US chasing AGI myth while China builds the AI future

The United States is increasingly organizing its artificial intelligence strategy around a concept it cannot clearly define, cannot reliably measure and may never achieve in the singular, decisive form imagined.

That concept is Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI. In Washington and Silicon Valley, AGI has become the policy anchor and rhetorical North Star. Lawmakers invoke it to justify massive investments. Tech executives tie timelines to presidential terms or national dominance. Analysts warn that the first country to reach it will shape the global order. The language is urgent: a race, a finish line, a winner-take-all victory.

There is only one problem: no one agrees on what AGI actually is.

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