The modern AI industry is burning through hundreds of billions of dollars not because it knows the path to AGI, but because it fears losing a race whose ultimate outcome no one understands.

The AI industry and its frontman, Sam Altman, love to talk about inevitability.

About how humanity is on the cusp of a new era. About how large language models will soon become the new critical infrastructure of civilization and give rise to a digital superintelligence.

According to them, all that’s left is to build more data centers, cram as many GPUs as possible into them, and burn even more money on the whole thing.…