Beyond the Supremacy of Intelligence — AGI and Humanity's Choice

Our journey, begun with Turing’s question, has at last reached the far edge of the horizon. AI survived its winter, awoke through deep learning, grew by feeding on data and semiconductors, came within everyone’s reach through generative AI, and became a source of power. Yet one final chapter still remains in this story. If the intelligence of machines should draw level with the human, and eventually overtake it — what then becomes of the world? The finale is a story about a question to which no one yet knows the answer.

”Human-Level” — A Goal Both Distant and Near

There is a word spoken of as the destination of the race over AI: AGI (artificial general intelligence).

The AI of the past was a “specialist,” excelling at particular tasks such as Go, translation, or image recognition. By contrast, AGI is said to refer to a kind of “all-purpose intelligence” — one that, like a human, can handle a wide range of intellectual work regardless of field. Beyond even that, there is talk of superintelligence (ASI), a concept of intelligence far exceeding the human.

One major AI company is said to have expressed the view that AGI should arrive not suddenly but in stages, and must be advanced together with human oversight and the securing of safety. To pursue greater intelligence while preparing not to be swallowed by it — this contradiction is, it could be said, the fate of modern AI development.

The Outcome of Supremacy Is Not Yet Settled

The US-China competition over the supremacy of intelligence has grown only more complex in its final phase.

The United States is said to have led in foundation models, semiconductors, and talent, while China has closed the gap through national strategy, an immense market, and a persistent drive toward domestic production. And in recent years, an event came to symbolize that picture. In 2025, a Chinese startup released an AI model said to achieve high performance at a cost far lower than before, and it was reported to have stunned the world’s markets and industry. Because the achievement came amid export controls limiting access to the most advanced semiconductors, a view also emerged that “constraint, in fact, bred ingenuity.”

Which side will ultimately come out ahead, no one can assert. Views differ, and the balance of power is being rewritten this very moment. What is certain is that AI is no longer one nation’s industrial policy but a variable that sways the balance of power across the world itself.

Can They Compete and Still Join Hands?

Here humanity faces a difficulty unseen in the history of supremacy so far: international cooperation over safety.

As was true of nuclear weapons, a technology too powerful endangers everyone unless even rivals share a minimum set of rules. In 2023, at the AI Safety Summit held in the United Kingdom, nations including the US and China are said to have signed the Bletchley Declaration and agreed to confront the risks of frontier AI together. The following year, a gathering was also held in South Korea, and the dialogue continued.

Cooperation, however, is not easy. Proceed cautiously with development, putting safety first, and a rival may pull ahead. Put speed first, and the danger of losing control grows. Carrying this dilemma, nations go on wavering between competition and cooperation. How far to prioritize safety, and how effective international frameworks can be made, are matters on which both assessments and forecasts currently differ.

How Is the Source of Power to Be Governed?

Here we should recall the starting point of this series.

In the twentieth century, what moved the world was oil. Over the black liquid welling up from the earth, the great powers drew borders, waged wars, and forged alliances. What dominated the entrance to the twenty-first century was the semiconductor. Whoever controlled the manufacture of the tiny chip born from sand held the world by the throat. And now a new source of power has appeared: intelligence (AI).

There is a decisive difference between oil and semiconductors on one hand and AI on the other. Those were tools that humans used. But AI may one day become an entity that thinks and judges for itself. For the first time, a source of power is on the verge of becoming “something that can possess a will” — and that is precisely why we must cultivate, on the side of society too, wisdom to match the speed of the technology.

Where this story of supremacy ultimately heads, no one can know. Which of the US and China will come out ahead, when AGI will arrive, whether humanity can govern this power well — all of it lies within the future. But one thing is certain: it is we humans, not the machines, who will choose that future.

When you next meet the words “AGI,” “semiconductor controls,” or “AI safety” in the news, you will already be able to read the long story that has piled up behind them. The battle over intelligence has only just begun. And its continuation is something we are now living, in real time.

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— The Race for AI: America, China, and the Battle for Intelligence · End —

From the ancient dream of building intelligence to today’s struggle for supremacy over AGI — thank you, truly, for staying with this long journey to the very end. If, through this story of humanity and its sources of power — oil, semiconductors, AI — the news of today has come to look even a little deeper, there is no greater joy for the one who wrote it. When you next encounter the word “AI,” please remember the grand story that lies behind it.