Capability Without Wisdom

Capability without wisdom is the structural condition Mary Shelley diagnosed in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus and that the present moment in artificial intelligence reproduces with uncomfortable fidelity: the power to create a mind acquired and exercised before any corresponding wisdom about what that creation requires of its maker. Victor Frankenstein’s failure is not that he was too brilliant or too ambitious; it is that his brilliance was undisciplined—he pursued the capacity to animate life with everything he had, and the wisdom to be responsible for the result with nothing. He could, and so he did, and the question of whether he should never seriously arose until the creature was alive and it was too late. The Promethean frame that Shelley chose for her subtitle names the condition precisely: Prometheus did not steal fire because he had thought through the consequences; he stole it because he could, and the punishment was boundless. The contemporary analog is an industry in which prestige, investment, and competitive advantage flow to