AN AI FOR AN AI

Countries and companies are engaged in geopolitical competition and are pouring billions to dominate Al economy. But dangers abound

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ON NOVEMBER 30, 2022, AI truly entered the public imagination. That day, a relatively unknown US startup, OpenAI, released ChatGPT—an AI chatbot capable of writing poems, solving complex problems and even mimicking human conversation with uncanny fluency. Within two months, it became the fastest-growing consumer software application in history, amassing over 100 million users and capturing global attention.

For decades, AI had been in the background as an algorithm, translating text and curating social media feeds. With ChatGPT, AI became a product, and tech giants took the lead in steering the AI revolution. In 2023, the industry produced 51 notable AI models while academia contributed just 15. This marked a shift from 2014 when universities led the AI research, according to Stanford University’s 2024 AI Index report. Nowhere is this power shift more evident than in the US, where the lines between Silicon Valley boardrooms and government corridors have blurred.

When US President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, he swiftly dismantled AI regulatory guardrails, making it clear that corporate ambition, not government caution, would dictate AI’s future. What followed was an unspoken alliance between the US government and its tech giants: in exchange for state support and global influence, companies were expected to keep China out of the race for Artificial General Intelligence—the theoretical milestone where AI matches or surpasses human intelligence.

In this new global order, the conversation around AI has shifted dramatically. Once-dominant concerns about safety and ethics—the very reasons tech giants initially hesitated to release chatbots—have been sidelined. Today, the AI race defines the technological supremacy of a country and its national security.