It doesn't have to be Skynet. If anything, that scenario seems to a strawman exclusively thrown out by the crowd insisting AI presents no danger to society. I work in ML, and I am not in any way concerned about end-of-world malicious AI dropping bombs on us all or harvesting our life-force. But I do worry about AI giving us the tools to tear ourselves to pieces. Probably one of the single biggest net-negative societal/technological advancements in recent decades has been social media. Whatever good it has enabled, I think its destructive effects on society are undeniable and outstrip the benefits by a comfortable margin. Social media itself is inert and harmless, but the way humans interact with it is not.
I don't think that trying to regulate every detail of every industry is stifling and counter-productive. But the current scenario is closer to the opposite end of the spectrum, with our society acting as a greedy algorithm in pursuit of short-term profits. I'm perfectly in favor of taking a measure-twice-cut-once approach to something that has as much potential for overhauling society as we know it as AI does. And I absolutely do not trust the free market to be capable of moderating itself in regards to these risks.