I'm not saying it's technically impossible, I'm saying that in the real world, it's not going to stop. Nobody is going to stop it. A significant number of people don't want it to stop. A minority of people are in the "stop AI" camp, and the ones with the money and power are on the other side.

It's an arms race replete with tribalism and the quest for power and taps into everything primal at the root of human behavior. There's no stopping it, and thinking that outcome can happen is foolish; you shouldn't base any plans or hopes for the future on the condition that the whole world decides AGI isn't going to happen and chooses another course. Humans don't operate that way, that would create an instant winner-takes-all arms race, whereas at least with the current scenario, you end up with a multipolar rough level of equivalence year over year.

The whole world decided in the 1970s not to pursue the technology of germ-line genetic engineering of humans, and that decision has stood.

People similar to you were saying in the 1950s and later that it was inevitable that nuclear weapons would be used in anger in massive attacks.

The people in charge are currently tentatively for AI "progress", but if that ever changes, they can and will put a stop to large AI training runs and make it illegal for anyone they don't trust to teach, learn or publish about fundamental algorithmic "improvements" to AI. Individuals and groups pursuing "improvements" will not be able to accept grant money or investment money or generate revenue from AI-based services.

That won't stop all research on such improvements (because some AI researchers are very committed), but it will slow it down to a rate much much slower than the current rate, essentially stopping AI "progress" unless (unluckily for the human species) at the time of the ban, the committed researchers were only one small step away from some massive algorithmic improvement that can be operationalized using the compute resources at their disposal (i.e., much less than the resources they have now because large training runs will have been banned).

Will the power elite's attitude towards AI change? I don't know, but if they ever come to have an accurate understanding of the situation, they will recognize that AI "progress" is a potent danger to them personally, and they will shut it down.

It's not a situation like the industrial revolution in England in which texile workers were massively adversely affected (or believed they were) but the people running England were mostly insulated from any adverse effects. In the current situation, the power elite is definitely not insulated from severe adverse consequences if an AI lab creates an AI that is much more competent that the most competent human institutions (e.g., the FBI) and the lab fail to keep the AI under control. And it will fail if it were to use anything like the methods and bodies of knowledge AI labs have been using up to now. And there are very bright people with funding doing their best to explain that to the elite.

So, those of you who want AI "progress" to continue need to hope that the power elite are collectively too stupid to recognize a potent short-term threat to their own survival.