Director James Cameron has spoken about screenplays written by AI – and on the threat of AI more generally. And he does say he warned us all…
"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," Cameron told CTV News when asked about AI-written scripts. "I don’t believe that’s ever going to have something that’s going to move an audience. You have to be human to write that. I don’t know anyone that’s even thinking about having AI write a screenplay."
He also voiced concerns about AI more generally, questioning the motivation behind the developments in this area of technology. "You got to follow the money," he said. “Who’s building these things? They’re either building it to dominate marketing shares, so you’re teaching it greed, or you’re building it for defensive purposes, so you’re teaching it paranoia. I think the weaponization of AI is the biggest danger."
Cameron continued: "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… 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… I warned you guys in 1984! And you didn’t listen."
He's referring, of course, to The Terminator, his '80s sci-fi movie that stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a cyborg assassin working on behalf of Skynet, an artificial intelligence that controls Earth in a dystopian version of the future. Or, maybe more of a prediction of the future, if Cameron's right…
Cameron's next movie is Avatar 3, which is set to hit the big screen on December 19, 2025. In the meantime, check out our guide to the other best upcoming movies on the way.
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