Public release of GPT (and the following models) did bring negative societal changes with it.

We now live in a world where captchas don't work, astroturfing is indistinguishable, school essays and theses don't prove any learning took place, open source maintainers gradually cease to accept stranger contributions, …

OAI wasn’t claiming any of those as dangerous. They mentioned biological warfare and massive job loss.

Moving the goal post now is a bit disingenuous. GPT-2 was a gibberish generator.