Oh well,- I'll let an opinion piece by Evgeny Morozov on The Guardian speak for me (Ok,- not quite - see *Counterproductive): The problem with artificial intelligence? It’s neither artificial nor intelligent

And a light hearted roast to the general public vs "AI" (not to be taken too seriously,- critical thinking is definitely required when addressing AGI, but I think we are sooo long from that stage, that it would actually be counterproductive* to press the panic-button) : Jim the Waco Kid comforting latest GPT model after its reception by the public

*Counterproductive: The OP is obviously very concerned with US/Western interests, but my concern with AI is,- the wrong problem is being addressed. My viewpoint is that we haven't really made that big a progress in AI yet,- only the apparent display of AI,- right now AI is just a very good BS artist (or a very good echo chamber in many situations, if you like) and that is actually were our current focus of concern should lie,- restrict the weird, disinformation like, output that the models, unintentionally I believe but by design*, sometimes propagate.

On the other hand, as OP addresses, a global stop to/ban on development of proper AGI, will only let nefarious actors, not concerned with the ethics of the matter, press forward with their research, while ethical scientist will be restricted in their research, including, what is very important to me, and I assume is very important to most subscribers of this reddit sub,- possible consequences of AGI.

*By design: We are only humans, and that is one of the things that GPT et al. ,sadly or luckily, essentially relies on,- It's called RLHF. It should, in theory, be able to stop the most fringe ideas, but it does not always work, it seems?!!!