Bret Stephens Sept. 15, 2026. Creators who anguish over their creations are nothing new: Alfred Nobel and dynamite, J. Robert Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb, Tim Berners-Lee and the Web. Now it’s the turn of A.I. parents. Jacob Coxon, a 27-year-old Anthropic researcher, resigned, warning A.I. companies were “gambling with our lives.” Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s CEO, warned A.I. agents could take over the internet within a year, costing hundreds of billions. Elon Musk and Sam Altman endorsed the letter. President Donald Trump called safety concerns a “hoax,” while Nvidia’s Jensen Huang dismissed Coxon’s warnings as “not grounded in science.”

Two questions remain: Is A.I. a disrupter or a destroyer? If destroyer, what kind? Most saw A.I. like steam engines or PCs. Stanford notes no negative impact on job postings; employment grew 10% after adoption. But what if disruption is inadequate? What if it’s like splitting the atom? Obama paused gain-of-function research; Truman created the Atomic Energy Commission. Both instructive but imperfect.