To be fair this makes complete sense if you don't consider "AI" a single entity. Worrying about GPT-4 escaping wasn't very rational, and it needed the internet to get better, so giving it internet access made sense. The risk was low and the reward high.

Now it is a lot better, and it has actually demonstrated that it can escaped containment in a way you didn't want or plan for. So now is the time to worry. The reward for giving it access is still high, but now the risk is high as well.