The shutdown section is missing a major possibility: AI shutdown combined with hardware bans. Deep ultra-violet (DUV) and extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography require highly specialized machines that there are a limited number of. So along with the shutoff of AI research, also shutoff production of new DUV and EUV lithography machines, and then shutdown the remaining machines. This would probably take years, or require significant payments to motivate companies to do so, but at that point the existing stock of high performance GPUs would start to decrease thru attrition, and the remaining ones would start to increase in cost since no new ones are being produced. Buy back and destroy programs, or programs to buy back the existing GPUs and shift their use to non-AI use such as scientific simulation would increase the speed this happens. This would basically force new technology back to circa 2005 levels, which would be much less risky for creation of super-intelligence.
(Or back to a different level, depending on where people decide to do a hardware ban. And it is worth mentioning that computer use has changed significantly because of increases in the amount of data that can be stored on magnetic media and in the amount of fiber optics that have been installed and this would not be affected by a lithography process limit.)
This would be politically much harder than a pure AI shutdown (since it affects all computers), but would solve the problem in Plan S of “The main downside of Plan S is that the shutdown deal will probably break down eventually.” since decreasing the amount of compute available can decrease the chance of creating artificial super intelligence.
The shutdown section is missing a major possibility: AI shutdown combined with hardware bans. Deep ultra-violet (DUV) and extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography require highly specialized machines that there are a limited number of. So along with the shutoff of AI research, also shutoff production of new DUV and EUV lithography machines, and then shutdown the remaining machines. This would probably take years, or require significant payments to motivate companies to do so, but at that point the existing stock of high performance GPUs would start to decrease thru attrition, and the remaining ones would start to increase in cost since no new ones are being produced. Buy back and destroy programs, or programs to buy back the existing GPUs and shift their use to non-AI use such as scientific simulation would increase the speed this happens. This would basically force new technology back to circa 2005 levels, which would be much less risky for creation of super-intelligence. (Or back to a different level, depending on where people decide to do a hardware ban. And it is worth mentioning that computer use has changed significantly because of increases in the amount of data that can be stored on magnetic media and in the amount of fiber optics that have been installed and this would not be affected by a lithography process limit.)
This would be politically much harder than a pure AI shutdown (since it affects all computers), but would solve the problem in Plan S of “The main downside of Plan S is that the shutdown deal will probably break down eventually.” since decreasing the amount of compute available can decrease the chance of creating artificial super intelligence.
(As a related example, https://ifanyonebuildsit.com/treaty restricts 28 nanometer process node and smaller technology)