Prevention, Not a Pause
A temporary slowdown hands the restart button back to the same race. We want a prohibition that holds until control is actually solved.
A pause
Slow the labs for a few years. Hope safety catches up on a schedule. Then resume. Superintelligence stays the destination. The clock is the only change.
Prevention
Prohibit systems past a general-capability threshold. No scheduled restart. The ban holds for as long as no one can control a mind smarter than its makers.
No validated control method exists
Not at small scale. Not at large. Leading labs say so in public. A pause that assumes alignment will finish on time is a bet with no method behind it.
Narrow AI keeps going
Medicines, weather models, industrial optimizers, coding tools. Systems with no open-ended agenda stay legal and funded. The line falls around the autonomous general mind, not around AI as a whole.
Treaties already work this way
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty does not pause bombs for five years. It limits who may build them, with inspections. Chemical weapons and ozone chemicals got the same treatment. Superintelligence needs that shape of law.
Governments should prohibit artificial superintelligence under a verified international treaty, and keep that prohibition until control is genuinely solved, if it ever is.