A couple of months after the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist and architect of the American atomic bomb, met then US President Harry S. Truman in the Oval Office. He was concerned about a possible future nuclear war with the USSR. Truman asked him to stop worrying and at one point he called Oppenheimer a “cry-baby”.
Christopher Nolan, the director of Oppenheimer, has said that Silicon Valley audiences should pay heed to the message in the film. After a screening of Oppenheimer at the Whitby Hotel, Nolan joined a panel of scientists and Kai Bird, one of the authors of the book Oppenheimer is based on.
When Chuck Todd of Meet the Press asked Nolan what he hoped Silicon Valley might learn from the film, the director said: “I think what I would want them to take away is the concept of accountability. When you innovate through technology, you have to make sure there is accountability. The rise of companies over the last 15 years bandying about words like ‘algorithm’, not knowing what they mean in any kind of meaningful, mathematical sense. They just don’t want to take responsibility for what that algorithm does.” He also touched on AI, saying, “And applied to AI? That’s a terrifying possibility.”
