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

Terminator Director James Cameron on AI: 'I Warned You Guys in 1984 and You Didn't Listen'

Director James Cameron weighed in on the development of artificial intelligence and the potential dangers it could pose in the future, recalling his 1984 film The Terminator. In a new interview with CTV News, Cameron examined the motives of those developing this technology, questioning whether it is for profit (“training greed”) or for protection (“training paranoia”) as he acknowledged the threat AI could pose to humanity as it is introduced further improvements. “I warned you guys in 1984, but you didn’t listen,” he said. “I think weaponizing AI is the biggest danger.

I think we’re going to enter the equivalent of a nuclear arms race with AI, and if we don’t create it, other guys will probably create it, and so then it will escalate. “You can imagine AI in the theater of operations,” he added. “The computers are just fighting through it all at a speed where humans can no longer intervene, and you have no ability to de-escalate.”

Hollywood is currently thinking about how to put artificial intelligence into the hands of movie and TV creators without abandoning the craft of humans. The topic has been hotly debated in recent

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weeks as the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) and the Writers Guild of America (WAG) joined forces in a historic double strike, with both unions demanding protection from AI technology. In particular, SAG-AFTRA has advocated for protections against AI using images of actors without their consent or compensation, while the WGA has expressed concerns about AI replacing screenwriters. However, Cameron is of the opinion that technology will not replace writers anytime soon because “the question is not who wrote it, but who wrote it.” it’s a question of, is it a good story?”

“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,” he said.

As such, Cameron asserted that he “wouldn’t be interested” in AI writing stories or open to accepting an AI-produced script at the present moment, saying: “Let’s wait 20 years, and if an AI wins an Oscar for Best Screenplay, I think we’ve got to take them seriously.”

While Cameron is against using AI in the filmmaking world, it is a topic he has expressed interest in exploring further on screen. He previously said he would like to tap into the subject of AI, not just “bad robots gone crazy,” if he was to relaunch The Terminator franchise in the future. The last movie Cameron directed in the franchise was Terminator 2: Judgment Day. He had no involvement with the three sequels that followed but returned as a producer on Terminator: Dark Fate — a movie he said he was “reasonably happy” with, though he admits it

might have worked better without the original stars. Terminator: Dark Fate earned over $261 million at the worldwide box office, but with a production budget of $185 million, plus $80 million to $100 million in global marketing and distribution fees, estimations suggested the film needed to bring in close to $450 million to break even.