Grazie Maurizio, davvero molto interessante e utile. Giulio
Il giorno sab 25 apr 2026 alle 02:20 Alfredo Bregni via nexa < [email protected]> ha scritto: > It's a long, slightly boring story (I did not make to reach the end), > which reminds me the Vietnam times and the evergreen concept of > "imperialism". > Is there anything *really new *to say about USA...? > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > *From:* Maurizio Borghi via nexa <[email protected]> > *To:* Nexa <[email protected]> > *Sent:* Friday, April 24, 2026 1:30 PM > *Subject:* [nexa] There is no AI race > > There is no AI race > <https://substack.com/@arnaudbertrand> > Arnaud Bertrand <https://substack.com/@arnaudbertrand> > Substack - Apr 24, 2026 ∙ Paid > > > https://open.substack.com/pub/arnaudbertrand/p/there-is-no-ai-race?r=y77av&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web > > The Chinese have this great principle: “Seek truth from facts” (实事求是). > It’s commonly associated with the Communist Party - because it’s indeed a > key slogan of theirs - but, as is often the case in China, it’s just a > modern usage of a much older idiom, first recorded in the Book of Han > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Han> (111 CE). > > What does it mean? Essentially, it’s an anti-ideology principle: rather > than starting with a doctrine and looking at facts through its lens, you > should go the other way round - “truth” is extracted from the world as it > is. It’s basically an ode to empirical pragmatism. > > “Seeking truth from facts” is precisely what’s missing in the conversation > on AI, which is stunningly doctrinal and ideological: apocalyptic doomers > on one end, deluded techno-utopians on the other, all of it made worse by > the great-power framing of the so-called “AI race.” Everyone is starting > with the conclusion - be it “China bad, so they must lose the AI race,” or > “AGI will kill us all,” or “AGI will herald a new era of abundance” - and > working backwards to find facts that fit. > > It’s interesting to contrast this with the early days of the internet, > which I’m sadly old enough to have witnessed as a late teenager and young > adult. There was also, at the time, some ideological dimensions and a lot > of naivety - we were definitely not “seeking truth from facts” either - but > the mood was fundamentally optimistic, universalist, and free-spirited. > These were doctrinal beliefs in the sense that nobody had actually checked > whether any of it was true, but it was a shared doctrine. Everyone globally > held roughly the same one, so there was no ideological battle to be had. > > For instance it’s pretty comical to look back at Bill Clinton’s famous > 2000 assertion that the internet would inevitably liberalize China and that > the government’s efforts to control it was "like trying to nail jello to > the wall > <https://www.iatp.org/sites/default/files/Full_Text_of_Clintons_Speech_on_China_Trade_Bi.htm>" > - arguing that it was “an argument for accelerating the effort to bring > China into the world.” > > Compare and contrast this with the current AI framing about China: today > not only is there no talk of “bringing China in” - the entire policy > architecture, from export controls to chip bans, is explicitly designed to > keep China out. Nor is anybody expecting that AI will liberalize anyone: on > the contrary, each side is convinced the other will use it to further their > power with malign intent, surveil its population, and ultimately dominate > the world. > > And, to be fair, the Chinese side is right to be convinced about this > because that’s literally what the U.S. side is saying they’ll use AI for, > which is also a complete contrast with the early internet discourse. > > Back then, the early web was largely built by kids in dorm rooms and > garages who saw themselves as contributing to a global commons. Today the > people building AI in the U.S. - a handful of labs working hand-in-glove > with the national security state - are explicitly framing their work as an > instrument of U.S. dominance. > > Take Palantir’s recent manifesto, which they published on X > <https://x.com/PalantirTech/status/2045574398573453312?s=20>: it has zero > pretense of building for the world, instead arguing that the “engineering > elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the > defense of the nation,” that Western civilization must “prevail,” that hard > power in this century "will be built on software" and “A.I. weapons,” and > that coexistence with others is, implicitly off the table > <https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/2045767857997484359?s=20>. > > And, just in case anyone hadn’t gotten the message, they recently changed > their tagline to “Software that dominates > <https://www.wired.com/story/palantir-what-the-company-does/>.” > > Looking back, it should have been obvious that a company that named itself > after the palantíri - the seeing-stones that Sauron, Tolkien’s > representation of absolute evil, used to corrupt and dominate the peoples > of Middle-earth - was probably not going to be building tools for human > flourishing… > > And it’s not just Palantir: it's pretty much the official position of the > entire frontier U.S. lab ecosystem. > > As