It's not guardrail, it's guidance. You don't guide a child or an intern with: "here is everything under the sun, just do things", you give them a framework, programming language, or general direction to operate within.
Collectively they kind of do and then some. That cost for AI is in aggregate, so really it should be compared to the cost of living + raising children to be educated and become interns.
At some point the hope for both is that they result in a net benefit society.
