So can military and nuclear secrets. Anyone with uranium can build a crude gun-type nuke, but the instructions for making a reliable 3 megaton warhead the size of a motorcycle have been successfully kept under wraps for decades. We also make it very hard to obtain uranium in the first place.
>Tech will get better enough in the next decade to make this accessible to normies.
Not if future AI research is controlled the same way nuclear weapon research is. You want to write AI code? You'll need a TS/SCI clearance just to begin, the mere acting of writing AI software without a license is a federal felony. Need HPC hardware? You'll need to be part of a project authorized to use the tensor facilities at Langley.
Nvidia A100 and better TPUs are already export restricted under the dual-use provisions of munition controls, as of late 2022.
They can of course restrict publishing of new research, but that won't be enough to stop significant advances just from the ability of private entities worldwide to train larger models and do research on their own.
The controlled parlor game is there to seed acceptance. Once someone is able to train a similar model with something like the leaked State Department cables or classified information we’ll see the risk and the legislation will follow.