Critical masses related to nuclear weapons can be found out at the risk of a nuclear explosion at worst and without any risks at best, by attacking nuclei with neutrons and studying the energies of particles and sections of reactions.
However, we don’t know the critical mass for the AGI. While an approval protocol could be an equivalent of determiming critical mass for every new architecture, accidental creation of an AGI capable of breaching containment or being used for AI research, sabotaging alignment work and aligning the ASI to the AGI’s whims instead of mankind’s ideas would be equivalent to a nuclear explosion burning the Earth’s atmosphere.
Critical masses related to nuclear weapons can be found out at the risk of a nuclear explosion at worst and without any risks at best, by attacking nuclei with neutrons and studying the energies of particles and sections of reactions.
However, we don’t know the critical mass for the AGI. While an approval protocol could be an equivalent of determiming critical mass for every new architecture, accidental creation of an AGI capable of breaching containment or being used for AI research, sabotaging alignment work and aligning the ASI to the AGI’s whims instead of mankind’s ideas would be equivalent to a nuclear explosion burning the Earth’s atmosphere.
P.S. The possibility that a nuclear explosion could burn the Earth’s atmosphere was considered by scientists working on the Manhattan project.
Fusion is also a thing. A glass of tap water contains (admittedly a very small amount) of deuterium.