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Because the great powers are incapable of cooperating in this unselfish way. Nuclear arms control is my example - the whole idea started just after the big powers acquired their nuclear arsenal and only applies to weaker latecomers.
Yudkowsky is like those who want global nuclear abolition, where neither big nor little powers have nuclear weapons but for AGI research. No country is going to consciously and deliberately kneecap their capabilities and fall behind in the race, especially in times like these when a competitive edge is in high demand. And AI is even more hard to ban than nuclear weapons. All the strongest lobby groups want more AI and AGI - big tech, big corporations, militaries, state security forces. There's no strong lobby group against AGI like there is against nuclear arms races, the risks are less obvious. AI is profitable and provides economic dividends, unlike piling up huge numbers of nuclear weapons. AI is so much harder to ban than nuclear weapons and we can't even do the latter.
Furthermore, the only two countries with a chance at AGI are the US and China, they're opposing forces. Of course they want to get ahead of the other, that's Made in China 2025 and the US CHIPS act in a nutshell.
Yudkowsky wasn't saying "this is likely to happen." He was saying "this is the sort of arrangement where humanity could avoid being made extinct by a hostile superintelligence." Which seems right to me if you agree with the premise that superintelligence is dangerous and possible and hard to align.
The difference between nuclear weapons and ASI is that ASI kills everyone and nuclear weapons don't. If people realized that then it would not be hard to ban it. Imagine if one nuclear weapon destroyed the whole solar system. Do you see how a treaty banning them would not be difficult? Even if China wasn't convinced, it still would not be that difficult to convince or prevent them from building one. Far easier than WWII, as Yudkowsky has said.
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A notable example of how this works is the war in Ukraine. Ukraine was coaxed into not being a nuclear power post-USSR. At the time, this definitely seemed like a good idea. Now they are in a situation where they and the West are always afraid of escalation, because of Russia's nuclear weapons.
(The US has a track record getting on the wrong side of escalation: in the Vietnam War, the US held back from e.g. a naval blockade of Vietnam, to avoid China and the USSR becoming more involved. In the Korean War, the US didn't use its nuclear arsenal, long before MAD, to avoid escalation. I'm not saying that either decision was wrong.)
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Nonproliferation maybe, but big powers have done lots of arms reduction and test ban treaties.
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