Hollywood director James Cameron warns of ‘Terminator-style apocalypse’
James Cameron has warned of the risks of using artificial intelligence inappropriately, saying it could lead to a “Terminator-style apocalypse”.
Hollywood director James Cameron has warned the misuse of artificial intelligence could lead to the kind of dystopia represented in his 1984 film, Terminator.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, the 70-year-old filmmaker warned that humanity could face extinction if it was used with inappropriate intent.
“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 defence counter-strike, all that stuff,” Cameron said.
“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.”
“The theatre 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.”
Uncertainty has been a recurring theme in ongoing conversations about the role the technology will play in the future, though experts are certain of one thing: it’s only a matter of time until AI is integrated into nuclear weapons.
Last month, at a talk at the University of Chicago for Nobel laureates, Stanford University Professor Scott Sagan said that we were entering a new world of AI that was not only influencing our daily lives, but also “influencing the nuclear world we live in”, as reported by Wired.
Similarly, Bob Latiff, a member of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board, said he believed AI will be as commonplace as electricity.
“It’s going to find its way into everything,” he said.
Where making decisions about nuclear weapons is concerned, experts maintained that ensuring human control remains front of mind is key.
Director of Global Risk at the Federation of American Scientists, Jon Wolfstal, also pointed out one major flaw with integrating artificial intelligence into nuclear weapons: nobody really understands what AI is.
“A number of people have said, ‘Well, look, all I want to do is have an interactive computer available for the President so he can figure out what (Vladimir) Putin or Xi (Jinping) will do and I can produce that data set very reliably,” he said, referring to large language models.
“I can get everything that Xi or Putin has ever said and written about anything and have a statistically high probability to reflect what Putin has said.
“I was like, ‘That’s great. How do you know Putin believes what he’s said or written?’
“It’s not that the probability is wrong, it’s just based on an assumption that can’t be tested.”
Originally published as Hollywood director James Cameron warns of ‘Terminator-style apocalypse’
