What's the expected state space of effective regulation though? Note that we've got passable coding models down to ~30B parameters by now. And keep in mind the ultimate floor here - the human brain only consumes on the order of 20 watts and fits in a handbag.
Is there any possible solution other than mass proliferation where the models are used to keep one another in check? Either that or a religious prohibition against the existence of integrated electronics.
The regulations don't have to address the end goal, but the process of development itself. Even just a pause on frontier research is a good start
What I'm asking is, why should we expect that to effectively further the end goal? You're simply asserting that it will ultimately do so.
Given the efficiency gains we've seen it seems to me that the situation has shifted from being analogous to producing nuclear weapons to producing something much closer to small arms.
To further the metaphor, didn't the ban on nuclear weapons research work? We don't have pocket nukes, and there's very little risk of random countries acquiring their own due to the amount of work involved. To be concrete to AI: if we stop work on the frontier, the best we can do is make the current frontier easier to get to and more accessible. And while current frontier is strong, it's not world-changing so. The only way for the frontier to get to that level is to do research on it, and stopping that research gives time to help develop plans to not make it world-changing when we get to it.
Not in the way you seem to be thinking, no. Nuclear weapons can be banned because they are prohibitively expensive to research and build. You can't reliably hide a nuclear program.
In contrast, rewind to the early 1800s and there is zero hope of a ban on the R&D of small arms being effective in the long run. The only thing it might maybe ensure is that no legitimate actors that fall under your jurisdiction are involved in it.
Basically I think that current trends point to an eventual situation where world changing research doesn't require anything more than consumer level compute. Pandora's box has already been opened.
> We don't have pocket nukes
Bit of a tangent but we do, actually. At least depending on if you consider an artillery shell to be pocket sized. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_artillery
This one is a bit long to fit in a pocket but you could certainly sling it over your back. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W45_(nuclear_warhead)
> Not in the way you seem to be thinking, no. Nuclear weapons can be banned because they are prohibitively expensive to research and build. You can't reliably hide a nuclear program.
Isn't that true of AI as well? Data centers are very big and very expensive.
> Bit of a tangent but we do, actually
Sure but not like the movies, these don't destroy cities. But the metaphor isn't accurate anyway: nukes don't get worse. The actual idea here is preventing the frontier of AI from advancing.
> We don't have pocket nukes,
What do you call the Davy Crockett warheads like the W54 ? The 0.3 kiloton low yield B61-12 ? The Chagai-I boosted fission warheads demonstrated by Pakistan in 1998 ?
> and there's very little risk of random countries acquiring their own due to the amount of work involved.
And yet North Korea, Isreal and Pakistan got there ... and India speed ran five tests in 1998 that caught the US completely by surprise.
North Korea got it with help from China, Israel got it with help from France. They didn't do it on their own.