If MIRI’s strict limits on training FLOPs come into affect, this is another mechanism that means we might be stuck for an extended period in an intermediate capability regime, although the world looks far less unipolar because many actors can afford 10^24 FLOP training runs, not just a few (unipolarity is probably a crux for large portions of this threat model). This does bolster the threat model, however, because the FLOP limit is exactly the kind of physical limitation that a persuasive AI will try to convince humans to abandon.
If MIRI’s strict limits on training FLOPs come into affect, this is another mechanism that means we might be stuck for an extended period in an intermediate capability regime, although the world looks far less unipolar because many actors can afford 10^24 FLOP training runs, not just a few (unipolarity is probably a crux for large portions of this threat model). This does bolster the threat model, however, because the FLOP limit is exactly the kind of physical limitation that a persuasive AI will try to convince humans to abandon.