Maybe Altman specifically is only paying lip service to this stuff, but when a company like Anthropic is like "BRO MYTHOS IS TOO DANGEROUS BRO WE CANT EVEN RELEASE IT BRO JUST TRUST US BRO", my bullshit detector is beeping too loud to ignore. It's very obviously a publicity stunt, because if it were actually that dangerous you wouldn't be making such a press release, you'd be keeping your mouth shut and working to make it safe.
I'm fairly certain it's both. They aren't going to be making a lot of money until they release it so they might as well get something (marketing) out of it, as well as spread more awareness so those paying attention can start preparing for what's to come. We'll see how effective it is with all their hashed patches or whatever.
They explained in detail why they felt they had to talk about it. They think there's no safe deployment strategy other than fixing all the vulnerabilities it's likely to find, and there are too many such vulnerabilities for them to fix without getting help from a substantial number of trusted partners.
I understand where you're coming from. I can imagine myself reacting similarly if HP announced that they've invented a printer so powerful that it can print documents you don't have access to. But I don't know how to engage with this response, other than to say that Anthropic's story is plausible to me and everyone I know in either AI or security.