If you just bow out of the AI race you are handing it to other countries where practices might not be subjected to the same standards. It's suicide to do this.
That's only if countries can't agree on this. I just gave the example of human cloning, which has been banned globally. You can also look at nuclear non-proliferation, which has been largely successful (though not completely) despite huge incentives for any country to defy it.
Given the current state of the world, do you really think the USA, China, India, Iran, Brazil, North Korea, and Russia, would all have the same opinion on the danger of AI systems and would—despite very obvious and tangible strategic advantages—all halt development for humanity’s sake?
Human cloning is an issue that is mostly academic in nature, but I’d bet everything I have that bioengineers all over the world secretly are researching this on government programmes, and nuclear non-proliferation is a joke. It was essentially about stripping Russia of its nukes, but all global powers still have them, and countries like Iran, North Korea, and India measure their development on the possession of nuclear weapons. It was successful only if by success you mean the USA didn’t maintain their minuteman program.
It's only the USA, Russia, France, China, the UK, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea that have nuclear weapons, from the entire world. Iran has been working on it for decades and they still ultimately haven't gotten them. This is a huge success given the gigantic advantage nuclear weapons give strategically.
