#Oppenheimer

From Atoms to AI: Do Tech Titans Feel Remorse?

Digital surveillance of our every movement. Facial recognition software. Deepfake technology designed to confuse or mislead. Ransomware. Online bots misshaping opinions. Tracking us on websites to sell us products. Three-dimensional printers used to print guns or suicide machines. Smart home and personal tech gadgets that spy on us, track us, study us, and listen to us. Biotech weapons. Genetically modified foods. Data centers that use incalculable amounts of electricity and water. Driverless cars that mistakenly kill or main. The list goes on and on.

Source: thebehavioralscientist.com

All of these dystopian technologies are out there right now. Someone somewhere thought they would be a good idea and developed the technology needed to employ these actions. The big questions are why and when does an invention become evil? Are there technologies that can be invented, but should not be due to ethical, moral, or societal concerns? Are there inventions that are not evil for certain purposes, but become evil when used for misguided or inappropriate functions?

“Just because it can be invented, doesn’t mean it should be.”

panethos.wordpress.com

J. Robert Oppenheimer expressed guilt (“I have blood on my hands”) and regret after use of the atomic bomb on Japan, especially Nagasaki. As he so aptly noted, “The physicists have known sin…and this is a knowledge they cannot lose.” He spent much of his life thereafter trying to rein in the terrible technology that he helped to create.

“The link between Hiroshima and Dresden was indiscriminate bombing, what the Allies called total war. But it was deeper than that; it was something about man’s inhumanity to man, about technocrats who valued demonstrations of know-how so much they lost sight of the fact that they were killing people: schoolgirls and geezers and mothers pushing babies in prams.”

“The Brothers Vonnegut” by Ginger Strand

Today, it seems moral/ethical debates as those cited by Mr. Oppenheimer are fewer and further between. The general philosophy seems to be, if it helps the company’s bottom line or can make one rich, then it is good. Beyond that, there seems to be no limitation to how rich one can become whether or not the wealth was generated by evil technologies.

“Isn’t there a point where so rich is too rich?”

panethos.wordpress.com

• Have we heard regret for technology and modern weapons used to obliterate Gaza?

• Have we heard regret for providing technologies that assist ICE?

• Have we heard regret for allowing lies to permeate across the web?

• Have we heard sorrow or dismay for those who will lose their jobs to AI?

• Have we heard any thoughtful regret for any evil products created by Tech Titans?

Heck. When Google was first becoming a household name some 25 years ago, the company’s motto was “Don’ Be Evil.” This was removed from the preface of the employee code of conduct in 2018 and relegated to hardly more than an afterthought. Given where technology has taken us since, it is doubtful that goodness is true for any major tech company any more.

Author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. went to great lengths in his poignant writings to raise ethical concerns about the misuse and abuse of technology during his storied career. Here are two examples of the concerns he noted:

“It wasn’t necessarily evil to invent Ice-9 or a machine to replace a human being, like OMIBAC, EPICAC, or the ‘contour-following system’ [three fictional techologies in his books] that made skilled workers obsolete. but it was unethical to do these things without thinking about the implications for humanity.”

“The Brothers Vonnegut” by Ginger Strand

“The danger of the technocratic worldview was that it made human conflicts, human drama, even war, into a kind of game.”

“The Brothers Vonnegut” by Ginger Strand

Source: instagram.com

As citizens of this nation and planet we must work together to formulate a series of ethical standards and protocols to be met by all parties (individuals, corporations, nations). Whether this is done through the United Nations, global agreements, or through non-government organizations doesn’t matter. What’s necessary is some form of treaty or failsafe to rein in the proliferating evils that derive from technological advancements and untethered greed, and to hold those accountable when advancements are employed for evil purposes.

#apologies #biotech #books #digital #ethics #evil #futurism #history #KurtVonnegut #militarism #morality #Oppenheimer #streaming #technology #transportation #weapons

Opinion | Trump Is Squandering the Greatest Gift of the Manhattan Project – The New York Times

Opinion,

Guest Essay

How Trump Is Undoing 80 Years of American Greatness Aug. 12, 2025

A Manhattan Project development site in Oak Ridge, Tenn., in 1944. Credit…Chicago History Museum/Getty Images

Listen to this article · 7:42 min Learn more

By Garrett M. Graff

Mr. Graff is a journalist, a historian and the author, most recently, of “The Devil Reached Toward the Sky: An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb.”

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The 80th anniversary last week of the atomic bombings that helped end World War II came at a most peculiar time. That is in part because we can’t mark that anniversary without also noting the astonishing Manhattan Project that built atomic weapons.

The Manhattan Project was a towering achievement, one of the great stories of human effort and accomplishment. Yet the Trump administration has been systematically dismantling the culture of research that the Manhattan Project and World War II bequeathed us, a culture that propelled American prosperity.

At no other time in modern history has a country so thoroughly turned its back on its core national strengths. The very elements that made the Manhattan Project such a success are today under assault. With devastating cuts to science and health research, the administration is turning its back on a history of being powered and renewed by the innovation and vision of immigrants. What America may find is that we have squandered the greatest gift of the Manhattan Project — which, in the end, wasn’t the bomb but a new way of looking at how science and government can work together.

That the Manhattan Project happened is itself a minor miracle. For nearly two years, the U.S. military seemed to want nothing to do with the effort of inventing an atomic bomb.

From 1939 to 1941, a ragtag group of mostly Jewish refugee scientists from Hitler’s Europe, including Albert Einstein, approached the government and met with military officials. The scientists educated them on the discovery of nuclear fission, its implications for war and their fears that Hitler would develop an atomic bomb first.

