James Cameron Believes AI Can Spark a ‘Nuclear Arms Race’ But Can’t Churn Out a Good Movie Script: ‘I Warned You Guys in 1984’
Director James Cameron said his 1984 film The Terminator is closer to reality than ever before and shared his fears for the dangers AI could bring mankind.
In an exclusive interview with CTV News, Cameron sat down to talk largely about deep sea exploration but just before the interview ended CTV News Chief Political Correspondent Vassy Kapelos had one pivotal question about AI technology.
“You created a movie a few decades ago that at the time seemed, Terminator, seemed like a fantasy. Now most people who are the so-called godfathers of AI say it’s not so much a fantasy, that in fact, there could be a risk to the extinction of humanity. Do you share their concern about that risk?” Kapelos said.
“No. I absolutely share their concern of you know, ‘I warned you guys in 1984 but you didn’t listen,'” Cameron said.
“You’ve gotta follow the money. Who’s building these things, right? They’re either building it to dominate market shares. So what are you 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. 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 gonna build it,” he added.
“You could imagine an AI in a combat theater, the whole thing just being fought by the computers at a speed that humans can no longer intercede. You have no ability to deescalate…” Cameron said.
Kapelos asked about the use of AI to write feature films and television shows, a factor that many who are currently picketing for fair wages as part of the Hollywood writers strike are concerned about.
“Would you ever create a movie that’s written all by AI or acted only with actors created by AI?” Kapelos asked.
“…I certainly wouldn’t be interested in having an AI write a script for me, unless they were really good, you know?” Cameron said. “Let’s wait 20 years if an AI wins an Oscar for best screenplay, I think we’ve gotta take them seriously.”
Cameron elaborated that it doesn’t matter who writes a script as long as it’s a good story.
“I personally don’t believe sitting here that a disembodied mind that’s just regurgitating what other embodied minds have said about the life that they’ve had, about love, about longing, about fear, about mortality, what they’ve said, and just put it all together into a word salad and then regurgitate it, you know, like what they call a stochastic parrot. I don’t believe that’s ever going to have something that’s going to move an audience,” Cameron said.
Watch above via CTV News on YouTube.
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