China isn't racing to AGI, why is the US?

US tech firms are focused on beating China in the AI race, but on GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, Tristan Harris of the Center for Humane Technology argues the two countries have fundamentally different visions for AI's future. While US companies are racing toward developing powerful general intelligence (what he calls “god in a box"), China is deploying AI directly to factories, medicine and industrial production to boost its economic output. Tech firms in the US are driven by venture capital and being the first to reach advanced frontier models, prioritizing speed and scale over solving real-world challenges.

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This approach isn’t just misaligned—it’s dangerous. Harris says that we need to change the way we think about AI competition with China on a longer timeline. Deploying more and more advanced AI tools to consumers en masse without safeguards and in ways that degrade mental health and critical thinking, he warns, will ultimately weaken the US. Rather than framing AI competition with China as a race to sheer technological supremacy, he says we should be racing to better deploy AI technology in a way that strengthens our society.

“We beat China to social media. Did that make us stronger or did that make us weaker?” Harris says, “It made us radically weaker. So we're not in a race for technology. We're in a race for who's better at applying and governing it."