One good way of staying to a prudent course / halting haphazard - winner takes all progress is to use social tech for it. In particular, there is an interesting possibility: the top researchers who drive the AI scenario all kind of know each other, and can self-organize in an international union, with pooled resources for strikes. AI revolution is dependent on simultaneous progress and cross capitalization of good ideas: a well timed strike of a good portion of research worldwide can stop things from moving on pretty effectively.