[Lekooks] Oppenheimer

[Michael McNett]

Lois and I went to see it Friday.  It's a great movie!

I was a chemistry major in college, and quantum mechanics was a required course.  It was very interesting to see the founders of it and their moral dilemmas associated with having it become the basis for a weapon of mass destruction.
I can easily see the same thing happening with AI.  But it's much harder to contain AI in a missile silo or massive reactor; it's vastly more insidious.  And you don't have to be capable of mining uranium; anybody with adequate computer training can create it and unleash it.  And, once unleashed, it can create infinite numbers of copies of itself.  It scares the hell out of me!
Namaste,Mike


Nehru to Gandhi, on his deathbed: "Mahatma, in your lifetime, you have turned the world utterly upside down. How must that feel??" 

Gandhi: "Yes, I turned the world upside down. I stood on my head."
 

    On Sunday, July 30, 2023 at 06:57:19 AM CDT, Gerald Flakas via Lekooks <lekooks at lekook.org> wrote:  
 
  Haven't seen "All Quiet...", understand the Nazis censored it in the '30s as it didn't follow the Party Line.
    On Saturday, July 29, 2023 at 10:17:51 AM CDT, mhbera <mhbera at wauknet.com> wrote:  
 
  
Mike and his friend want to see it also, as our friend is a physics teacher in the high schools.   Me, well, I am just now watching " All quiet on the Western Front" that came out maybe a couple of years ago.  Hard for me to watch in its entirety.  Doing little bits at a time, and then go and do something else...... Helen
 
 ---- Original Message ----
 From: "Gerald Flakas via Lekooks" <lekooks at lekook.org>
 Sent: 7/29/2023 7:39:39 AM
 To: "Stephanie Tsoris via Lekooks" <lekooks at lekook.org>, "James Kishline" <jlkishline at yahoo.com>
 Subject: Re: [Lekooks] Oppenheimer
 
 
    The movie was very interesting to me because I remember the "modern physics" courses I took at the UW in the '60s, and remember the pantheon of pioneering physicists from the 20th century such as Heisenberg, Bohr, Fermi, Teller, and of course Einstein, who played important roles in the movie. Those were heady times for scientists like Oppenheimer making new discoveries and inventions. And the '30s were turbulent times with the rise of fascism and communism, and many intellectuals sided with the communists without realizing the horrors of Stalin. The movie's portrayal of the Trinity bomb blast was a wakeup to the horror of what they created; like Frankenstein, they created a monster with the power to destroy its creator and all the rest of us. Then I remember the McCarthy-era congessional hearings about Oppenheimer, with him being demonized for his associations with communists before the War. My Grandma was a McCarthy supporter and thought Oppenheimer was a "Jew Commie" - she was a borderline Nazi, and would be horrified to learn how liberal her grandson has become! All in all I think this is a powerful movie that should scare the hell out of us. Gerry         On Friday, July 28, 2023 at 07:56:30 PM CDT, James Kishline via Lekooks <lekooks at lekook.org> wrote:       Definitely a film to talk about after you see it and maybe see it again because there is so much packed into it. There are also some documentaries that talk about this event and the background of Oppenheimer and how is story unfolded. Compassion as we don’t always understand the full effects of our choices till afterward.   Sent from my iPhone   > On Jul 27, 2023, at 4:24 PM, Stephanie Tsoris via Lekooks <lekooks at lekook.org> wrote: >      _______________________________________________ Lekooks mailing list Lekooks at lekook.org http://lekook.org/mailman/listinfo/lekooks_lekook.org      _______________________________________________
Lekooks mailing list
Lekooks at lekook.org
http://lekook.org/mailman/listinfo/lekooks_lekook.org
  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lekook.org/pipermail/lekooks_lekook.org/attachments/20230730/99cf852e/attachment.htm>