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"?

The only prize is control of the light cone.

A race to the bottom.

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