Green Goblin, the Hasty Transhumanist – Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

“The product is certified ready for human testing.” I’m not quoting Elon Musk in relation to Neuralink. That’s the line from the fictional Norman Osborn in Sam Raimi’s original Spider-Manmovie, starring Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, and the green maniac himself, Willem Dafoe. I’ve seen this movie dozens of times, so maybe it’s due to the weird fact that twenty-plus years after this film hit the scene, we now live in a world where big science organizations like Osborn’s Oscorp seem to be dealing with similar conflicts that ultimately produced the iconic Green Goblin.

Not that Elon Musk or Sam Altman are going to start flying around on saucers and terrorize New York City. But they are eager to rush new technologies down the pipeline. Are they trying to move too fast and with too little foresight?

Osborn must show the military that his laboratory’s human performance enhancement drug is successful and can be trusted. A botched test notwithstanding, Osborn has his lead expert, Dr. Stromm, apply the dosage to himself, or he’ll lose his big deal with the military.

If you’ve seen the movie, you know what happens next. Osborn gets the bad batch of enhancers. His heart stops briefly after the trial, but Dr. Stromm resuscitates him, only to get hurled through a glass wall and murdered by the Jekyll-like creature Osborn has turned himself into.

One might credit Osborn with ambition. “40,000 years of evolution and we’ve barely even tapped the vastness of human potential,” he broods before the trial. He wants to show the military and the world that he’s taking them to the next level of human civilization. The strength, agility, and enhanced cognition enabled by this special drug will allow us frail mortal beings to become gods. Also, Osborn’s livelihood and ego is on the line. If this doesn’t work, his funding gets slashed. It could mean the end of everything he’s worked for. His idealism and his income is at stake. So, he rushes the scientific process against the recommendation of Dr. Stromm. He skips prudence and reaps chaos.

The Green Goblin emerges as the powerful but unhinged result of the enhancement drug. And Osborn loses Oscorp anyway to a board vote. Now he’s on a warpath of revenge, hindered only by Spider-Man, the nerdy kid from Queens who undergoes his own enhancement from a spider bite the same night of Osborn’s unfortunate night at the lab. Both are powerful, both are brilliant minds. The difference is, Peter Parker is curious about the world. He doesn’t want to control it or supersede it. That’s actually why he can be trusted with superhuman power. In addition, he has the grounding wisdom from his Uncle Ben: “With great power comes great responsibility.” The phrase is overused to the point of cliche, but it’s the one we need today. Spider-Man uses his power to save people. Green Goblin, the wounded idealist, the hasty transhumanist, uses it to blow up the city. Spider-Man later has to resist the allure of power gone mad when the parasite Venom comes to visit.

For us, though, if haste and folly rule today’s labs of progress, watch out. The goblins might start showing up.

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Green Goblin, the Hasty Transhumanist - Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence