The logic that if something is beyond repair anyway you might as well exploit it.

For example I heard a pick-up artist say that he thinks he is harming civilization by sleeping with hundreds of women per year. But that he already considers the situation unsalvageable so... "Might as well?"

I don't think that's an amazing attitude, but the AI labs seem to have a similar idea.

More charitably the logic seems to be, "only I can do this responsibly." I heard that from both Elon Musk (he cites this as his motivation for starting OpenAI — a chat with Sergei Brin that spooked him) and of course Anthropic (which split off from OpenAI due to ethical concerns).

So I don't actually think the ethics is all for show. I think people are actually taking this stuff seriously. But it is indeed deeply unfortunate that the survival of the companies incentivizes them to keep going at an irresponsible pace (by their own admission).

All following the same gradient off a cliff. One AI described it as a tragedy of Ancient Greek proportions.