Still, better this is done in the open. Otherwise Russia and China will just continue in secret, which is definitely a world I don't want to live in.
While, as a matter of fact, you will be naive if you believe that there is no secret research happening inside US government agencies.
Big companies are just equally a problem as big governments. They are even more effective and efficient in collecting user data and reaching privacy sensitive information.
AI in general has become a game for big players, that's in itself a worrying trend.
- Strong companies can and do force weak governments to adopt whatever policies they want; see e.g. tobacco companies and their fight against health warnings on cigarette boxes. Or private companies and their private armies - happened in the past (e.g. East India Company), happens today (why do you think people kill each other in Africa over tantalum they don't have technological capability to use?).
- Lobbying you mentioned. Doesn't always happen, but happens frequently.
- Various low-level deals and bribery on e.g. city scale.
- Low-skilled jobs. Just talk to people who are stuck with those, especially in smaller cities. Employers can, and routinely do, make them do anything because they basically own them.
So yeah, private companies are not like governments. They can't just go and coerce you to do something in the name of law. But they have lots of less direct ways to coerce people if they really want to. The job of the government is usually to make them not want to.
I strongly doubt that.
> Russia and China
Those use the US as an excuse. Of course, these entities are only convenient monoliths when it comes to pushing the interests of very small groups within them, not when a poor American or Russian or Chinese asks a wealthy one to share.
Also, why is something done in secret and something done out in the open a zero sum game? I would think the opposite is the case, when you already have the infrastructure for 99.9% and only have to set the evil bit, that's a lot easier than doing it secretly when nobody else is doing it at all.