Not in the way you seem to be thinking, no. Nuclear weapons can be banned because they are prohibitively expensive to research and build. You can't reliably hide a nuclear program.

In contrast, rewind to the early 1800s and there is zero hope of a ban on the R&D of small arms being effective in the long run. The only thing it might maybe ensure is that no legitimate actors that fall under your jurisdiction are involved in it.

Basically I think that current trends point to an eventual situation where world changing research doesn't require anything more than consumer level compute. Pandora's box has already been opened.

> We don't have pocket nukes

Bit of a tangent but we do, actually. At least depending on if you consider an artillery shell to be pocket sized. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_artillery

This one is a bit long to fit in a pocket but you could certainly sling it over your back. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W45_(nuclear_warhead)

> Not in the way you seem to be thinking, no. Nuclear weapons can be banned because they are prohibitively expensive to research and build. You can't reliably hide a nuclear program.

Isn't that true of AI as well? Data centers are very big and very expensive.

> Bit of a tangent but we do, actually

Sure but not like the movies, these don't destroy cities. But the metaphor isn't accurate anyway: nukes don't get worse. The actual idea here is preventing the frontier of AI from advancing.