another illustration, take Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic (the > company behind Claude AI), who argues for an “entente strategy” > <https://www.darioamodei.com/essay/machines-of-loving-grace> in which the > West should use AI to achieve “robust military superiority (the stick) > while at the same time offering to distribute the benefits of powerful AI > (the carrot) to a wider and wider group of countries in exchange for > supporting the coalition’s strategy to promote democracy.” > > In essence, Amodei views AI as both a tool of military dominance and a > tool of blackmail to force countries to align themselves with the West > politically. Not exactly the open, universalist spirit of the early web, > and a position virtually indistinguishable from that of Palantir. > > If one adopts a “seek truth from facts” approach to Anthropic, the reality > of that company is a - very - stark contrast to their public image. > > Back in February, there was a huge media story around Anthropic refusing > the Pentagon's demand that Claude be made available for mass domestic > surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, and the subsequent (seeming) > power struggle between the company and Pete Hegseth. > > The story, as told by virtually every mainstream outlet, was unambiguous: > here was a responsible AI lab that had drawn an ethical line in the sand, > "trying to do their best to help us from ourselves" as a Republican > Senator put it > <https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/anthropic-cannot-in-good-conscience-accede-to-pentagons-demands-ceo-says>. > The National Catholic Register even reported > <https://www.ncregister.com/news/judge-sides-with-anthropic-2026-03-30-0cz4n7a6> > that a group of 14 Catholic moral theologians and ethicists had filed an > amicus brief in the case, stating that “the teaching of the Catholic Church > supports Anthropic’s decision”. > > What no-one spent too much time mentioning was the reason why the Pentagon > was negotiating these terms with Anthropic in the first place: it stemmed > from the fact that in January 2026, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth had > issued a memorandum > <https://media.defense.gov/2026/Jan/12/2003855671/-1/-1/0/ARTIFICIAL-INTELLIGENCE-STRATEGY-FOR-THE-DEPARTMENT-OF-WAR.PDF> > aimed at “accelerating America's military AI dominance” that directed all > Pentagon AI contracts to incorporate "any lawful use" language within 180 > days - basically allowing the Pentagon to use AI for any purpose the > Department considered lawful. > > Why did this matter for Anthropic specifically? Because Anthropic had > spent the previous year and a half aggressively working to become the > Pentagon's most deeply integrated frontier AI lab - and, at the time, its > only one. In November 2024 they partnered > <https://www.axios.com/2024/11/08/anthropic-palantir-amazon-claude-defense-ai> > with - of all companies - Palantir “to make Anthropic's models available to > U.S. intelligence and defense agencies.” In June 2025, they launched > Claude Gov > <https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-gov-models-for-u-s-national-security-customers> > - a dedicated product line custom-built for U.S. national security > customers, already being deployed by agencies at the highest classification > levels. A month later, in July 2025, they won a $200 million Pentagon > contract > <https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-and-the-department-of-defense-to-advance-responsible-ai-in-defense-operations>. > No other AI lab was remotely as deep as they were in the U.S. military and > defense apparatus. > > This all means that, contrary to the "principled holdout" story the media > ran with, Hegseth's memo didn't pull Anthropic into the war machine. It > affected them because they were already fully embedded in it, more than any > other player. > > Notably, Anthropic’s Claude was used by the Pentagon to capture Maduro, as > reported by the WSJ > <https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-used-anthropics-claude-in-maduro-venezuela-raid-583aff17>: > a story that came out less than 2 weeks before the whole media frenzy about > this supposed “clash” between Anthropic and the Pentagon over AI ethics. > Which really makes you wonder whether the "clash" was a genuine ethical > dispute at all, or a PR operation designed to distract from the fact that > Anthropic's AI had just been used by the U.S. military to illegally capture > a foreign head of state… > > It’s also interesting to look at what the “clash” was about. What > Anthropic said they refused was the use of their AI for “*mass* *domestic* > surveillance” (emphasis on both *mass* and *domestic*) and “*fully > autonomous* weapons” (emphasis on both *fully* and *autonomous*). That is > their > exact wording <https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war> > . > > Which means, concretely, that AI surveillance is fine domestically as long > as it’s not “mass.” It also means, critically, that mass AI surveillance is > fine as long as it’s not domestic. > > So the rest of the world is on notice: Anthropic has absolutely no problem > with the U.S. military-industrial complex using their AI to surveil all 8 > billion inhabitants on Earth, provided it excludes the 340 million > Americans. And even the latter *can* be surveilled, just not in a “mass” > way (whatever that means). > > This, incidentally, is actually merely a restatement of U.S. law. Mass > domestic surveillance of Americans is prohibited anyhow by the Fourth > Amendment, and mass foreign surveillance is authorized under FISA Section > 702 and Executive Order 12333 - the legal architecture Edward Snowden > exposed in 2013. > > So Anthropic’s so-called “principled holdout” stance is them simply > restating the current US legal status-quo, rebranding it as a “red line,” > and being congratulated for “following the teaching of the Catholic Church” > by theologians for it. Even though that very same legal architecture > they’re defending, back when the Snowden revelations broke in 2013, was > rightly condemned as the most sweeping surveillance regime in the world > (which it factually is). > > In effect, when one “seeks truth from facts,” Anthropic realized the > pretty impressive PR feat of getting applauded - even getting virtually > sainted by Catholic theologians - for making the U.S. sweeping surveillance > apparatus more grimly powerful with frontier AI. In Tolkien’s terms: > sharpening the eye of Sauron. > > You have to hand it to them: impressive branding work, their PR folks > definitely deserve a raise over that one. > > Same story with the “*fully autonomous* weapons” aspect of their “ethical > stance.” > > First of all, what this concretely means is that if there was a situation > where the Pentagon decided to commit a Gaza-like genocide with AI, asking > it - hypothetically - to select targets, optimize timing, and execute the > operation, Anthropic’s red line would be fully honored provided Pete > Hegseth personally clicked the final “go.” That’s the “ethical” principle > at play here: not *whether* Claude helps plan awful deeds, only *whether > a human is in the loop when it happens*. > > And it goes further than this actually: in their statement on this matter > <https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war> Anthropic > specified that they don't even object to fully autonomous weapons as a > category. They specifically write that such weapons "may prove critical for > our national defense." Their only objection is that today's AI isn't > reliable enough yet. And they helpfully offer “to work directly with the > Department of War on R&D to improve the reliability of these systems.” > > In other words: Anthropic isn’t at all refusing to help build autonomous > killing machines. They just want them to be good before they’re deployed: > it’s an objection over the quality of the killing, not ethics. > > Again, what an extraordinary PR feat: getting Catholic theologians to > bless what is functionally a pitch for accurate autonomous killing machines. > > And while Anthropic makes for a particularly instructive case study - > given their near-saintly public image - they're really just one example > among many. I could have equally picked on OpenAI, who quietly deleted > <https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/16/openai-quietly-removes-ban-on-military-use-of-its-ai-tools.html> > the prohibition on military use from their policies in January 2024 and > then partnered with Anduril > <https://www.anduril.com/news/anduril-partners-with-openai-to-advance-u-s-artificial-intelligence-leadership-and-protect-u-s> > to build AI for battlefield systems, with Sam Altman writing Washington > Post op-eds > <https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/25/sam-altman-ai-democracy-authoritarianism-future/> > about the need for “democratic AI” to prevail over “authoritarian AI” - a > framing indistinguishable from Amodei's or Palantir's, and laughable on its > face when you consider that this so-called “democratic AI” is built for the > global domination of others (the very opposite of democracy) and explicitly > set up, as we just saw, for mass surveillance and autonomous killings. Or > Google, which in February 2025 abandoned its long-standing pledge > <https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/04/google-removes-pledge-to-not-use-ai-for-weapons-surveillance.html> > not to develop AI for weapons or surveillance. Or Meta, which opened > Llama up for U.S. national security use > <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/nov/05/meta-allows-national-security-defense-contractors-use-llama-ai> > in November 2024. > > This isn't a few bad apples, it’s virtually the entire ecosystem. > > So taking a step back, that's what you have on one side of the ledger: a > U.S. obviously dead set on using AI not as a global commons but as a tool > of submission and dominance for the United States. > > Now, smart readers (which is, of course, all of you) will think they know > how the rest of this article is going to go: “he’ll present the other side > of the ledger - i.e. China - with its open source models, say that’s the > way to go, that we all ought to cheer for the camp that does in fact value > some form of openness and universalism, bla bla bla”. > > Well… at the risk of disappointing you, I’m actually not going to do that, > because a) I like to surprise, and b) that’d be wrong. > > The