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At this point there are only two countries with AI models near the frontier. If these countries make a deal that they will not advance their models past a certain capability level and will prevent other powers from doing so, this is much closer to the NLPT than disarmament. Most obviously, it does not entail any reduction in AI capabilities, where disarmament entails a reduction in nuclear capabilities.
Right. The US and China get a photo op in Brussels shaking hands, while they make a deal that they won't advance their models.
Then they both take the plane back home and keep advancing their models. Whatcha gonna do?
AI 2040 is much closer to total disarmament than it is the NLPT, because the NLPT is about punching down (it is plainly true that the US/China could stop any non-nuclear power from advancing models) while AI 2040 / total disarmament is about restraining great powers from pursuing their interests, which is of course completely impossible unless you pull the nuclear card. The NLPT was completely useless at restraining the P5 from having as many nukes as they liked, after all, which is who we're actually worried will create models that are too powerful.
The other big difference between nukes and compute is that nukes are binary: unless you fire a nuke it's useless, and once you have "glass the world" levels of capabilities there aren't many benefits to having more nukes, whereas with compute it's just straightforwardly useful to have more, unrestricted compute. This is why disarmament kind of worked between the US and Russia (but of course, never under the number of warheads needed to glass the world) and is a complete non-starter with compute.
I am not interested in debating Plan A, but the implication that there is no proposal to audit compliance is false. This is a pretty low effort response.
This just sounds like word games. Disarmament isn't when you stop building more nukes or improving existing nukes. Do I need to cite the dictionary?
You've set up an argument where actual nuclear disarmament must have been in the interests of the nuclear powers since it happened. Okay, well then if this happens then it's also in the interests of the great powers.
No, you misunderstand my point; the proposal is chock full of ways to audit compliance if and only if all players actually sincerely co-operate, in the same way that total nuclear disarmament is extremely simple if and only if all players sincerely co-operate.
In real life, the US and China, and realistically even France and the UK, say "We'll shake hands in Brussels for the photo op if you want, but I don't think we'll allowing our geopolitical adversaries to remotely shut down all of our compute, and we won't be connecting our SCIF's to be publically audited. Trust me bro, I'll stick to the treaty.".
Now what? Either you pretend that they're following the treaty (as the NNPT is a polite fiction that great powers cannot proliferate up until their interests are met in full) or you countenance a nuclear first strike.
Correct, this is why I specified total disarmament. As I mentioned in my previous post, great powers don't actually want more nukes than is necessary to establish MAD, because once you have MAD, additional nukes are just white elephants that need expensive maintenance.
Partial disarmament worked because there is no geopolitical advantage to having more nuclear weapons after you establish MAD, but this is not true of owning unrestricted compute, and hence any such proposal is unworkable unless you're willing to pull the nuclear card to force compliance.
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