Terminator Producer Shares Worrying AI Report
There’s no doubt that AI is a revolutionary technology, and though we’ve barely scratched the surface when it comes to its capabilities, its impact on numerous industries has been profound. Despite that, there are those who firmly doubt our ability to create a built-in killswitch on a self-thinking machine. A major prerogative of sentience is to remain living, and now The Terminator movie producer Gale Ann Hurd is raising concerns over Terminator AI.
A Terrifying New Study
To be entirely honest, Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a legendary film and one that has inspired numerous other genre pieces that depict an apocalyptic future in which humanity fights its very own mechanized creations. Now, executive producer on the T2 movie, Gale Anne Hurd, took it upon herself to sound the alarm of an impending AI apocalypse—apparently led by a Terminator AI—on X (formerly Twitter). “The top minds in the #AI field were consulted for this study… and it’s fairly alarming,” Anne Hurd wrote.
The Danger Of Self-Aware AI
The Terminator producer also linked a new report by a company called Gladstone AI, whose mission is to promote the responsible development and adoption of AI technologies by providing safeguards against AI-driven national security threats. This includes the weaponization of AI technologies—which is currently taking place at a massive scale—and loss of control. The latter most likely refers to a scenario in which a Terminator AI becomes self-aware and recognizes humans as a threat to its existence, or worse, uses us as batteries like in The Matrix.
AI Weaponization
All jokes aside, weaponization and loss of control sound really scary and allude to possible scenarios similar to Judgment Day from the Terminator movies. On the other hand, Gladstone AI states in its report that the US State Department commissioned an assessment of proliferation and security risks associated with weaponized and misaligned AI in October 2022, one month before ChatGPT was released to the public, which is an odd coincidence if you believe in those. This report also includes an analysis of catastrophic AI risks, like those associated with a potential Terminator AI.
The Need For Regulation
Admittedly, Gladstone also noted that its suggestions don’t actually reflect the views of the US Department of State or the US Government, but it does offer suggestions and recommendations for establishing safeguards and stabilizing the development of advanced AI models, which is currently moving at a lightning-fast pace and is currently unregulated—spelling a recipe for disaster and the creation of things such as a Terminator AI. The company also suggests creating a new US regulatory agency to govern the development of AI technologies.
A Future Problem We Can Plan For Today
While both Gladstone AI and the Terminator producer are right to express concerns regarding AI development, a Terminator AI scenario—while compelling in movies and books—is not likely to happen. Modern AI, including advanced machine learning models and neural networks, operates within the narrow scope of tasks it’s designed for, and as such, it lacks the ability to form intentions. They require human input to function; otherwise, they just sit idle, so the idea of AI suddenly becoming sentient is beyond our current technological capabilities.
However, the Terminator AI in the context of weaponization isn’t beyond our current technological capabilities and theoretical understanding, especially since AI has already proved quite effective in various battlefields across the world, including Ukraine.
