It's a frightening thought: The countries with the least regulations will have GAI first. What will that lead to?
When AI can control a robot that looks like a human, can walk, grab, work, is more intelligent than a human and can reproduce itself - what will the country with the least regulations that created it do with it?
"but countries without {child labour laws, environment regulation, a minimum wage, slavery ban} will out compete us!"
It has also been leaving China for a while. You cannot hope to compete with the poorest country on labor cost, it's not a matter of regulation (well unless we're talking about capital control, but it's a completely different topic)
The people worried about AI are worried that the first country that achieves ASI will achieve strategic dominance equivalent to the US as of 1946.
Can you tell me with a straight face that China's actions in the Pacific are not impacted by the US strategic nuclear arsenal?
Being a nuclear power is something shared by a few, but the US dominance has no equal.
It's pretty clear that the US leadership mostly comes from its economic power, which it used to derive from its industrial strength and is now more reliant on its technological superiority (since it has sold its industry to China, which may end up as a very literal execution of the famous quote from Lenin about capitalists selling the rope to hang them).
Or even the Russian Federation, which may be a better comparison: I think it was only the USA and the USSR (from whom modern Russia inherited all the weapons) who decided to fight over arsenal size well beyond the point of MAD, rather than keep to the cheapest deterrent against a first strike.
That said, IMO the USA's strategic dominance between the end of WW2 and the fall of the USSR was significantly influenced by them having nukes, even though they didn't use them and I think they had more than they needed for mere deterrence — it mattered then more than now.
If anything, I think nukes actually reduced their strategic dominance because it prevented conventional conflicts because the fear of escalation and they couldn't use it nukes aggressively anyway (the US / China/ USSR love triangle in the 60-70 is a good example of that).
I’m not saying I dislike US dominance, but at least, the nuclear option is nothing compared to the rest of their spendings.
Somehow people smart enough to build something fantastical and seemingly dangerous, but not smart enough to build in protections and controls.
It's a trope, not reality. And GAI is still speculation.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/nuclear-warheads-by-coun...
Also, the US has significantly less power worldwide than it did for most of that chart. Today, arguably, China exerts as much power as the US. American's always love to brag about how exceptional the US is, but often that isn't as true as they think and certainly won't be true for the long run.
Long term planning needs to avoid such arrogance.
India though, even as 7th in the world, is smaller than the US, with about 32% of its area.
Population-wise India has now surpassed China, and both beat the US (3rd in the world) by over 1B people each.