“It’s going way too fast”: the inside story of the race for the ultimate AI

On the 8:49 a.m. train through Silicon Valley, the tables are full of young people glued to laptops with earphones and rattling off codes.

As the hills of Northern California roll by, instructions from bosses appear on screens: Fix this bug; Add new script. There is no time to enjoy the view. These commuters are foot soldiers in the global race to artificial general intelligence – when AI systems become as capable or even more capable than highly skilled humans.

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, some of the world’s largest companies are fighting to gain an advantage. And again, they are competing with China.

This race for control of a technology that could change the world is fueled by trillions of dollars in bets by America’s most powerful capitalists.

The computer scientists get out in Mountain View for Google DeepMind and in Palo Alto for the talent factory of…