James Cameron: Weaponization of AI is the biggest danger

Director James Cameron
| Photo Credit: AP

Talking about AI and its continued rapid growth, director James Cameron made a call back to his 1984 sci-fi action film The Terminator, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. “I warned you guys in 1984, and you didn’t listen,” he told CTV News.

Cameron’s The Terminator was about a cyborg assassin Terminator, and Skynet, an artificially intelligent defense network that has become sentient. “I think the weaponization of AI is the biggest danger,” he said. “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,” Cameron is quoted in a report from Deadline.

ALSO READ:James Cameron denies working on Titanic submersible disaster movie

The filmmaker feels AI won’t replace writers anytime soon. “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 have 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,” he added.