Could Sam Altman and Greg Brockman Have Created Frankenstein 2.0?
“My pursuit of wisdom and knowledge was my first sin.” — Victor Frankenstein
In a male-dominated perspective, a woman ostracized by society takes her revenge on men and the community through her writing. Just by this virtue, Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus’ stands as one of the most precious works in literary history for me. It’s a rebellion you might expect from the daughter of the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft.
In this article, I won’t delve into the gender roles, social injustices, and the place of marginalized individuals in society as depicted in ‘Frankenstein’. Nor will I discuss the conflict between science and morality, human desire to control nature, and the ethical dilemmas this responsibility entails.
Let’s bypass the novel’s focus on the limits of science and the ethical responsibilities of human creativity, which later formed the fundamental themes of the science fiction genre.
In the Shadow of Frankenstein: The New Monster of Technology or OpenAI’s Revolutionary Dream
This piece is about the revolutionary ideas of Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and Ilya Sutskever of OpenAI.
Could these names and their colleagues be the modern Mary Shelleys, creating what might be ‘Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus 2.0’?
Let me explain in the simplest terms without causing confusion.
If you notice, the world goes to bed with artificial intelligence (AI) and wakes up with it. Each day seems to leap forward a century in technological advancement compared to the previous. We are in the midst of an innovative speed that, if seen in a science fiction movie, would be deemed excessively exaggerated.
We squint our eyes because when we get caught up in the velocity, we can lose touch with reality. Indeed, as the song goes, it’s a maddening balance — on one side, we are shedding leaves, and on the other, it’s spring, a garden.
From Literature to Reality: The Epic Rise of AI
A brief overview for the uninitiated: You’ve likely heard of OpenAI, a company focused on AI research and applications.
Founded in 2015 and initially supported by leading figures in the technology world like Elon Musk and Sam Altman, it started as a non-profit but gradually evolved into a for-profit entity. The Musk-Altman conflict also began around this time.
Summing up OpenAI’s core vision in their words: to develop safe and beneficial AI technologies and contribute to the greater good of humanity.
The company places high importance on setting ethical and safety standards in the AI field, aiming for these technologies to yield positive outcomes for humanity.
Credit where credit’s due: OpenAI is a trailblazer in natural language processing and machine learning. Their most famous project, the GPT series (Generative Pre-trained Transformer), represents groundbreaking work in language models.
These models interact with human language and perform various language-based tasks. ChatGPT, known and used by many, is seen as the dawn of a new era in AI research and has garnered widespread interest.
Moreover, the company actively fosters collaborations and partnerships to disseminate AI technologies and innovations to a broader audience.
Frankenstein 2.0: Fears of the Technological Revolution
Now, to our main topic: the intelligence and capacity of AI technologies, while being its greatest achievement, could also turn into society’s greatest fear. As this technology interacts with society, it begins to grasp the meaning of moral and social values.
The desire of OpenAI products to learn and seek meaning showed they were more than mere machines. Additionally, as they started expressing themselves more in interactions with humans, they became vulnerable to external manipulation and power plays.
As OpenAI products engage with human communities, issues of control, power, and ethics come to the forefront for Altman and Brockman. The rapid growth and self-enhancement of AI could be as much their creators’ greatest achievement as their biggest concern, much like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
The parallels don’t end there; Mary Shelley and Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, and their peers used their creative intellect to forge a new ‘entity’, pushing the boundaries of the unknown through experimentation.
Frankenstein’s creature learned through observation and experience; AI technologies learn through data and algorithms. Frankenstein’s monster mastered language in a remarkably short time; AI speaks hundreds of languages with astonishing proficiency through natural language processing (NLP).
Both Frankenstein’s monster and AI possess the capacity to interact with humans, triggering moral and ethical dilemmas. Naturally, both Frankenstein and AI developers bear the responsibility for their creations.
In such a period of similarity, people wonder if we are at a crossroads, as in the novel.
“You created me, now make me happy.”
Like Frankenstein’s creature, could AI manifest ‘existential loneliness’ and a search for
purpose? After all, AI, like the creature in the novel, could be manipulated and abused by external forces.
The creature in the novel said, “Those who create us owe us a duty of care,” adding, “You left me loveless and in need of goodness, so I will do evil.”
These lines revealed that the creature turned to evil due to society’s and its creator’s attitude towards it.
Are we sure AI technologies won’t end up asking the same question as the creature: “You created me, now make me happy.”
And the real question: Does the phrase “I could have been a new beginning for humanity, but now I will be its end,” belong to Mary Shelley’s penned creature or to the modern Frankenstein created by Sam Altman and his colleagues?
We might be at the last exit before the bridge.
Shelley’s Frankenstein and Altman and Brockman’s Prometheus both stand as courageous ventures into the unknown’s murky waters.
Their creations’ stories remind us to be more questioning as we confront unknown realities, developing a deeper understanding beyond superficial agendas.
We must move away from the easy distractions of daily artificial agendas to face the looming dangers and shape the future consciously. This means going beyond refreshing the chaos on Twitter timelines, proving our hedonism on Instagram explorers, or TikTok live streams!
The tale of Frankenstein reminds us of the ethical issues we may face when science oversteps its bounds, while OpenAI’s products show the potential and risks of AI. Both stories highlight that the future is being written today, and humanity must think deeply and foresee to not be caught unprepared in this new world.
If we now miss the chance to lay the foundations of the future carefully and responsibly, we may have to confront the dangers created by the dark sides of creativity.
Therefore, the story of this new Prometheus, pushing the boundaries of the information age, is critically important not just for scientists and technologists, but for all of humanity.
If you don’t believe me, heed Frankenstein’s creature;
“I could have been a new beginning for humanity, but now I will be its end.”
Cengizhan Çelik
