> When the history books are written and all is said and done, the hubris of this moment where all the American labs decided to punk their investors and join hand in hand in agreeing to let the Chinese win forever is going to be the main story.

Come on. Lecturing about hubris when your message is damn the consequences, full speed ahead?

If it's a race to build the torment nexus, or a race with a nonzero chance of building the torment nexus by accident, I don't care about winning.

Win what? The race to the bottom always has this competitive language.

“If we ban CFCs now the Chinese will win!”

“If we ban chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, etc etc our enemies will triumph! They won’t stop!”

“If we switch to biodegradeable plastic then our rivals will have an advantage.”

“If we dont externalize the costs to our population, then they will, and then will win!”

I think workflows can do the job agents do, 20x cheaper and more predictably and safely. They can completely displace agents, just as HFCs displaced CFCs and then we were able to ban CFCs and phase them out through international COOPERATION. The language of COOPERATION is what saves us vs COMPETITION is all about cutting corners and externalizing costs. Google the Montreal Protocol, Geneva Conventions, Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, Unleaded Gasoline etc etc.

Agents have got to be marginalized. They are just popular because the labs need to make a ton of money for their investors and recoup their massive spending on training models.