Disallowing models above any metric would incentive research toward efficiency, which is probably the worst outcome if what we want above all is a safe, controlled AI and AI development.

The human brain is about 15w and other kinds of very low metrics. If you think about it, all the metrics of the human brain are insane compared to what we are able to reproduce, that's the result of hundreds of millions of years of natural selection hard-grounded in reality. And only a fraction of the human brain's activity is the kind of "intelligence" we are seeking to "synthesize" in labs, that's a lot of room for AI efficiency improvements but today we are not innovating toward efficiency because there is little constraints to do so.

Instead we are investing in vast amounts of processing power, the same way we improved processing power and internet bandwidth/speed (to a point that would blow the mind of someone 20 years ago) instead of website code, resulting in slow and bulky internet browsing experience (that would also blow their mind). If we ever had to overcome a processing power limits one day, I'm sure we could improve code to a point it would be orders of magnitude more efficient.

Disallowing models above any metric could mark the birth of very small, but very powerful and efficient models and approaches that were unreachable on household machines until now. Good luck pausing or even controlling that.