Director James Cameron isn’t holding back as he added to his history of speculating about the future of artificial intelligence, which plays a key role in his 1984 science-fiction classic, “The Terminator.”
Cameron, in an interview with Rolling Stone published Tuesday, explained that he sees a “danger of a Terminator-style apocalypse” should AI ever combine with weapons systems, including those at the nuclear level.
“The theater of operations is so rapid, the decision windows are so fast, it would take a superintelligence to be able to process it, and maybe we’ll be smart and keep a human in the loop,” explained Cameron, whose “Terminator” film sees the AI defense network SkyNet become sentient and take over the world.
“But humans are fallible, and there have been a lot of mistakes made that have put us right on the brink of international incidents that could have led to nuclear war. So I don’t know.”
Cameron, whose “Avatar” movies also touch on the dangers of tech, added that he thinks we’re on the “cusp in human development” with three existential threats: “climate and our overall degradation of the natural world, nuclear weapons and super-intelligence.”
“They’re all sort of manifesting and peaking at the same time,” he continued.
“Maybe the super-intelligence is the answer. I don’t know. I’m not predicting that, but it might be.”
Cameron told the magazine that he currently has a “love-hate relationship” with tech and has been leaning into teaching himself the value of generative AI so he can loop it into his “future art.”
Last year, Cameron — despite his past criticism of AI — joined the board of the generative AI company Stability AI, claiming at the time that “the intersection of generative AI and CGI image creation is the next wave.”
Earlier this year, he told the “Boz to the Future” podcast that AI could prove vital to keep blockbuster filmmaking alive by cutting production costs.
As far as using AI for creative purposes, Cameron has kept the door open to focusing on AI rather than “bad robots gone crazy” in a potential reboot to the “Terminator” franchise.
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He’s also once expressed doubts that AI could ever produce a “good story” like a human screenwriter can.
