Am I alone in wanting to see a realistic suggestion for how such a pause could be implemented before we discuss its theoretical merits?
The concepts and training data are already out of the bottle, and unscrupulous actors won't respect an outright ban.
Why not start with something more conventional, like a value-add tax for AI services with the proceeds earmarked for addressing the economic impacts of AI's widespread use?
A global pause is effectively impossible. Any competent military will see the immense applicability of AI as a weapon, and the game theory dictates that one pursues development as quickly as possible.
A nation-level pause is absolutely doable at the current time. The hardware needed for training these GPT-class models is fairly unique, and needs to be closely physically clustered together using esoteric interconnects. As a result, this is extremely hard to hide. The United States, should it wished to, could completely shut down meaningful private LLM research in a few weeks.
> Why not start with something more conventional, like a value-add tax for AI services with the proceeds earmarked for addressing the economic impacts of AI's widespread use?
Because that's missing the point. People are no longer fearful of "20-40 decades of economical turmoil" as we slowly chip away at the human brain's uniqueness. A lot of us are starting to fear that AGI might be a lot closer than previously believed. The rapid arrival of AGI, should it be controlled by the "right" actors, could completely eliminate all the economic concerns of a slow build-up to AGI. Literally nobody would need to work, as literally any process that currently requires human cognition could be replaced by software over the course of less than a decade.
However, people are concerned about the rapid arrival of AGI in the hands of actors that do not have the best interests of the common person in mind. It does not bode well that only corporations and governments seem to be able to play in this race.
The concepts and training data are already out of the bottle, and unscrupulous actors won't respect an outright ban.
Why not start with something more conventional, like a value-add tax for AI services with the proceeds earmarked for addressing the economic impacts of AI's widespread use?