Wikimedia Commons
Meta, Anthropic, Google and OpenAI are set to meet Trump administration officials on AI safety testing Leading AI developers including Meta, Anthropic, Google and OpenAI were invited to meet Trump administration officials to discuss how the most advanced AI models are tested for safety. The talks follow a June executive order outlining voluntary government tests of models' cybersecurity and hacking capabilities. The White House has not said how results would be reported or made public. Analogies The Russell–Einstein Manifesto We have to learn to think in a new way... In view of the fact that in any future world war nuclear weapons will certainly be employed, and that such weapons threaten the continued existence of mankind, we urge the governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them.
Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein and nine fellow scientists, statement issued in London, 9 July 1955 (Atomic Heritage Foundation / Nuclear Museum archive) → Summary Statement of the Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA Molecules It is this ignorance that has compelled us to conclude that it would be wise to exercise the utmost caution... it was agreed that standards of protection should be greater at the beginning and modified as assessments of the risks change.
Paul Berg, David Baltimore, Sydney Brenner, Richard O. Roblin III and Maxine F. Singer, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 72(6):1981–1984, 1975 → Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus Remember that I have power; you believe yourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched that the light of day will be hateful to you. You are my creator, but I am your master; obey!
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, first published 1818 (Project Gutenberg full text) → The Sorcerer's Apprentice ("The Pupil in Magic") Ah, he's coming! see, / Great is my dismay! / Spirits raised by me / Vainly would I lay!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Der Zauberlehrling" (1797); anonymous English translation in The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Vol. 9 (Wikisource) → Prometheus Bound Rubens paints the Titan who stole fire for humankind splayed helpless on his rock, an eagle tearing at his liver as punishment from the gods for handing mortals a power that was not theirs to give. Muscles strain, the torch of stolen knowledge already spent, the giver of a transformative technology now bound to endure the consequences of the gift. It is the promethean bargain made flesh: the very act of empowering the world with fire is inseparable from the terror and the reckoning it unleashes.
Peter Paul Rubens (with the eagle by Frans Snyders), oil on canvas, c. 1611–1618, Philadelphia Museum of Art → Prometheus: The Poem of Fire, Op. 60 Scriabin's tone poem opens on his unresolved "mystic chord," a sonority hovering outside ordinary tonality, as if to render in sound a power humanity has summoned but cannot yet master. Across the score he binds the orchestra to a keyboard of coloured light, insisting that fire, illumination and creation are one ecstatic and dangerous act. The music climbs toward a blazing, near-uncontainable climax: the myth of stolen fire recast as an intoxicating drive to create something greater and more luminous than ourselves.
Alexander Scriabin, symphonic poem for orchestra, piano, chorus and colour organ, composed 1910 (IMSLP / Petrucci Music Library score) → 
