Ten years ago, if you said artificial intelligence might surpass human-level intelligence by the year 2029, no one in Washington would have taken you seriously. A Wednesday hearing showed how dramatically that has changed.

During the hearing, dubbed “ Shaping Tomorrow: The Future of Artificial Intelligence ,” the House Oversight Committee and its witnesses grappled with several trends: the rapid advance of AI, Beijing’s determination to dominate the field, and China’s increasingly threatening posture toward Taiwan.

“Current trend lines suggest” that Ray Kurzweil—inventor, author, and current Google executive—”was dead on” when he predicted human-level AI by 2029, Samuel Hammond , chief economist at the Foundation for American Innovation , said at the hearing.

Kurzweil’s projecti

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