"Great AI war with China", "altercation" are excessively harsh characterizations. There is nothing "escalatory" in competing for leadership in new industries with other states, nor should it be "regrettable". No one, to my knowledge, is planning to nuke DeepSeek data centers or something.
I wish I could agree with you. But have you read Aschenbrenner's "Situational Awareness" [1]? I am very much afraid that the big decision makers in AI do in fact think in those terms, and do not in any way frame this as fair competition for the benefit of all.
A person heavily invested in this wave of AI succeeding saying AI will be big and we will have AGI next year? Sure.
I don't think there is much point of reading the whole thing after the following:
"Everyone is now talking about AI, but few have the faintest glimmer of what is about to hit them. Nvidia analysts still think 2024 might be close to the peak. Mainstream pundits are stuck on the willful blindness of “it’s just predicting the next word”."
