The U.S. government must move “quickly and decisively” to avert substantial national security risks stemming from artificial intelligence (AI) which could, in the worst case, cause an “extinction-level threat to the human species,” says a report commissioned by the U.S. government
...
many say it will arrive in the next five years
...
In other words, DARPA or a national lab have it, and China just figured it out or they're worried they're close.
I'm not saying that the USA isn't in the lead, only that the US government seems somewhat out of touch. If US government labs are secretly ahead of industry on AI, they're doing a very good job of keeping it secret.
No, that's their main advantage that funds their other activities. That's their thing that most Americans know about China, which isn't saying much. They also have insane tech talent, as does North Korea, because they start teaching/hiring teenagers to work for them, with all that extra neuroplasticity, and they're happy to 'help.'
China leads everyone else in the world in leapfrogging via industrial espionage. They don't need to do the backbreaking work of creating paradigm shifts in physics, tech, engineering, they only need to have people who can understand and implement it.
You'll see this in academia as well, Chinese students are far and away more aggressive cheaters.
In Chinese culture it doesn't matter how you get ahead as long as you aren't hurting family or the state, the ends justify the means.
The US government works with companies like OpenAI, they sell them custom capabilities while learning more about the system and then eventually they build and improve their own systems for more sensitive operational abilities. DoD has been heavily involved in AI (specifically generative AI) publicly for years now so you can be assured it's been in research for at least a decsde.. Here's there github repo but you can find a lot of .mil PDF files talking about it too. https://github.com/deptofdefense/LLMs-at-DoD
DARPA and the National Labs (Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Oak Ridge, Brookhaven, etc. are the ones who pull scientists from universities to work there when their research is something that has a clear and present military application.
Also for the other guy talking about China not being good at AI or anything besides manufacture, here's some good examples of their GenAI propaganda at work. Now, this isn't actual AGI, which is what the article is worrying about, but it shows they've been working on these capabilities for some time and have an automated system for pushing messaging. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3FQSFnZpsqw
I'm not sure if I'm worried more about AGI, or people I know, because agressive propaganda campaigns have been underway and are kicking up even more now, using LLMs and other GenAI.