The letter against AI is a power grab by the centralized elites

You forgot the leader of Center for Humane Technology, Tristan Harris, who made The Social Dilemma and has been working on ethics in tech for years now.

I'm sure his motives are terrible.

I am the basilisk

coo coo cachoo

Not sure if it is a power grab or the other conclusions reached by that site, but whatever "ban" is instituted it won't be for internally run AIs by big/powerful enough companies, intelligence and other high profile government agencies, and so on, at least if improves processes or drives profits up. And if there is any danger using AIs, is in those places where it would be more dangerous.

At most, it would be for public facing AIs, open source projects, and small enough companies and organizations. And the administrative controls to keep that going, like export controls, auditing, commercial penalties to countries and companies that don't comply with those controls and so on.

The cat is out of the bag already, any action taken will be asymmetric, cutting new or powerless players, but the big ones using it already or with enough resources to do roll their own won't be stopped.

We have an existential threat already with fossil fuels, but that doesn't stop governments and big companies to keep rising production and consumption of it, no "ban" was ever instituted on that yet, and whatever be done, will go first after not so big or profitable targets like meat producers. That is the kind of asymmetry that you can expect for AIs too.