Is Cognitive Sovereignty the New Arms Race?

The pursuit of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has ignited a geopolitical competition of historic proportions. This is a massive technological arms race, with leaders like Vladimir Putin saying whoever achieves AGI first will “rule the world”. There are parallels with the nuclear arms race, which tends to get peoples attention, but is this comparison accurate? And what does it all mean for a country like Australia, a tech savvy, middle power, caught in the middle of this tussle?

For the purposes of this article, we will define AGI as at or above human level intelligence, and acknowledge that this vague description doesn’t capture the wider issues, about what intelligence is and how we measure it.