In 1942, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the son of a painter and a textile importer, was appointed to lead Project Y, the military effort established by the Manhattan Project to develop nuclear weapons. Oppenheimer and his colleagues worked in secret at a remote laboratory in New Mexico to discover methods for purifying uranium and ultimately to design and build working atomic bombs. He had a bias toward action and inquiry. “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it,” he told a government panel that would later assess his fitness to remain privy to U.S. secrets. “And you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.” His security clearance was revoked shortly after his testimony, effectively ending his career in public service. Oppenheimer’s feelings about his role in conjuring the most destructive weapon of the age would shift after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Full opinion : Alexander Karp of Palantir on A.I. Weapons Development.
