The risk is humans using AI to control / exploit / coerce / injure other humans. The risk of AIs being given enough agency to threaten humans comes after that - they'll only have the agency we give them (being "alive" or "conscious" is not the near-term risk).
The article lists diplomatic actions which might help to manage the risk, starting with "An agreement between America and China" - they all sound like impossible dreams.
We had ~80 years of relative peace and prosperity in which to construct a framework of unity to face challenges like AI (and global warming, which until GPT I thought was the bigger risk); international unity is weaker than ever.
In geopolitics and defence, capability of other nations is the concern rather than intention; the capability curve of LLMs is heading off our charts.
We're backed into tight corners on nuclear proliferation, global warming, and I can see LLM-enabled conflicts (cyber warfare, infrastructure terrorism) pushing us over those other edges. Our democracies seem weakened, and I expect LLMs will empower those using social media to create conflict and control opinion.
We're familiar with the cycle of inventing new technology which benefits people, then seeing how long before people invent ways to misuse it. There is a possibility here that LLMs could be used to solve the problems we are juggling, but I struggle to imagine that people won't misuse it even faster.
The article is a start on thinking and talking about managing our risks. The best outcome would be it is so well managed that, like the Y2K "bug", people say "after all that hoopla, nothing happened". I'm not seeing a smooth path to there.