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This is a great point. In some sense, this is the situation we had with the CDC. It was a trusted institution that was able to play around with gain-of-function because its reputation indicated that it would only ever use technology to fight disease, not win at superplauge war. It was limited to disease-type stuff, though, and the AI would presumably be able to predict and head off any kind of threat. Assuming, like you said, that we can trust it.
I think it makes "pausing" AI research impossible. There's no way to stop everyone from continuing the research. If the united West decides to pause, China will not, and it's not clear that the CCP is thinking about AI safety at all. The only real option is figuring out how to make a safe AI before someone else makes an unsafe AI.
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