Not just the greed. The whole AI is so dangerous that we must be the ones to build it to save humanity, and then gaslighting yourself and everyone around you into believing that your language model is AGI. This is some weird detached from reality cult behavior.
Complete hearsay, but I struck up a convo with someone who had spent a few hours drinking around a campfire with him and a few others at burning man, prior to GPT3's popularity. Apparently he was utterly convinced in his pivotal role to shepherd in a new era with AI, to the point where it got really messianic and culty. He didnt recall much else other than just being really weirded out by the dude.
The AI CEOS and most of their employees are in the same place as that guy. They're just in a more professional context and will be careful not to let their delusions of grandeur look too insane.
I remember watching the fitness function improve while my neural net learned to recognize characters for a project I did in school, and there was something about it that felt powerful. I guess we've always had that with the machines we imbue that have any sort of decision making "intelligence", but mix that with taking psychedelics and you have an interesting cocktail.