Regarding making a policy ahead of time, I think we can have an evolving model of what ingredients are missing to get transformative AI, and some rule of thumb that says how dangerous your result is, given how much progress it makes towards each ingredient (relevant but clearly insufficient < might or might not be sufficient < plausibly a full solution), how concrete/​actionable it is (abstract idea < impractical method < practical method) and how original/​surprising it is (synthesis of ideas in the field < improvement on idea in the field < application of idea outside the field < completely out of the blue).
One problem is, the model itself might be an infohazard. This consideration pushes towards making the guidelines secret in themselves, but that would make it much harder to debate and disseminate them. Also, the new result might have major implications for the model. So, yes, certainly there is no replacement for the inside view, but I still feel that we can have guidelines that help focusing on the right considerations.
Regarding making a policy ahead of time, I think we can have an evolving model of what ingredients are missing to get transformative AI, and some rule of thumb that says how dangerous your result is, given how much progress it makes towards each ingredient (relevant but clearly insufficient < might or might not be sufficient < plausibly a full solution), how concrete/​actionable it is (abstract idea < impractical method < practical method) and how original/​surprising it is (synthesis of ideas in the field < improvement on idea in the field < application of idea outside the field < completely out of the blue).
One problem is, the model itself might be an infohazard. This consideration pushes towards making the guidelines secret in themselves, but that would make it much harder to debate and disseminate them. Also, the new result might have major implications for the model. So, yes, certainly there is no replacement for the inside view, but I still feel that we can have guidelines that help focusing on the right considerations.