I’m optimistic—in fact, I’m excited about the future of AI.
I believe it will expand human capability, sharpen creativity, and help us solve problems that once felt immovable. I don’t share the fear that often accompanies new technology, nor do I believe we are on the brink of some inevitable 2001: A Space Odyssey–style HAL 9000 uprising. Tools are tools. They reflect the intent, care, and limits of the people who build and use them.
But optimism does not absolve responsibility.
That distinction matters more now than ever—and it’s one we’ve confronted before.
In 1954, Japanese cinema offered one of the most misunderstood technological parables of the modern era: Godzilla (Gojira).
The Godzilla Most People Forgot
Over time, Godzilla became pop spectacle: rubber suits, roaring battles, over-the-top, comical adversaries (including King Kong), cities flattened for fun. But the original Gojira was never entertainment-first. It was grief-forward. It was aftermath.
Released less than a decade after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the film does not ask us to fear a monster. It asks us to sit with the consequences of destructive power unleashed without foresight—and without accountability.
Godzilla does not act with malice. He does not scheme or desire conquest. He simply exists as a force born of human action, responding to the world that created him. The real horror of the film is not the destruction itself, but the quiet scenes that follow: hospital wards filled with the injured, families searching ruins, bureaucratic infighting, the collective weight of something that cannot be undone.
This is where the analogy to AI becomes clear—not as fear, but as responsibility.
Creation Is Not the Crisis. Misuse Is.
In Godzilla (1954), the atomic bomb tests have already happened. There is no going back. The film is not arguing for a return to innocence, because such a return is impossible. Instead, it asks a harder question:
What do we do now that this power exists?
AI occupies a similar moment.
We are well past the “should this exist?” phase. AI systems are here, improving rapidly, and being woven into work and daily life. The meaningful question is no longer whether we can build them—but how thoughtfully we choose to deploy them, constrain them, and remain accountable for their outcomes.
Misuse rarely arrives dramatically. It arrives quietly—through over-automation, through systems deployed without human oversight, through incentives that reward speed over care.
Like Godzilla’s wake, the damage is often visible only after normalization has already occurred.
The Ethics of Refusal
One of the most important figures in the film is not the monster—it’s Dr. Daisuke Serizawa (played by Akihiko Hirata).
Serizawa develops the Oxygen Destroyer, a weapon capable of killing Godzilla. But his anguish comes not from whether it works—it does—but from what its existence means. He understands that once such a tool is normalized, it will fall into wrong hands—replicated, weaponized, and stripped of ethical context—accelerating further destruction.
His ultimate decision is not an act of fear. It is an act of responsibility.
He refuses to allow power to exist without restraint.
This idea—that refusal can be ethical, not regressive—is one we rarely hear in contemporary AI discourse. We are often told that progress demands constant acceleration, that stopping is failure.
I don’t believe that.
Knowing when not to deploy a system, when to halt refinement, when to insert human judgment back into the loop—these are not signs of weakness. They are signs of ethical stewardship.
AI Needs Stewards, Not Spectators
I love working with AI (particularly ChatGPT). I use it as a creative partner to deliberately create reflections and images, and to analyze stories, films, and other creative projects. But I also design constraints. I impose stopping rules. I reject outputs that improve aesthetically while eroding meaning. I document where the tool should not be used as carefully as where it should.
That practice doesn’t limit AI’s potential—it protects it.
The future of AI will not be defined by what it can generate, but by how well humans remain present inside its use. The danger is not intelligence. The danger is abdication.
Godzilla was never the villain. The failure was never technology itself. The failure was believing that power could exist without responsibility—and that consequences could be ignored once the spectacle faded.
A Moment to Pause
Below is a brief clip from Turner Classic Movies: Godzilla (1954), “Attack on Tokyo.”
This is not the Godzilla of merchandise or memes. This is a film about consequence—about what lingers after power moves through the world.
Watch it not as a monster movie, but as a reminder.
Containment Is Not Control
We don’t need to fear AI. We need to hold it responsibly.
Containment is not suppression. Constraint is not censorship. Stopping is not failure. These are acts of authorship—choices that signal care for both the tool and the humans affected by it.
If Godzilla taught us anything, it’s that power doesn’t ask permission once it exists. Responsibility must arrive from us.
The future of AI is bright. But only if we remember that progress without stewardship is not progress at all—it’s spectacle, followed by aftermath.
And we’ve seen that movie before.
Scott Bryant 