point is that, if we do indeed believe that AI ought to be a global > commons, if we do believe in “seeking truth from facts” as opposed to > ideology, by definition there shouldn’t be sides of a ledger in the first > place: defaulting to “team China” is just the other side of the same > mistake we've spent this whole article documenting. The framing itself - AI > as a contest between civilizations, a race to be won - is the pathology. > You can't seek truth from facts while still holding on to the premise that > there must be a “winner”. > > Think back to, say, electricity: would it have been right to frame its > development as a race to be won by one civilization over another? To cheer > for whichever country happened to be ahead on transformers in 1890? To make > electricity a matter of national allegiance, something you rooted for the > way you’d root for a football team? It sounds absurd because it is absurd. > Electricity was a general-purpose technology destined to become part of the > shared operating system of human life, and the only sensible stance toward > it was to want it developed well and diffused widely for everyone’s > benefit, full stop. > > Sure, it’s absolutely true that China today has an infinitely better > posture towards AI than the U.S. does. Case in point, just as I was in the > process of writing this article Deepseek V4 was released > <https://huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4-Pro>, and it's hard to > imagine a more perfect illustration of the contrast. > > V4 is open-source under an MIT license, meaning anyone anywhere can > download the weights, modify them, run them on whatever hardware they > choose. It's competitive with GPT-5.5 and Claude Opus 4.7 on most AI > benchmarks, and priced at a small fraction - or even “free” if you choose > to download it and run it yourself. But the single most striking thing > about V4 isn't the benchmarks or even the price. It's that V4 has zero > dependency on Nvidia’s CUDA anywhere in its stack - it runs entirely on > Huawei Ascend chips via Huawei's own CANN framework. In other words: China > now not only has its own frontier AI models, it has its own domestic AI > stack, top to bottom. And it's giving the whole thing away to the world - > the exact opposite of the “hoard and dominate” posture of the U.S. labs. > > This is China seeing AI as a general-purpose technology built into the > economy, shared across borders, and iterated on openly. And in fact one of > the DeepSeek researchers wrote this on X > <https://x.com/victor207755822/status/2047518146689732858?s=20> with the > release of V4: “we stay true to long-termism and open source for all. AGI > belongs to everyone.” > > When you cheer for this, you’re not cheering for the “China side” to win, > you’re cheering for the principle that there shouldn’t be any side: that > this technology - perhaps the most consequential general-purpose technology > humanity has ever developed - should belong to everyone, should be built in > the open, should be allowed to diffuse the way electricity or the internal > combustion engine or antibiotics diffused, imperfectly but broadly, across > the whole of human civilization. > > Let’s go back to electricity and look at what the world would have been > like had a country decided to take towards it the approach that the U.S. is > currently taking towards AI: imagine if, say, the United States in 1890 had > declared electricity a matter of national security, classified the designs > of Edison’s dynamos and Tesla’s induction motors as export-controlled, > integrated its electrical companies directly into the War Department, > framed the generator as a strategic weapon rather than a general-purpose > technology, and spent the following century building its foreign policy > around ensuring that only it, and politically-aligned nations, had access > to the light bulb. > > Batshit insane, right? Well that’s EXACTLY the posture it’s taking towards > AI. > > Had that happened, it’s painfully obvious we’d ALL have been immeasurably > poorer for it, materially and morally. And the United States first and > foremost, given that for electricity - as will undoubtedly be the case for > AI - the real value didn’t lie in control of the technology but in its > widespread diffusion and in what you built on top of it. Think about the > U.S.’s “electricity giants”: companies like GE, Whirlpool or RCA didn’t get > rich by “owning” electricity - they got rich by *selling what electricity > made possible* into a world that was electrifying as fast as it could. > The U.S.’s electrical fortune was built on the world electrifying alongside > it, not against it. > > Does the analogy hold for AI? Yes, surprisingly well. I like Jensen > Huang’s (Nvidia’s CEO) recent description of AI > <https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/jensen-huang> as a “5-layer cake” made of 1) > energy, 2) chips, 3) infrastructure, 4) models and lastly 5) applications. > > The implication of his point is that each layer save for the last one - > the application layer - will ultimately be largely commoditized, and as > such that’s where the real value lies: in the millions of specific > products, services, and industrial processes that get built on