Here's the actual Sam Altman quote, which appears to be a response to an unheard question (maybe "did we underestimate China's AI capabilities), and has been heavily sanewashed by NBC to make him appear like he has a coherent answer.

It's really not.

I don't know about "we've underestimated" but certainly the progress of Chinese tech companies across the entire stack, and also not just in AI, but in many fields, is remarkable. Um. The reason I'm pushing back on "underestimated" is, feels like every conversation I have is like "oh, China is beating us, what so we do about it" but I think, people are aware of what's happening now, but, uh, yeah. Chinese progress is amazingly fast.