"The cat is out of the bag" doesn't mean the cat is gone, it means the cat has freedom. I read the GP as meaning "no single company can currently control the trajectory of AI." That's not unfortunate -- that's great!
"The cat is out of the bag" doesn't mean the cat is gone, it means the cat has freedom. I read the GP as meaning "no single company can currently control the trajectory of AI." That's not unfortunate -- that's great!
No, doesn't mean that either.
People would sell piglets and would try to sell "a pig in a poke" (where a poke is a bag).
That's why you don't buy a pig in a poke because you can't see what you're buying.
Letting the cat out of the bag is because you've revealed that it was a cat rather than a piglet. You've revealed the deception.
Thanks for the correction. In my own words, to commit to memory: once "the cat is out of the bag", the point is not that it's difficult to put the cat back in, the point is that we now know it's a cat and putting it back is not relevant.
I've seen two expressions referring to "it's difficult to put the (thing) back in" that are in more-or-less common use in English. The slightly more common one is "You can't put the genie back into the bottle", and the slightly less common one (in my experience, at least) is "You can't put the toothpaste back into the tube." (Which actually inspired me to try, and it is actually possible to put the toothpaste back into the tube with careful application of suction, by squeezing the tube gently, touching the end to the excess toothpaste, then releasing the tube and letting some of the excess get sucked back in. But I digress.)
I've actually seen the "genie back into the bottle" phrase used in contexts that refer to secrets, e.g. where "the cat is out of the bag" would actually be more appropriate, so there's definitely some overlap there. For example, I've seen people talking about nuclear proliferation say "you can't put the nuclear genie back into the bottle", meaning that the secret of how to build a nuclear weapon is well-known, and it's not really possible to make it secret again. But I've also seen people use the same "you can't put the nuclear genie back into the bottle" expression referring to a nuclear weapon exploding: once the radioactive material in the bomb has gone critical, there's nothing anybody can do to stop the explosion that's about to happen.
Personally, I like the "genie back into the bottle" phrase better. But some people like more grounded-in-reality phrases rather than fantasy-based phrases, and they prefer "toothpaste back into the tube". Either one works well, though.
I think I have to commend you for trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube. These expressions are more or less some form of fatalism and when used in political context it is very annoying. Especially when some politicians are working there asses off to make something claimed inevitable happen.