“Now I am become Death”: Sam Altman compares OpenAI to the Manhattan Project
Back in 2019, Sam Altman made a comparison between the ambition and scale of OpenAI’s operations to that of the Manhattan Project. He also paraphrased Robert Oppenheimer to say that AI must progress in spite of the risks associated with it. Robert Oppenheimer was a theoretical physicist who was the head of the Los Alamos Laboratory during the Second World War, and is considered to be the father of the atomic bomb. He also famously quoted the Bhagvad Gita after observing the first nuclear test in 1945, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
Sam Altman reportedly made the comparison between the two enterprises in 2019, just mere days after Microsoft pledged to invest $1 billion in OpenAI. Along with the comparison, he also paraphrased sections of Robert Oppenheimer’s speech that was made in 1945 and justified the creation of the atomic bomb as a necessary expansion of human knowledge. Altman also went on to add that technology happens because it is possible. In a curious case of circumstances, Altman also shares a birthday with Robert Oppenheimer, the 22nd of April.
OpenAI is striving to achieve AGI or artificial general intelligence, which is AI that is capable of reaching near-human levels of intelligence, in a safe manner. The company has been making leaps and bounds of progress, especially with the release of GPT-4, but the development has led to increasing concerns among the general public.
Mirroring Sam Altman’s comparison, 36% of respondents to a survey put out by New York University said that developments in AI could lead to a “nuclear-level catastrophe”, and researchers have even said that AI has no considerations for human beings, or sentient life in general. A report by Goldman Sachs suggests that the impacts of AI are already being felt, as it is being used to write cover letters, children’s books and is being used to help students write essays. It also says that the technology could potentially impact 300 million full-time jobs.
The ethical and moral dilemmas posed by the development of AI are not alien to Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, and in conversation with Cade Metz, a reporter, he raised the question “Am I doing something good? Or really bad?” He made his thoughts on the matter clearer later through a blog post which states that the upsides of AGI are great enough to make stopping its development an unviable option. He suggests that society and the developers of AGI have the responsibility of figuring out how to get AGI right. Altman suggests that some form of universal basic income, or UBI could be used to compensate for the jobs that get replaced by AI. This would also allow more people to follow through on creative pursuits.
We currently do not know where the development of AI is headed, but all of us are strapped in for the ride, whether we’d like it or not. We can only hope that the steps that we take are in the correct and safe direction.
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