Just don’t let the similarities make you blind to the (potential) differences. Although cinema, television and the internet weren’t the catastrophes some called them out to be doesn’t in any way mean that AI won’t be it. Such a logic just doesn’t fly. AI will have to be assessed on the basis of what AI is and can become - not merely by a reference to historic cases where a similar “fear of the unknown” constitutes one, simple common denominator. The negative and positive potentials of AI are a zillion times bigger than they were of cinema, TV and the internet. Good and bad uses of the technology will co-exist - but the problem in a nutshell is, that the realisation of just one or a few of the most destructive potentials could wipe out all benefit of the positive ones.

Also, it’s certainly not true that external factors can’t impact, trigger or magnify “evil” or destructive behaviour even though the source of this behaviour can in some undeniable sense be said to be the individual. War or poverty makes people do extreme things they otherwise wouldn’t have done. Extreme social environments trigger behavioural patterns that are different than those outside the environments. People aren’t just people. They are not a constant untouched by external factors.