Not if it has a power cord.
I see this stated a lot these days but it's not true.
You're imagining a exponential phenomenon, improvement leads to greater improvement, leading to still greater improvement, etc.
However, all exponential phenomenon require the right environment to sustain and, by their nature, consume that environment. Thus, they are inherently limited in scope and duration.
The bacteria in the Petri dish grows an exponential rate... until it reaches the edge of the dish and consumes the nutrients carefully places on it. The dynamite explodes for an instant and then stops exploding once the nitroglycerin is consumed.
Also, this is an especially unconcerning scenario because (1) we haven't seen step 1 of this process yet; (2) there's no particular reason to believe the environment necessary environment to sustain the exponential growth of AI is in place (if it is, it's random chance, and therefore very likely to fizzle out almost immediately).
This is a fine sci-fi scenario, but doesn't make sense in real life.
Chatgpt3.5 would have had to be capable of creating chatgpt4, which itself is capable of creating a better chatgpt5.
So, no, (1) has not occurred yet.
We’re talking about igniting the atmosphere when no one has invented gunpowder yet.
I did not claim this is a near term risk, though I’m also not sure it isn’t. But how far off is it? How can we be sure?
My real point though is that it’s either impossible or inevitable. If it can happen it will, just as the odds of global thermonuclear war are 100% over a long enough timeline.
And if it happens, this is exactly what it’ll look like. Some people will be warning about it. Some people will say it’s impossible or very far away. And then it will happen so far nobody will have had time to adjust.
That’s always been true of every possibility anyone’s ever conceived. You’re just describing the general nature of reality, which is interesting, IMO, but not particularly relevant here and now.
The six month pause though, I don’t think would be helpful. It is hubris to think we could control such an AI no matter what safeguards we try to add now. And since you couldn’t possibly police all of this activity it just seems silly to think a six month pause would do anything other than give companies that ignore it an advantage.