James Cameron Told Gates AI Makes It ‘Hard to Write Science Fiction’

Artificial intelligence is making tasks easier for some — but harder for others.

For the acclaimed film director James Cameron, AI is complicating his livelihood.

“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?” Cameron said to Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates.

The conversation was depicted in the first episode of the billionaire’s Netflix series, “What’s Next? The Future with Bill Gates,” which was released Wednesday. Gates sat down with Cameron, the acclaimed filmmaker behind “The Terminator,” “Titanic” and “Avatar,” for the episode called “What Can AI Do for Us/to Us?”

The rapid development of AI has brought about excitement about new frontiers of discovery as well as stark warnings about the risks regarding labor disruptions, misinformation, and security threats.

Some tech and business leaders have called for regulation and issued dire warnings about the nascent technology.

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Though such warnings could seem “trite,” Cameron said he’d seen this film before.

“Let me give you an example of the last great symbol of unheeded warnings: the Titanic. Steaming full speed into the night thinking, ‘We’ll just turn if we see an iceberg,’ is not a good way to sail a ship.”

Cameron, known for his science fiction chops and his own scientific exploration, has concerns about people putting their faith in machines and losing a critical sense of their own purpose, he told Gates.

“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,” Cameron said. “As we take people out of the loop, what are we replacing their sense of purpose and meaning with?”

The filmmaker behind “The Terminator” compared the phenomenon of the AI takeover to someone with early onset dementia losing their physical and mental capabilities and sense of self.

“They give up control, and what you get? You get anger. You get fear and anxiety. You get depression because you know it’s not going to get better. It’s going to be progressive,” Cameron said. “If we want AI to thrive and be channeled into productive uses, how do we alleviate that anxiety? I think that should be the challenge of the AI community right now.”

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