James Cameron says the reality of artificial general intelligence is ‘scarier’ than the fiction of it

Director James Cameron discussed artificial general intelligence.

James Cameron, the writer and director of “The Terminator,” is wary of artificial general intelligence, the still theoretical version of AI that can reason as well as humans.

In “The Terminator,” which was released in 1984, an artificial intelligence network developed by the US Defense Department gains self-awareness and ultimately turns on the human race in a nuclear attack.

It’s about as dystopian as one can imagine. Cameron said the reality might be worse.

In a virtual message about the future of AI for the Special Competitive Studies Project’s AI+Robotics Summit, Cameron says that contrary to his movies, AGI will not come from “a government-funded program.”

“It will emerge from one of the tech giants currently funding this multibillion-dollar research,” he said.

“Then you’ll be living in a world that you didn’t agree to, didn’t vote for, that you are co-inhabiting with a super-intelligent alien species that answers to the goals and rules of a corporation,” Cameron said. “An entity which has access to the comms, beliefs, everything you ever said, and the whereabouts of every person in the country via your personal data.”

Cameron said surveillance capitalism, where corporations collect consumer data and sell it for profit, can “toggle pretty quickly” into digital totalitarianism.

“At best, these tech giants become the self-appointed arbiters of human good, which is the fox guarding the hen house,” he said.

Arnold Schwarzenegger poses with a gun in the 1984 film, “The Terminator.”

“That’s a scarier scenario than what I presented in ‘The Terminator’ 40 years ago, if for no other reason than it’s no longer science fiction. It’s happening.”

Cameron said that while he’s “bullish on AI,” he’s “not so keen on AGI because AGI will just be a mirror of us.”

“Good to the extent that we are good, and evil to the extent that we are evil,” he said. “Since there is no shortage of evil in the human world, and certainly no agreement of even what good is, what could possibly go wrong?”

Although Cameron rose to fame as a Hollywood director, he’s also known for his tech ventures. He co-founded the visual effects studio Digital Domain in 1993. Cameron has gone on to incorporate advanced technology in his films, including the “Avatar” franchise.

James Cameron attended the “Avatar: The Way of Water” world premiere in December 2022.

Cameron has shared his thoughts about artificial intelligence’s potential impact on society and filmmaking several times. During an appearance on the Netflix series “What’s Next? The Future with Bill Gates,” Cameron told the Microsoft cofounder that it’s getting harder to write science fiction as AI progresses.

“It’s getting hard to write science fiction. Any idea I have today is a minimum of three years from the screen. How am I going to be relevant in three years when things are changing so rapidly?” he told Gates.

Cameron also told Gates he’s concerned people are putting more faith in machines and less into their sense of purpose.

“I think we’re going to get to a point where we’re putting our faith more and more and more in the machines without humans in the loop, and that can be problematic,” he said. “As we take people out of the loop, what are we replacing their sense of purpose and meaning with?”

However, Cameron has continued to embed himself in the AI and technology industry.

Stability AI, a generative AI company, announced that Cameron joined its board of directors in September.

“James Cameron lives in the future and waits for the rest of us to catch up,” the company’s CEO said in a press release.