James Cameron won’t be using AI to write his scripts any time soon: ‘I warned you in 1984 and you didn’t listen’

In James Cameron’s 1984 film “The Terminator,” a seemingly unstoppable cyborg is sent from 2029 to 1984 to assassinate a woman whose unborn son will eventually save humanity from AI’s conquest.

As tech developers caution the public that the rapidly advancing technology must be regulated, Cameron said in a recent interview with CTV News that advancements in AI pose a serious risk to humanity.

“I absolutely share their concern,” Cameron told CTV News Chief Political Correspondent Vassy Kapelos on Tuesday.

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“I warned you guys in 1984 and you didn’t listen,” he said.

Both SAG-AFTRA and the WGA have expressed concerns in their negotiations with Hollywood studios about the unregulated use of AI in entertainment. Actors argue that they need protections against the use of their voices and likenesses without their consent or compensation, and writers say studios shouldn’t be allowed to replace them with AI.

“We demand respect! You cannot exist without us!” SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher said in an impassioned speech at the union’s headquarters in Los Angeles last week.

But Cameron isn’t particularly worried about AI replacing the more than 11,000 Hollywood writers or 160,000-plus actors currently on strike.

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“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. ... 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,” Cameron said.

“Let’s wait 20 years, and if an AI wins an Oscar for best screenplay, I think we’ve got to take them seriously,” he added.

Instead, Cameron warned that, depending on who is developing new AI and for what purpose, we may be close to the “equivalent of a nuclear arms race with AI.”

The weaponization of AI, he said, may escalate international conflict to a place of no return— to a post-apocalyptic future that rivals that of “The Terminator.”