“What distinguishes leaders from laggards and greatness from mediocrity is the ability to uniquely imagine what could be,” American author Robert Fritz once boldly asserted. This quote applies well to the fact that the U.S. edge in artificial intelligence systems is dwindling by the day. The stakes are increasing, however, with artificial general intelligence on the horizon.

Although there are a plethora of definitions for AGI and no real wide-ranging consensus, the industry commonly defines it as an AI system that can perform 100% of human-level cognitive tasks. In this respect, we exclude physical robotics or cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs but only envision a system versatile enough to achieve everything an average human can do in front of his desktop at the office. This AGI race is no longer within the realm of science fiction and has been amply documented or theorized over the last months — by Leopold Aschenbrenner in a document called “Situational Awareness,” Dario Amodei in “Machines of Loving Grace,” Fin Moorhouse and Will MacAskill in “Preparing for the Intelligence Explosion,” or in the more recent, and highly and rightly criticized, “AI 2027” paper by AI Futures project.