocutor (like, I’ve had a bunch of instances of the same person telling me at different times that they were centrally concerned about China because it increased P(AI takeover) and then at a different point in time in a different social context that they were centrally concerned about Chinese values being less good by their lights if optimized).
FWIW, I have seen a decent amount of flip-flopping on this question. My current guess is that most of the time when people say this, they don’t mean either of those things but have some other reason for the belief, and choose the justification that they think will be most likely compelling to their interlocutor (like, I’ve had a bunch of instances of the same person telling me at different times that they were centrally concerned about China because it increased P(AI takeover) and then at a different point in time in a different social context that they were centrally concerned about Chinese values being less good by their lights if optimized).
It really depends on what you mean by “most of the time when people say this”. I don’t think my experience matches yours.