top of the > other 4 layers. > > It’s typical network building: the layers underneath eventually become > utilities, and utilities are low-margin commodity businesses. It happened > with electricity, it happened with phones, it happened with railroads, it > happened with the internet itself. The operators of each layer got > commoditized over time, while the durable, century-defining fortunes > accrued at the top of the stack: GE on top of electricity, Apple on top of > the mobile and telecom infrastructure, Amazon and Google on top of the > internet. The pattern is so consistent across technologies that it's > essentially a law of how general-purpose infrastructure creates value. > > There's no reason to think AI - a general-purpose technology of the same > order - will turn out any different. If anything, the pattern may be even > more pronounced, because the surface area of potential AI applications is > larger than any previous general-purpose technology: every industry, every > knowledge-work process, every product category can in principle be rebuilt > with AI inside it. > > As such, if that is correct, it means that the approach the U.S. is taking > is strategically incoherent on its own terms. Seeing AI diffusion as > something that ought to be resisted, slowed, and controlled gets the > economics exactly backwards: diffusion is *precisely* the thing that > enables value in the first place. Arguing against it is just as misguided > as if American legislators had argued for restrictions on global mobile > adoption in 2007, in the name of “winning” the mobile revolution: the $3 > trillion Apple of today exists precisely because it did the opposite. > Diffusion wasn't the threat to Apple's value - diffusion *was* Apple's > value. > > Now I can already hear you retort: “sure, but AI is different, what about > AGI, surely the country that reaches it first will have a tremendous > competitive advantage over everyone else, no?” > > Let’s look into this because it’s probably the main argument hawks are > making in favor of the current American approach. The claim being that AGI > is not like electricity. Electricity was a tool that humans used to do > things. AGI will be an agent - a system that can itself reason, plan, > conduct research, and improve itself. The moment a sufficiently capable AGI > comes online, the argument runs, it will be able to compound its own > advantages: designing better chips, writing its own successor systems, > solving the bottlenecks that currently constrain human science and > engineering. > > The country that controls that system will, in effect, have added a > superhuman research-and-development engine to its economy, its military, > and its intelligence apparatus. Rival countries will not be able to catch > up by copying, because the leader will be using AGI to move faster than > copying can achieve. By this logic, AGI is the last general-purpose > technology - the one that hands permanent advantage to whoever gets it > first - and treating it like “just another technology to diffuse” isn't > pragmatism, it's catastrophic strategic naïveté. > > First of all, note the implied assumption in this thinking: that it would > be acceptable - desirable, even - for one country to achieve permanent, > structural dominance over every other country on Earth - provided, of > course, that country is the United States. It’s presented as self-evident > and the natural order of things but let’s be very clear about what this > vision means when you strip away the techno-utopist language: the permanent > subjugation of every human being who doesn't happen to be American. > > If you’re based outside the U.S. and you’re deluded enough to go along > with this, let me suggest a thought experiment. Picture the current U.S. > administration and imagine it with ten times its current leverage over your > country. Because that's roughly what “permanent American AGI dominance” > actually means for you. Every tariff decision, every threat that you > already resent? Multiply it by an order of magnitude, make it permanent, > and make it enforced by a technology your country cannot meaningfully match > or resist. That is the future you quite literally cheer for if you happen > to reflexively root for the Palantir-Anthropic-OpenAI vision for AI. > > Thankfully though, this is purely theoretical because it has no chance of > happening anytime soon. Let’s come back down to earth: AI is at a stage > right now where it cannot even reliably perform tasks a competent > six-year-old can perform. Current frontier models still routinely > hallucinate facts, fail at basic arithmetic, lose track of long > conversations, and cannot navigate a physical world they have no experience > of. > > They are, to be clear, extraordinary tools - vastly more useful than what > existed even two years ago. But the leap from “extraordinary tool that > still can't multiply two four-digit numbers reliably” to “self-improving > superintelligence capable of reorganizing global power structures” is - at > this stage - a leap of religious faith. > > If you don’t believe me, go try to change your flight date by chatting > with any airline's AI customer service bot, and report back on how your > imminent civilizational transformation