Re:US and UK refuse to sign AI safety declaration at summit
by AnthonyMouse on Wednesday February 12, 2025 @03:45PM
(#43029602)
> That's an enforcer. Unfortunately, nobody follows through with its sanctions, so it's devolved into a glorified opinion-providing body.
The mechanism in principle is pretty simple and largely works: You both agree not to tariff each other's exports and various other conditions and then if one of you breaks the deal the other one doesn't have to follow through on their end either, and maybe some extra leverage from being a multi-party organization because Country A breaking their deal with Country B means Country C can also apply sanctions to Country A.
Obviously it doesn't work if you don't actually do it.
> You can't CERN your way to nuclear non-proliferation.
But that's also not about cooperation. The US has nuclear weapons and they don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons. What is Iran getting out of this? Cooperation is working together toward a common goal. "Don't do this thing it's otherwise in your interest to do" is either a bribe or a threat.
The closest you get to not doing something being cooperative would be something like, an agreement not to do gain of function research. But that's a judgement call about a tradeoff. If you do the research and it escapes from the lab you get a pandemic; if you don't do the research then you don't have the science when there is a natural pandemic. If countries agree that the tradeoff isn't worth it then you don't need an enforcement mechanism, they just refrain from doing it. If they don't agree, how do you even determine who is right? Or, if you somehow answer that question, you're back to the non-cooperative case where one country is forcing its will on another instead.
The mechanism in principle is pretty simple and largely works: You both agree not to tariff each other's exports and various other conditions and then if one of you breaks the deal the other one doesn't have to follow through on their end either, and maybe some extra leverage from being a multi-party organization because Country A breaking their deal with Country B means Country C can also apply sanctions to Country A.
Obviously it doesn't work if you don't actually do it.
> You can't CERN your way to nuclear non-proliferation.
But that's also not about cooperation. The US has nuclear weapons and they don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons. What is Iran getting out of this? Cooperation is working together toward a common goal. "Don't do this thing it's otherwise in your interest to do" is either a bribe or a threat.
The closest you get to not doing something being cooperative would be something like, an agreement not to do gain of function research. But that's a judgement call about a tradeoff. If you do the research and it escapes from the lab you get a pandemic; if you don't do the research then you don't have the science when there is a natural pandemic. If countries agree that the tradeoff isn't worth it then you don't need an enforcement mechanism, they just refrain from doing it. If they don't agree, how do you even determine who is right? Or, if you somehow answer that question, you're back to the non-cooperative case where one country is forcing its will on another instead.