[jillesvangurp]

Exactly. The cat is out of the back. Right now, people and companies in China, India, North & South Korea, Japan, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, etc. are trying to replicate results (obviously with lots of variation in success rates) as fast as they can. And they are motivated by just one thing: they don't want to be outsmarted by some foreign AI. They want to get there first.

Especially China, South Korea, Japan, and India have some highly capable people. Same for Europe. Though as a European, I'm skeptical of this continent being able to pull together a coherent effort. The rest of the world is not going to be waiting for Silicon Valley to deliver them the next version of chat gpt and figure out the least offensive level of wokeness.

Companies across the world are doing the R&D and they'll be shipping whatever they have to get a piece of the market. And not all of those companies and countries are going to be very interested in ethics.

This technology is hugely relevant across essentially all industry sectors with a potential to help knowledge workers in R&D, technological sectors, law, medicine. And of course the defense industry. Just because people don't like it doesn't mean other people won't go there. They will. This is technology with an obvious potential for weaponization. It's going to be a pretty bad time to be defenseless against that. I don't think it will take long for this stuff to start having some real world impact in conflicts across the world.

So, there's a sense of urgency here in not giving away a head start and trying to keep up. Spinning your wheels for a year or so is just not going to be helpful. Another argument here is that some AI researchers might be recruited away. A lot of them are foreigners and their home countries might come calling.