The military brushed them off. “The colonels kept rather aloof,” the physicist Eugene Wigner recalled after one such meeting in October 1939, as Hitler took Poland. “They were friendly, they smiled, but they never expected to see a working atomic bomb in this world.”

One of those colonels told Wigner and Edward Teller, dismissively, that he would award $10,000 to whoever could develop a death ray and prove it by killing a goat — the implication being he imagined that project more likely than a bomb that unlocked the power of the fundamental building block of the universe.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Opinion | Trump Is Squandering the Greatest Gift of the Manhattan Project – The New York Times

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#2025 #America #Books #DonaldTrump #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #ManhattanProject #Movies #OakRidge #Oppenheimer #Politics #Reading #Resistance #Science #Technology #TheNewYorkTimes #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

#Navajo #uranium miners, people #downwind of atom bomb tests demand justice as Congress lets aid program lapse

by Keetra Bippus / Cronkite News
July 5, 2024

WASHINGTON – "A federal program to compensate people exposed to fallout from U.S. nuclear testing expired June 10.

"The #Radiation Exposure Compensation Act has paid out $2.6 billion to over 41,000 people since 1992. In March, the U.S. Justice Department projected that another 1,070 claims would be approved by the end of September.

“'Why do we have to beg to pass #RECA?' said #MaggieBilliman, whose father, a #NavajoCodeTalker during World War II, died of stomach cancer she attributes to exposure to #fallout that affected their hometown in #Arizona. 'You don’t put a price tag on human life.'

"Starting with the #ManhattanProject’s Trinity test on July 16, 1945, weeks before bombs destroyed #Hiroshima and #Nagasaki, the U.S. government conducted 94 tests that produced radioactive mushroom clouds in remote areas of the West. Most were over #Nevada. One was over #NewMexico.

"People #downwind – including many in #Arizona – were exposed to dangerous #fallout, typically without warning.

"The Billimans’ hometown, #SawmillArizona, on #NavajoLand, is part of the large affected area where Congress made residents eligible for compensation.

"#Radioactive particles fell throughout Arizona, according to research from Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security. The state’s population grew from about half a million just before World War II to over 1.3 million in the early 1960s.

"Congress adopted RECA in 1992 to address claims from downwinders and uranium miners.

"The program offers an apology, and lump sum compensation ranging from $50,000 to $100,000 to those who developed certain illnesses linked with radiation exposure, and who either lived in the #FalloutZones or worked at #UraniumMines and #UraniumMills.

"The law came in response to lawsuits from uranium workers who accused the government of failing to warn them about radiation hazards.

From 1944 to 1986, nearly 30 million tons of uranium ore was extracted from Navajo lands. The Manhattan Project itself, led by physicist #RobertOppenheimer, was disbanded in 1947, two years after Japan surrendered to end World War II.

"An estimated 3,000 to 5,000 Navajo people worked in the mines. They and their families lived nearby.

“'The closer you live to mine waste, the higher your risk of chronic #metabolic disease,' said Chris Shuey, director of the Uranium Impact Assessment Program at the Southwest Research and Information Center, a nonprofit research and advocacy group. 'People who live in these communities next to these wastes, they’re exposed through all of the pathways: air, water, land.'

"Claims from Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and #Colorado account for $1.8 billion of the payouts under RECA.

"Most of the #NavajoNation was covered due to potential fallout. About one in seven approved claims – 5,480 through the end of 2023 – have come from #NativeAmericans, 86% of them Navajo, totalling $372.6 million.

"The Environmental Protection Agency counts 523 abandoned uranium mines on or near the Navajo reservation that spans Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, an area bigger than Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont combined.

"The Senate voted 69-31 in March to extend the RECA filing period for five more years, with 46 Democrats and 20 Republicans in favor, along with Sen. #KrystenSinema of Arizona and two other independents. Sen. #MarkKelly, D-Ariz., also supported the bill.

The bill has stalled in the House, with no explanation from Speaker Mike Johnson or Majority Leader Steve Scalise, both Republicans from Louisiana.

"Their aides did not respond to multiple requests for comment."

Read more:
https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2024/07/05/navajo-uranium-miners-people-downwind-atom-bomb-tests-demand-justice/

#Downwinders #NoNukes #NoWar #BanTheBomb #NoUraniumMining #NuclearWar #NuclearWeapons #ICANN #Oppenheimer #HaulNo #InformedConsent #EnvironmentalRacism #WaterIsLife

Atomspion Klaus Fuchs in Dresden 🕵️

Klaus Fuchs, der Mann, der den Bau der Atombombe an die Sowjetunion verrietm, ging als "Atomspion" in die Geschichte ein. Im Film #Oppenheimer taucht er als Nebenrolle auf. Seine Personalakte im Archiv der #TUDresden zeigt, wie der Forscher in der #DDR rasch Karriere machte. Der MDR hat Fuchs' Geschichte rekonstruiert.

Zum Artikel ➡️ https://www.mdr.de/geschichte/ddr/kalter-krieg/oppenheimer-oscar-sieger-klaus-fuchs-atom-spion-100.html

Still buzzing about #Oppenheimer after their big Oscar win(s) this weekend? We've got you covered.

Dive into this 1963 episode of “Exploring the Universe,” featuring Dr. #RobertOppenheimer and Dr. I. I. Rabi (portrayed in the film by Cillian Murphy and David Krumholtz). They discuss their first introduction to #science and the societal impact of developing the #AtomicBomb at #LosAlamos.

Watch the full program: https://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-75-0966t2cn

#Oscars #Oscars2024 #AcademyAwards #archive #PublicMedia

#BBCNews - The other #Oppenheimer story that won't win Oscars
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68515779