Ai Race To What Exactly?

Races usually have a finish point where the victor crosses first and they receive all the plaudits but i am confused to what the finishing point is in the current Ai Race which seems to be between China and USA.
US President Donald Trump, not a man usually mentioned in the same sentence as Intelligence, artificial or otherwise, has said that 'Whoever wins AI, Wins' but nobody is defining what  actually constitutes what a win is.
When America landed Neil Armstrong on the Moon that was them winning the Space Race but what is the goal of Artificial Intelligence apart from ending us all within a decade as was mentioned recently and Trump dismissed as a hoax, although he did suggest that ingesting disinfectant to cure Coronvirus so is a man it is probably best not to listen to.
According to people in the know America are the global leaders but China is not far behind and will probably go on to dominate because while the American firms such as Anthropic, Google and OpenAI are monetising their versions through paid subscriptions, China are releasing open models which can be downloaded and tweaked for free and Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 is almost on a par with the American models so I’m told.
Making AI cheap and open seems to be the Chinese model and they have another advantage is that the Chinese AI companies are able to access the electricity they need for a much lower cost.
Where America is ahead is in the safety of what they are making, China are even less concerned about any existential risk to humanity and America don't seem overly concerned themselves so off we head into a race to whatever the end goal is, but it probably isn't good.