It's not lazy to follow thought patterns that yield correct predictions. And that's the bedrock on which "AI hype" grows and persists - because these tools are actually useful, right now, today, across wide variety of work and life tasks, and we are barely even trying.

> And there are indeed examples of technological acceleration or dispersal which was deliberately curtailed – especially with weapons.

Name three.

(I do expect you to be able to name three, but that should also highlight how unusual that is, and how questionable the effectiveness of that is in practice when you dig into details.)

Also I challenge you to find but one restriction that actually denies countries useful capabilities that they cannot reproduce through other means.

Which examples? Despite curtailment, new countries have acquired nuclear weapons over time.

Efforts to squash technology exist, such as cloning bans, and so on, but they will only work for so long. You might think I'm making a "predestination" argument here, but I'm not. I'm observing the powerful incentives at play (first past the post advantage), noting that historically technology has always advanced, and making a bet that technology will continue to advance. I am supremely confident in that bet. I could of course go out and protest, but there is also a part that doesn't seem present in the original post and your argument, many (maybe most) of us don't want to stop technological progress.