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first, the likely return on AI products on the market--either direct to consumers, or for use in further automating production--are incredibly high. market participants are _heavily_ incentivized to invest in productizing existing AI capabilities and in creating new capabilities
in the past 30 or 40 years, the tech industry has gotten incredibly good at taking novel technologies and turning them into products it is an art; it is a science. the process is well understood and a meta industry exists to do just this. i expect it will move quickly here
the second reason is geostrategic. AI will--is already to a limited extent--lead to a new revolution in military affairs. China is active contesting America's hegemony; neither side can afford to see its capabilities fall behind its adversary's.
the fact that the Chinese are aggressively investing in AI capabilities, and that the US is doing its best to kneecap them while onshoring its own chip fabs, shows that both countries' apparatuses are highly aware of the stakes and acting accordingly
even if the US government decided to cripple the country's economic development in response to popular fear, there is no world in which they would stop military development of AI. and China will not pump the brakes regardless
I am optimistic about the United States winning this competition. I say optimistic because while I'm not confident that the outcome will be good, I am extremely sure that the CCP dominating the world with insuperable authoritarian technology would be extremely bad
i don't think FOOM is the likely outcome, and its possible (I'm not in a good position to know) that the raw technology is actually plateauing now. but even at its current state decades worth of applications will be shipped. so i do expect changes to continue apace.