[upghost]

Just to clarify, I meant the rhetorical technique was being employed by the author of the article. He's downplaying the "AGI race" in order to normalize and validate the byproduct of the hype bubble to be as "normal and reliable as electricity and TCP/IP". It's clearly meant to attempt to disarm and appeal to skeptics, but there is more than enough dog whistling and performative contradiction in there to make it clear the true intention of the article -- praising Caesar.

For the record, I would be more inclined to be sympathetic towards the author if any receipts (i.e., repos) were produced at all, but as you so correctly stated, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

I agree you do not have burden of defending the author's claims, apologies if that was not clear.