When we think about the future, our anxiety emanates from concerns even bigger than political or economic chaos. A looming climate catastrophe generates greater apocalyptic fear and escalating protest actions. At the same time, there’s a growing realization that the collapse in fertility will mean an aging population and an inability to respond to the challenges of the future. Nolan has intimated in interviews that he sees a parallel between the Manhattan Project depicted in Oppenheimer and the existential risks posed by increasingly sophisticated and autonomous forms of artificial intelligence (AI) research.
Our anxiety about the future is paralyzing. And yet it is a strange kind of paralysis—the paralysis of acceleration, like an astronaut planted deep into her seat by the force of liftoff. Not an irrational despair but an all-too-rational projection of the uncertain future of accelerating technological change and its consequences. Stop, or at least slow down, is the refrain, whether the issue is climate change, deforestation, genetic modification, or another emerging threat. Tens of thousands of people, including world-leading AI scientists and entrepreneurs, have signed an open letter calling for a pause on AI research for safety reasons.
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