False economy What’s in it for me? Understand what makes the

There’s a brief window in which the future of 
AI will be shaped, primarily by actors in the 
United States and China.
As it evolves, AI will eventually develop a mind 
of its own: an ability to think about the world in a 
way that’s both independent of human input and 
distinctly non-human in the way it functions. We 
can’t predict exactly what that mind will evolve 
into, but we do know what it will evolve from: the 
AI systems being built right now.
That means we’re living in a pivotal period of 
history. From now until some time in the next 
two decades, our current AI research and 
development will shape the contours of the 
landscape on which the future of humanity will 
be built.
By the 2040s, the author estimates, AGI 
systems will already be in place. As they begin 
evolving into ASI, they will reach a point of no 
return – developing outside of our control, too 
powerful for us to stop or change. And as you’ll 
find out later, the results could be devastating for 
our species. The time to act is therefore now – 
and if we don’t steer carefully, we might end up 
driving off a cliff.
So who’s at the wheel? A group of corporate 
giants and a pair of governments that are 
becoming rival superpowers.
Those corporations are the “big nine” tech 
companies, along with their various partners, 
investors and subsidiaries. Six of the 
corporations are based in the United States: 
Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, IBM and 
Apple. Three of them are based in China: Baidu, 
Alibaba and Tencent. The governments in 
question are those of these two countries, along 
with their respective allies.
For the sake of simplicity, we’ll speak of these 
AI-steering corporations and governments in 
terms of their being either American or Chinese, 
although they often operate in or hail from other 
allied countries. The idea here is that they 
belong to one of two international camps 
dominated by the United States and China.
As you’ve probably heard umpteen times before, 
the United States is the world’s only remaining 
superpower from the twentieth century, while 
China is the emerging superpower of the twenty-
first century. The two countries are economically 
intertwined in many ways, with considerable 
trade and investment money flowing between 
them, but they’re also political rivals. While the 
United States is trying to maintain its domination 
over the world, China is trying to assert its own.
In vying for power, these two countries are also 
pushing very different visions of how society 
should be run. In the next blink, we’ll take a look 
at what these visions are and how they’re 
guiding AI research and development.