A new Renaissance or Cold War 2.0, what can artificial general intelligence achieve?

Sunday, 3 August 2025

An unprecedented period of economic prosperity or a new geopolitical world order, that is what the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI) could lead to.

A new research report by a US-based think tank showed how international politics and the global society could be reshaped by an artificial intelligence able to perform any intellectual tasks humans can perform.

Eight scenarios, ranging from a worldwide New Renaissance to a war between China and the USA were described in the RAND report.

RAND national security research division vice president Barry Pavel said AGI’s superhuman capabilities were like having a country full of geniuses.

“And when you have those kinds of capabilities, and you set them to problems, or they set themselves to problems, the period of progress would be an explosion – a very positive explosion.”

Pavel, who is also the report co-author, said this explosion included help fighting long-standing diseases, as well as changes to the job market and economy.

“It would be an upheaval, the likes of which we really haven’t seen, if ever, since possibly the industrialisation era,” he said.

Some of the latest progress in the AI fields question whether the blurry divide between AI and AGI has not been crossed already.

In June, world-leading mathematicians travelled to Berkeley for what was described as a “clandestine mathematical conclave”, where they were asked to train and challenge a large language model – OpenAI o4-mini.

While the mathematicians found 10 questions it could not answer, some asked whether large language models similar to o4-mini were not already closer to AGI than to the first predictive AI tools.

Pavel said the report provided informed speculation about whether AGI could be developed in the short-term period.

“When I read about what the experts say, it ranges between 18 months from now to 10 years from now.”

The report, How Artificial Intelligence Could Affect the Rise and Fall of Nations, showed these new developments could be brought about through an international cooperation of countries around the world.

However, concurrent innovation in different countries could trigger a similar situation to what the world experienced in the space race of the 60s, where geopolitcal actors and large companies compete for the latest technologies and use neo-protectionist strategies to prevent international coordination.

Large private companies or nations were most likely to be the first movers in the AGI field, as there were high costs associated with building data centres and powerful enough chips.

“The nation or entity that develops and controls such systems could fundamentally reshape the global order and potentially guide the future trajectory of humanity,” the report said.

The disruptive changes could also result in conflict.

“Nation states, it seems, ever since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, have acted in ways that have mostly been in their own self interest.

“And so you can imagine scenarios where nation states are… continuing to act in this way, and it leads to either miscalculation or aggression or some other form of geopolitical friction that leads to crisis and conflict,” Pavel said.

One of the scenarios in the report is called Mushroom Cloud Computing and it describes the final moments before a war between China and the USA.

Pavel said this was the most dangerous and negative scenario examined.

On the other hand, the report showed how the development of AGI could spark a new era of innovation and scientific progress – a New Renaissance.

It was important that AI capabilities were aligned with human guidance and values, to minimise the possible damages and maximise the positive aspects, Pavel said.

“It is not implausible that… especially once it gets really capable, an AGI, or AGIs could take control of things, or could take control of things that we did not expect.”

At the frontier of AI, some were already passing laws to keep future developments under control and promote ethical innovation.

Last year, the European Union passed the EU AI Act to regulate the development of AI systems, based on the risks they pose to society.

The legislation bans AI applications that use “subliminal techniques beyond a person’s consciousness” or that classify people according to their social behaviour, “such as government-run social scoring used in China”.