Oppenheimer, Henry Adams, AI, and the Annihilation of Man

Doom, gloom, and the resilience of humanity

Henry Adams describes an innovative force called the Dynamo that diminishes human creative potential instead of increasing it, like the progenitive female power of the Virgin before it. Oppenheimer illuminates a key problem with Henry Adam’s Dynamo in the most dramatic terms, the destruction of human life but there are many ways that industrial force can undermine human potential. 

Through the Dynamo and Virgin, Adams draws parallels between the force behind technological innovation and the force behind religious worship because of their intangibility to the human eye and their impossible power over human life. Adams “began to feel the forty-foot dynamos as a moral force, much as the early Christians felt the Cross,”  After a discussion with physicist Samuel Pierpoint Langley, Adams writes about Langley’s concerns about the apparently irrational behavior of radium, and Adams realizes, “Radium denied its God--or, what was to Langley the same thing, denied the truths of his Science. The force was wholly new.” Peering into the future, Adams surmises that radioactivity is yet another revelation that will act on mankind with unimaginable force. But I doubt he could have predicted the sheer magnitude of what came next.

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer depicts the revelatory power of the Dynamo in one of its most extreme expressions, the atomic bomb. Throughout the creation process, the film is full of theory, the desperation of wartime, and the necessary indulgence of the temperamental genius of the physicists involved in the Manhattan Project. The act of creating the bomb is heroic, the Trinity test releases psuedo-divine judgment on the test site. Oppenheimer's repeated quotation of Hindu scripture “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds” throughout the film references the view of the bomb and himself as a destructive deity. Clearly, the creation process in service of Dynamo or Virgin is rewarding but their consequences vary drastically. 

The film’s tone shifts sharply after the Trinity test due to the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Inside Oppenheimer’s mind, he imagines the annihilation his weapons released in the world, specifically their destruction of human life. We witness him crying while watching a lecture about the destruction his creations caused. In this way, Oppenheimer shares characteristics of Dr. Frankenstein living long enough to see the horrors his unnatural creation released into the world. 

Oppenheimer demonstrates that what appears to be the height of man’s creative powers can turn against him, sowing destruction not creation. What begins as an experiment with the limits of man’s abilities destroys human potential, and what once appeared to be trinitarian in its glory is revealed as a force of apocalypse.

I believe artificial Intelligence, the latest expression of the Dynamo’s force, has less explosive components than the atomic bomb but a similar potential to cut off human life and creativity. Sheena Iyengar writes for TIME that artificial intelligence “enables us to become more creative” citing saving money and time on otherwise tedious projects as ways in which language models can benefit individuals. 

However, Iyengar’s examples focus on the use of ChatGPT as a glorified search engine not what AI enthusiasts hope for it to become– a cheap replacement for expensive human thought and creativity. Though she makes a strong case for the usefulness of AI in certain contexts, she entirely overlooks the potential human cost when adopting these technologies. 

As we begin to lean on AI, we risk kneecapping our own creative potential. Instead of using AI as Iyengar suggests to generate concepts or lists and then use human intelligence to sort through them, many intend to have AI do the thinking for them. Students are already leaning on AI to write their papers, robbing themselves of the opportunity to refine their ideas while drafting. Although I can understand the impulse to maximize your time and output, I’m afraid those using AI for writing projects are missing out on the opportunity to refine their thinking through the writing process. Almost every time I sit down to write, the process leads me to a different conclusion than when I started–and thank goodness for that! “First thought, worst thought” is a saying for a reason. 

Although in the present moment, the technological triumph that AI represents is exhilarating, like the atom bomb, even as we revel in its power, we need to consider the human cost of its implementation. Will we make it more difficult for humans to create art, innovate, and reason? Will it diminish the creative job market making it even more difficult for musicians, writers, and yes even actors to work? These risk factors need to be taken into account to protect human creativity from annihilation. 

As this amazing tweet states so well, I’m not excited to live in a world where humans are doing all the manual labor while the robots make art. Especially since they don’t even have the pleasure of making as my fellow humans do. 

Sure, I realize this might sound alarmist, In the words of the great Henry Adams, ““The year 1900 was not the first to upset schoolmasters.” Ditto for 2023. Innovation is scary, especially when it represents a potential threat to humanity. As Oppenheimer warns, technology once invented cannot be erased and thus proceeds to leave its mark on the world. 

However, at minimum on a personal level and at best on a societal one, it is possible to resist the urge to exercise the Dynamo’s tremendous power and to invest instead in the organic and generative. Like dandelions growing through cracks in the sidewalk, we can find a way to flourish even in an environment increasingly hostile to our organic existence.