> a software update could easily cripple its ability to run on your local machine
A software update collaborated on by Microsoft, Apple + countless of volunteer groups managing various other distributions?
The cat really is out of the bag. You could probably make it a death penalty in the whole world and some people would still use it secretly.
Once things like this run on consumer hardware, I think it's already too late to pull it down fully. You could regulate it though and probably have a better chance of limiting the damages, not sure an outright ban could even have the effect you want with a ban.
Models released today are already useful for a bunch of stuff, maybe over the course of 100 year they could be considered "out of date", but they don't exactly bitrot by themselves because they sit on a disk, not sure why'd they suddenly "expire" or whatever you try to hint at.
And even over the course of 100 year, people will continue the machine learning science, regardless if it's legal or not, the potential benefits (for a select few) seems to be too good for people to ignore, which is why the current bubble is happening in the first place.
I think you over-estimate how difficult it is to get "most of the world" to agree to anything, and under-estimate how far people are willing to go to make anything survive even when lots of people want that thing to die.
Plenty of past civilizations have thought they were invulnerable. In fact, most entities with power think that they can never be taken down. But countless empires in the past have fallen, and countless powerful people have lost their wealth and power overnight.
unless you plan to never update again