The potential dangers of artificial Intelligence have become a hot news topic in recent years and are a key component of the current writer’s and actor’s strikes gripping the film and TV industry.
Throughout the discussion of the topic, there’s been plenty of comparisons to use of A.I. in cinema. Ib particular, it’s James Cameron’s “The Terminator” franchise and its A.I. villain ‘Skynet’ that often gets cited.
Now the Oscar-winning “Titanic” and “Avatar” filmmaker has weighed in on the topic in an interview with CTV News and says quite succinctly: “I warned you guys in 1984, and you didn’t listen.”
Cameron says the dangers of A.I. are very real and need to be regulated, especially in regard to its potential destructive capabilities:
“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.”
Funnily enough, whilst he is concerned about the dangers of weaponization of the tech, he’s far less worried about its ability to impact the filmmaking process:
“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 — and just put it all together into a word salad and then regurgitate it… I don’t believe that have something that’s going to 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.”
Cameron’s most recent film, “Avatar: The Way of Water,” is currently accessible on the Disney+ service.
