OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly attempted to deceive the United States government into funnelling billions of dollars into his company by conjuring a threat that may never have existed. The 'AGI Manhattan Project' claimAccording to the New Yorker, in 2017 Altman met with US intelligence officials and made a dramatic claim, that China had launched an 'AGI Manhattan Project,' a state-backed artificial general intelligence programme on par with the scale of America's World War II nuclear weapons effort. He urged that OpenAI urgently needed billions of dollars in government funding to keep pace with this supposed Chinese threat.When officials pressed…