2023-07-18 21:57:11
This content is a translation of a article by CTV News.
Cameron, who has won critical acclaim for such films as Titanic and Avatar, was in Ottawa on Tuesday to launch a Canadian geographic exhibit about his exploits in underwater exploration. He also directed and co-wrote the 1984 sci-fi action film Terminator, which is about a cyborg assassin, and was asked by CTV News about his thoughts on recent predictions about the future of the artificial intelligence (AI).
Many of the so-called founding fathers of AI have recently issued warnings about the need to regulate this rapidly advancing technology before it poses a greater threat to humanity.
“I absolutely share their concern,” Cameron told CTV News Chief Political Correspondent Vassy Kapelos in an exclusive interview ahead of a chat with his longtime mentor, Dr. Joe MacInnis, on Tuesday.
“I warned you in 1984 and you didn’t listen.”
– Filmmaker James Cameron on AI
Cameron finds it important to assess who is developing the technology, and whether it is for profit – either “teaching greed” – or in self-defence, which he calls “teaching paranoia”.
“I think the weaponization of AI is the biggest danger,” he said.
“I think we’re going to get into the equivalent of a nuclear arms race with AI, and if we don’t build it, the others for sure will, and then it will escalate. One could imagine an AI on a battlefield, where everything would be completely controlled by computers at a speed at which humans could no longer intervene, and where there would be no possibility of defusing the situation.
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AI and strikes by screenwriters and actors in Hollywood
The use of AI and the need to regulate it have also been points of contention during the ongoing strikes by screenwriters and actors in the United States.
About 160,000 actors and other media professionals who are members of the SAG-AFTRA union are on strike. They join the more than 11,000 members of the Writers Guild of America, who have been on strike since the beginning of May, on the picket line.
Unions argue that artists need protections against their image and art being used by AI technology without their consent, and screenwriters say studios shouldn’t be allowed to replace them with the AI to write scripts.
“If we don’t stand up now, we’re all going to be in trouble,” SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher told reporters last week. “We will all be in danger of being replaced by machines.”
On Tuesday, Cameron said he doesn’t think technology is already at the level of replacing screenwriters, mostly because “it’s never a question of who wrote it, it’s a question of whether it’s is a good story”.
“I just don’t believe, personally, that a bodiless spirit that just regurgitates what other incarnated spirits have said about the life they’ve lived, about love, about lying, about fear, about mortality, and putting it all together in a salad of words and then regurgitating it again.[…] can move an audience,” he said.
Cameron said that while he’s “definitely not interested” in the idea of AI writing his scripts, time will tell what impact that will have on the industry.
“Let’s wait 20 years, and if an AI wins an Oscar for best screenplay, I think we’ll have to take it seriously,” he said, when asked if he was open to the possibility of accept a scenario produced by the AI.
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