But what about dangerous capabilities that have more to do with AI takeover (e.g., a company develops a system that shows signs of autonomous replication, manipulation, power-seeking, deception) or scientific capabilities (e.g., the ability to develop better AI systems)?
Supposing that 3-10 other companies are within a few months of these systems, do you think at this point we need a coordinated pause, or would it be fine to just force company 1 to pause?
If they can’t do that, then the other labs catch up and they’re all blocked on the same spot, which if you’ve put your capabilities bars at the right spots, shouldn’t be dangerous.
If they can do that, then they get to keep going, ahead of other labs, until they hit another blocker and need to demonstrate safety/understanding/alignment to an even greater degree.
What should happen there is that the leading lab is forced to stop and try to demonstrate that e.g. they understand their model sufficiently such that they can keep scaling. Then:
If they can’t do that, then the other labs catch up and they’re all blocked on the same spot, which if you’ve put your capabilities bars at the right spots, shouldn’t be dangerous.
If they can do that, then they get to keep going, ahead of other labs, until they hit another blocker and need to demonstrate safety/understanding/alignment to an even greater degree.