People conflate two very different senses of “autonomous”. One basically means capable of reacting to things automatically without a person in the loop. Lots of computer systems are autonomous in that sense, and have been so for decades. The other sense is more like “accountable”, i.e. it’s a real player on some stage, like a country or a person, capable of governing its own affairs.

One day it may make sense to hold software accountable for its own actions, but we are nowhere near that point.

When OpenAI creates software that performs crimes, what’s actually happened is that OpenAI has performed crimes using software (whether intentionally or through negligence). People need to stop falling for the anthropomorphic PR spin.