1 March 2025

American AI Is High on Its Own Supply

Bhaskar Chakravorti

The most powerful people in the United States are obsessed with spending more on artificial intelligence (AI). Besides Greenland and Gaza, President Donald Trump has signaled that he wants total dominance of the technology. Elon Musk wants OpenAI, a leading player, for himself. And OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is aiming for artificial general intelligence, or AGI, which mimics all human capabilities—and he’s pushing for “exponentially increasing investment” to get there.

Even as a hitherto obscure Chinese lab, DeepSeek, has demonstrated a cost- and energy-efficient approach to AI development, the U.S. tech industry has taken the present situation as its own Sputnik moment. Americans have derived all the wrong lessons: spend even more on AI; trust Chinese technology even less; and reach back to analogies from the 19th-century English coal industry to justify the seemingly unjustifiable 21st-century expenditures in AI.

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