Agreed. It's a bit of both. There's been people talking about the "alignment problem" in the right fora for like 20 years. And, if we ever have consciousness / sentience that is created by us, it will be something that it would be nice to have an answer to.

But, the most relevant AI issues today are not that. It's about liability-shifting and other externalization by the powerful, misunderstanding and misuse by the well-meaning, and various cognitive hazards. These are not marketing, these are what the companies don't want you to think about. There also lock-in and labor issues that the model providers don't want to talk about, though these do have somewhat-known mitigations. You get plenty of people that are primarily concerned with these issues being dismissed a "AI doomers" which in, I think, wrong.