feels. Or try to resolve literally > *any* problem with the customer service bot of your bank or your telecom > provider. > > These systems are all powered by current frontier AI, deployed at scale, > by well-funded companies with every incentive to make them work. And yet > the universal experience of interacting with them is an exercise in immense > frustration as they fail to understand what you’re asking, misremember what > you said two messages ago, confidently invent policies that don’t exist, > and eventually escalate you to a human anyway. > > If this is what the technology can actually do when deployed in production > by companies that have spent millions on integration - if THIS is the state > of the art - the notion that it’s on the edge of becoming a self-improving > god-like intelligence capable of dominating geopolitics is, let’s be > charitable, difficult to reconcile with observable reality. > > The “seek truth from facts” reality is that model companies have an > inherent interest in making everyone believe that AGI is just around the > corner - because their entire business model, their valuations, and their > political influence depend on it being true. Strip away the AGI narrative > and the frontier U.S. labs are infrastructure providers in a brutally > commoditizing market. In a world where this commoditization is allowed to > run its course, the model labs become utilities - high fixed costs, eroding > pricing power, the AT&T of the AI century. Their trillion-dollar > valuations, their hundred-billion-dollar capital raises - all of it > evaporates. > > Unless, of course, AGI is imminent - which it isn’t ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ > > And, in any case, the point is moot because even if AGI were imminent, a > “seek truth from facts” look at the scoreboard tells you the hoarding > strategy has already failed. DeepSeek V4 matches U.S. frontier models on > most benchmarks that matter > <https://huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4-Pro>. Alibaba's Qwen, > Moonshot's Kimi, Zhipu's GLM are all at or near the frontier. The entire > architecture of export controls, chip bans, and military-industrial > integration was designed to prevent exactly this. It didn't work. Not > “might not work” - it has already factually failed, today, on April 24, > 2026. China has caught up, is releasing open-weight frontier models and > just demonstrated with DeepSeek V4 it can do so on entirely domestic > silicon. Continuing to act as if dominance is still achievable - as > Palantir, Anthropic, and OpenAI keep insisting in their strategy documents > - is just denial of reality. > > This is actually the main risk in AI right now. Not the superintelligence > scenario the labs keep warning us about. Instead, it’s the labs themselves, > or more precisely their lobbying power on the U.S. government, which has > quietly become one of the most successful regulatory capture operations in > history. A handful of companies - OpenAI, Anthropic, Palantir, their close > allies - have managed to make every piece of public discourse about AI > happen on their terms, which is factually leading the U.S. into concrete > policy choices that are not only bad for the world, but also for the U.S. > themselves. > > Bad for the U.S. because it systematically pours American capital into the > layers that are commoditizing - chips, infrastructure, models - while > actively shrinking the addressable market of the one layer where durable, > century-defining fortunes actually get built. And their policies > simultaneously encourage the exact outcome they’re designed to prevent: > they’ve empirically helped create a credible alternative AI that is just as > good, free, genuinely open and shipping on entirely non-American silicon - > thereby amplifying the very commoditization they’re trying to delay. > > Bad for the world because while the US spends its energy on export > controls, chip bans, and strategic denial, the actual work of figuring out > how humanity integrates a transformative new technology - the norms, the > institutions, the shared understanding of what AI should and shouldn’t do - > is being crowded out of the conversation entirely. Every minute of > political oxygen consumed by “how do we win” is a minute not spent on “how > do we do this well.” And the darkest irony is that “how do we win” isn’t > even a question the American public asked for - it’s a question > manufactured, funded, and amplified by the small cluster of labs - the > Anthropics, the OpenAIs, the Palantirs - whose business model depends on > humanity never getting around to asking the better one. > > Long story short, there is, in fact, no AI race: > > 1. > > It's a narrative manufactured and amplified by a handful of labs whose > valuations depend on it > 2. > > The economics of general-purpose technologies actively punish “race > winners” > 3. > > Even on the hawks' own terms - AGI - there's no race to win since it’s > already empirically been lost > > A hundred years from now, the idea that anyone seriously framed AI as a > race between nations will sound exactly as absurd as a race to “win” > electricity sounds to us today. The Book of Han had it right in 111 CE: > seek truth from facts. > > >
