James Cameron on AI Threat: ‘I Warned You Guys in 1984 and You Didn’t Listen’

Forum 9 months ago

James Cameron on AI Threat: ‘I Warned You Guys in 1984 and You Didn’t Listen’

Artificial Intelligence poses a major threat to Hollywood, so much so that the use of AI has been a hotly contested topic during the actors and writers’ strikes. And who better to weigh in on the AI threat than Oscar-winning filmmaker James Cameron?

What Did James Cameron Say About AI?

Cameron agrees that the AI threat is real and needs to be regulated, even joking that his 1984 film, The Terminator, should serve as a cautionary tale about the power of artificial intelligence.

“I warned you guys in 1984,” Cameron said in an interview with CTV News. “And you didn’t listen.”

However, Cameron views the materialization of AI as 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,” Cameron said.

While acknowledging the weaponization of AI, Cameron does not think this technology is at the profound level of human authors when it comes to scriptwriting. According to Cameron, whoever writes the story is still less important than if the story is good.

“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,” Cameron said.

“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 added.