Oppenheimer | Christopher Nolan: AI will go into defensive infrastructure; ultimately, they’ll be in charge of nuclear weapons

After a special screening of Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan warned against artificial intelligence, comparing it to his new film about the atomic bomb. The filmmaker made his remarks after a New York Oppenheimer preview screening. The panel featured Nolan, Dr. Thom Mason, director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Drs. Carlo Rovelli and Kip Thorne, and Kai Bird, co-author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

According to Variety, Nolan said that the rise of companies in the last 15 years bandying words like algorithm—not knowing what they mean in any kind of meaningful, mathematical sense—shows that these guys don’t know what an algorithm is. People in his business are talking about it; they just don’t want to take responsibility for whatever that algorithm does.

He continued by saying that AI makes that terrifying. Especially since AI systems will go into defensive infrastructure. They'll control nukes, and the world is doomed if they say that's independent from the individual using, programming, and using that AI. Accountability matters, and they must hold people accountable for their use of tools.

In his latest film, Nolan describes how the US military contracted J. Robert Oppenheimer to build the atomic bomb during World War II. Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., and Florence Pugh join Cillian Murphy as the theoretical physicist.

SAG-AFTRA joined the WGA strike on Thursday, bringing the entertainment sector to a halt. Both unions have many disagreements with studios, but AI and its potential impact on entertainment sector labour practises are major ones.

Nolan said that with the labour disputes going on in Hollywood right now, a lot of it—when they talk about AI when they talk about these issues—are all ultimately born from the same thing, which is that when one innovates with technology, one has to maintain accountability.

When asked if there will be a revisit of Oppenheimer as people understand quantum physics and tame the atom, Nolan hopes there is. When he talks to elite AI researchers right now, they refer to this—right now—as their Oppenheimer moment. He asked what scientists' responsibilities are when developing new technologies with unintended consequences, as they have in history.

Nolan also thinks Silicon Valley is thinking of it as an Oppenheimer moment right now. He said that it's helpful that it's in the conversation, and the filmmaker hopes that the thought process continues. Oppenheimer's story doesn't address those questions, but it can demonstrate where some of those obligations lie and how people take a pause and ask, "Okay, what is accountability?"

Oppenheimer opens July 21 on the big screen.