My brother in Christ, have you heard about our lord and saviour the Scientific Method and the proliferation of cross-domain ideas? How do you imagine the li-ion batteries came about as the go-to energy storage solution? Incremental improvements of ideas would be my guess, ideas have to start somewhere and of course they’re going to be hyperbolic since researchers are both excited and have to draw attention to their ideas.

I sympathise with your point but the alternative is little to no research into different battery technologies because close to nothing will ever emerge as a competitive day-one drop-in replacement, but some ideas may prove exciting to others who understand the value and they might push the ball further towards realistic alternatives.

Absolutely, but that’s the easy case, computerphile had this interesting video discussing a proof of concept exploration which showed that indirectly including stuff in the training/accessible data could also lead to such behaviours. Take it with a grain of salt cause it’s obviously a bit alarmist, but very interesting nonetheless!