I'm writing a follow-up to my blog post on soft takeoff and DSA, and I am looking for good examples of tech companies or academic research projects that are ~3+ years ahead of their nearest competitors in the technology(ies) they are focusing on.
Exception: I'm not that interested in projects that are pursuing some niche technology, such that no one else wants to compete with them. Also: I'm especially interested in examples that are analogous to AGI in some way, e.g. because they deal with present-day AI or because they have a feedback loop effect.
Even better would be someone with expertise on the area being able to answer the title question directly. Best of all would be some solid statistics on the matter. Thanks in advance!
In practice, it is often hard to tell the difference between "far ahead of the competition" and "off on a weird tangent". You could make the case that NASA is 50 years ahead of the competition in manned lunar space travel, and at the time being ahead of the Soviets was a huge part of the appeal. But over time manned space travel was all but abandoned because there didn't seem to be enough value in it. The USAF is in a similar position with stealth aircraft; competing countries never heavily invested in stealth and radar improvements have made it increasingly obsolete.
If you're three years ahead of intelligent, well-funded competition, they may be waiting to see if the game is worth the ante.