I think pausing AI is probably a bad idea at any point because the political economy of an AI pause is so toxic.
Imagine a world in which we decided to pause the Internet, just until we could make sure it’s safe for children, or pause electricity just until we can make sure that nobody will get electrocuted.
We actually ran this kind of experiment with nuclear power and the result is that you get an entrenched regulatory power whose only incentive is to prevent anything bad from ever happening, and so they just keep it paused permanently.
I don’t really think there’s a solution to this pol-econ problem: once you create an entity whose entire existence is dedicated to preventing a technology from existing, it simply never has any incentive to let the thing happen.
I think pausing AI is probably a bad idea at any point because the political economy of an AI pause is so toxic.
Imagine a world in which we decided to pause the Internet, just until we could make sure it’s safe for children, or pause electricity just until we can make sure that nobody will get electrocuted.
We actually ran this kind of experiment with nuclear power and the result is that you get an entrenched regulatory power whose only incentive is to prevent anything bad from ever happening, and so they just keep it paused permanently.
I don’t really think there’s a solution to this pol-econ problem: once you create an entity whose entire existence is dedicated to preventing a technology from existing, it simply never has any incentive to let the thing happen.