James Cameron weighs in on the dangers of AI: ‘I warned you in 1984’

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When it comes to artificial intelligence and the dangers it could pose to humanity, Terminator filmmaker James Cameron doesn’t want to say, “I told you so.” But after taking a look at AI’s quickly emerging capabilities, the Oscar winner is basically saying, “See, I was right.”

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“I warned you guys in 1984, and you didn’t listen,” he told CTV News Chief Political Correspondent Vassy Kapelos about the looming threats of AI.

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In The Terminator, Cameron cast Arnold Schwarzenegger as a cyborg assassin who is sent back in time to kill the woman who will give birth to the human resistance warrior who, in the future, leads an uprising against a sentient machine guided by artificial intelligence.

Cameron doesn’t think AI will lead to our demise anytime soon, but said the “weaponization” of technology poses a threat to humanity.

“You got to follow the money,” he said. “Who’s building these things? They’re either building it to dominate marketing shares, so you’re teaching it greed, or you’re building it for defensive purposes, so you’re teaching it paranoia. I think the weaponization of AI is the biggest danger.”

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Cameron continued, “I think that we will get into the equivalent of a nuclear arms race with AI, and if we don’t build it, the other guys are for sure going to build it, and so then it’ll escalate … You could imagine an AI in a combat theatre, the whole thing just being fought by the computers at a speed humans can no longer intercede, and you have no ability to deescalate.”

In a 2019 interview with Postmedia, Cameron predicted a “never-ending conflict between humans and artificial intelligence … will take place.”

“Whether that’s a smooth transition or whether that’s a rocky one or whether there’s an apocalypse, remains to be seen but I don’t think people are taking it as seriously as they should,” he said. “If you talk to any AI researcher, they all say it’s pretty inevitable that they’ll be able to develop an artificial intelligence equal to ours or even greater. And I don’t think that there’s enough adult supervision for what they’re doing. That’s speaking as a science-fiction writer, that’s speaking as a filmmaker and that’s speaking as a father of five. This is a potential existential threat.”

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He added, “When I dealt with AI back in 1984, it was pure fantasy and certainly on the outer bounds of science fiction. Now, these things are being discussed fairly openly and are an imminent reality.”

But with AI a central issue in the ongoing actors and writers strike, Cameron is less worried about the technology being used to craft screenplays.

“I just don’t personally believe that a disembodied mind that’s just regurgitating what other embodied minds have said — about the life that they’ve had, about love, about lying, about fear, about mortality … [is] something that’s going to move an audience,” he told Kapelos.

This week, Google announced it was testing an AI product that can produce news stories, pitching the program to news organizations including the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal’s owner, News Corp.

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According to the Times, the tool, known internally as Genesis, can take in information — distilling current events and story points — and generate a news article.

Jenn Crider, a Google spokeswoman, tried to allay fears that the program will eventually replace reporters, saying in a statement that Genesis is designed to help journalists.

“Quite simply, these tools are not intended to, and cannot, replace the essential role journalists have in reporting, creating and fact-checking their articles,” she said.

For his part, Cameron would never be interested in directing a film written by artificial intelligence, but he did tell Kapelos that there could come a day when a story crafted by a machine could move an audience.

“Let’s wait 20 years, and if an AI wins an Oscar for Best Screenplay, I think we’ve got to take them seriously,” he said.

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Twitter: @markhdaniell

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