The world's superpowers enforce nuclear non-proliferation mainly because it allows them to keep unfair political and military advantages to themselves. At the same time, one cannot deny that centralized weapon ownership made the use of such weapons more controllable: These nuclear states are powerful enough to establish a somewhat responsible chain of command to avoid their unreasonable or accidental uses, and so far these attempts are still successful. Also, due to the fact that they are "too big to fail", they were forced to hire experts to make detailed analysis on the consequences of nuclear wars, and the resulted MAD doctrine discouraged them from starting such wars.
On the other hand, if the same nuclear technologies are available to everyone, the chance of an unreasonable or accidental nuclear war will be higher. If even resourceful superpowers can barely keep these nuclear weapons under safe political and technical control (as shown by multiple incidents and near-misses during the Cold War [0]), surely a less resourceful state or military in possession of equally destructive weapons will have even more difficulties on controlling their uses.
At least this is how the argument goes (so far, I personally take no position).
Of course, I clearly realized that centralized control is not infallible. Months ago, in a previous thread on OpenAI's refusal on publishing technical details of GPT-4, most people believed that they were using it as an excuse to maintain a monopolistic control. Instead, I argued that perhaps OpenAI truly values the problem of safety right now - but acting responsibly right now is not an indication that they will still act responsibly in the future. There's no guarantee that the safety considerations will eventually be overridden in favor of financial gains.
The world's superpowers enforce nuclear non-proliferation mainly because it allows them to keep unfair political and military advantages to themselves. At the same time, one cannot deny that centralized weapon ownership made the use of such weapons more controllable: These nuclear states are powerful enough to establish a somewhat responsible chain of command to avoid their unreasonable or accidental uses, and so far these attempts are still successful. Also, due to the fact that they are "too big to fail", they were forced to hire experts to make detailed analysis on the consequences of nuclear wars, and the resulted MAD doctrine discouraged them from starting such wars.
On the other hand, if the same nuclear technologies are available to everyone, the chance of an unreasonable or accidental nuclear war will be higher. If even resourceful superpowers can barely keep these nuclear weapons under safe political and technical control (as shown by multiple incidents and near-misses during the Cold War [0]), surely a less resourceful state or military in possession of equally destructive weapons will have even more difficulties on controlling their uses.
At least this is how the argument goes (so far, I personally take no position).
Of course, I clearly realized that centralized control is not infallible. Months ago, in a previous thread on OpenAI's refusal on publishing technical details of GPT-4, most people believed that they were using it as an excuse to maintain a monopolistic control. Instead, I argued that perhaps OpenAI truly values the problem of safety right now - but acting responsibly right now is not an indication that they will still act responsibly in the future. There's no guarantee that the safety considerations will eventually be overridden in favor of financial gains.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_Control_(book)