The technology behind AI is amazing, and with junk data scrapped from the internet we have only established a proof of concept.
What is finally being acknowledged is that quality data matters. Garbage in, garbage out. If you use Reddit and other junk data, while you will get a good measure of the current state of the human condition, it is not necessarily the best data you want to move AI forward.
While we are seeing amazing results even with junk data, when AI is trained on specialized data and research. Data that is behind closed doors, Difficult data that took years of hard research and not just photocopying books or YouTube videos, we are seeing amazing results and starting to see technological breakthroughs.
OpenAi and others had started switching to "artificial data" after the easy junk data was gone through and have learned it does not work. They know they know need to roll up their sleeves and do the hard work.
What we have seen so far is just barely the proof of concept of what AI is capable of, and the not too bright believe this is it, no this is only the beginning.
No one is "ahead' That is preposterous. That is simply the chorus of a bunch of goofballs. It is based on open source research available to everyone. Everyone is just barely getting on the track and lining up on the starting line.