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James Cameron on Dangers of AI 40 Years After 'Terminator': 'I Warned You Guys...and You Didn't Listen'
"I think the weaponization of AI is the biggest danger," the director said inBy Jen Juneau
Published on July 19, 2023 03:52PM EDT
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James Cameron in London on Dec. 6, 2022; The Terminator(1984). PHOTO:
KARWAI TANG/WIREIMAGE, PHOTO BY ORION/KOBAL/SHUTTERSTOCK
James Cameron is reflecting on a famous project he made nearly 40 years ago that he believes was a warning for what's happening today.
The Academy Award–winning director, 68, said in a recent interview with CTV News about his views on the ongoing debate about artificial intelligence, which is a large cornerstone of SAG-AFTRA's recently announced strike against Hollywood studios.
During the conversation, Cameron referenced his 1984 film The Terminator, which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger as a cyborg assassin.
“I warned you guys in 1984, and you didn't listen,” Cameron told CTV News.
Saying he "absolutely share(s) the concern" about AI potentially going too far, Cameron told CTV news, "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 going to build it, and so then it'll escalate," said the Avatar and Titanic director. "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."
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James Cameron. MATT WINKELMEYER/GETTY
In a press conference announcing the union's intention to strike against the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers), SAG-AFTRA's national executive director and chief negotiator, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, said in part: "This 'groundbreaking' AI proposal that they gave us yesterday, they proposed that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get one day’s pay, and their companies should own that scan, their image, their likeness and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity on any project they want, with no consent and no compensation."
In a statement ahead of the union's decision, the AMPTP said their offer to SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) included "a groundbreaking AI proposal that protects actors' digital likenesses."
According to Reuters, the AMPTP doubled down after the SAG-AFTRA press conference by stating that the union's claim is false: "[Studios] said the current proposal would restrict the use of the digital replica to the motion picture for which the background actor is employed. Any other use would require that actor’s consent and bargaining for the use, subject to a minimum payment."
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Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator(1984).
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Schwarzenegger, 75, recently spoke about Cameron, praising him for predicting the future of artificial intelligence in the Terminator films that Schwarzenegger said has now "become a reality."
“Today, everyone is frightened of it, of where this is gonna go," the actor said of current concerns around AI, during An Evening with Arnold Schwarzenegger in Los Angeles last month. "And in this movie, in Terminator, we talk about the machines becoming self-aware and they take over."
Schwarzenegger celebrated the "brilliance of writing" in Cameron's sci-fi film, given that "at that time we [had] scratched the surface of AI, artificial intelligence. Think about that.”
“Now over the course of decades, it has become a reality. So it's not any more fantasy or kind of futuristic. It is here today. And so this is the extraordinary writing of Jim Cameron,” Schwarzenegger added.
