The point of the discussion is to have a look at the possible future ramifications of the technology, so it's only logical to talk about future capabilities and not the current ones. Obviously the current puppet chatbots aren't gonna be doing much ruining (even that's arguable already judging by all the layoffs), but what are future versions of these LLMs/AIs going to be doing to us?

After all, if we only discussed the dangers of nuclear weapons after they've been dropped on cities, well that's too little too late, eh?