James Cameron warns of a “Terminator”-style AI apocalypse if AI gets mixed with weapons. The legendary director, promoting his new book Ghosts of Hiroshima, told Rolling Stone AI-driven arms races risk global disaster.
Cameron stressed the danger of AI controlling nuclear or defense systems, where decisions must happen fast. He doubts keeping humans in control will stop near-catastrophes.
“I do think there’s still a danger of a ‘Terminator’-style apocalypse where you put AI together with weapons systems, even up to the level of nuclear weapon systems, nuclear defense counterstrike, all that stuff,” Cameron said.
“Because the theater of operations is so rapid, the decision windows are so fast, it would take a super-intelligence to be able to process it, and maybe we’ll be smart and keep a human in the loop. 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.”
He named three existential risks on the rise simultaneously: climate change, nuclear weapons, and super-intelligence.
“I feel like we’re at this cusp in human development where you’ve got the three existential threats: climate and our overall degradation of the natural world, nuclear weapons, and super-intelligence,” he added.
“They’re all sort of manifesting and peaking at the same time. Maybe the super-intelligence is the answer. I don’t know. I’m not predicting that, but it might be.”
Hollywood’s relationship with AI remains cautious. Cameron doubts AI will replace screenwriters anytime soon. He said in a 2023 CTV News interview that AI can’t capture human emotions and experiences.
“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’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.”
But Cameron is betting on AI to cut costs in blockbuster filmmaking. He joined Stability AI’s board this September. On the “Boz to the Future” podcast, he said AI could halve VFX costs by speeding up production, not firing artists.
“If we want to continue to see the kinds of movies that I’ve always loved and that I like to make and that I will go to see — ‘Dune,’ ‘Dune: Part Two,’ or one of my films or big effects-heavy, CG-heavy films — we’ve got to figure out how to cut the cost in half,” Cameron said.
“Now that’s not about laying off half the staff and at the effects company. That’s about doubling their speed to completion on a given shot, so your cadence is faster and your throughput cycle is faster, and artists get to move on and do other cool things and then other cool things, right? That’s my sort of vision for that.”
Read more at Rolling Stone.
