Well, you get hundreds of billions in debt, and then you get open weight models distilling your proprietary models.

? It absolutely is a race. Whether thats a positive thing or not is debatable but every lab is definitely in a race. What prize do you win? Imagine a world where only one country has AGI/ASI. Or a world where Europe only gets access to frontier models 6 months later. Far from ideal.

How about "being able to align ASI somewhat to your values"?

A race to the bottom.

The only prize is control of the light cone.

It's red queen. You stay alive by winning, you lose everything by losing.

Unless you manage to build a god, and keep it under control... okay, we're all going to lose