James Cameron is one of the most successful filmmakers of recent decades and with good reason. And not only because of the awards he has won, but also because he has given life to franchises that have transcended generations; among them, Terminator. The first installments of the series —The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day— have been more than great exponents of action and science fiction cinema; After all, they continue to be a point of reference every time technological advances are presented that are reminiscent of what was seen in both films. Who has not thought of Skynet and the machine revolution when seeing certain innovations in fields such as artificial intelligence and robotics?
However, James Cameron believes that—if it existed—Skynet would not wipe out humanity with a nuclear bombardment. On the contrary, he would opt for something simpler and more accessible today: deepfakes . In a recent BBC interview, the prolific film director addressed the dangers behind technology that allows one person's face and voice to be replaced to resemble another in a video. He even acknowledged that part of the blame lies with the film industry itself , and with those who seek to permanently escape from technical limitations (him included).
“Almost everything we create seems to go wrong at some point. We're working on state-of-the-art digital effects, and our goal has been to make them more and more photorealistic. And every time we optimize them, we're essentially building a toolbox to create fake media,” said the director of Aliens, Titanic and Avatar.
And regarding deepfakes, James Cameron did not hesitate to point out their harmful potential and the consequences of their possible use on a larger scale. “Right now the tools are made for people to play with apps and they're not that great, but over time the limitations will go away. Things you see, and really think you're seeing, could be faked. This is the big problem.” that we depend on video. News cycles happen so fast, and people respond so fast, that a major incident could happen in the interval between when the deepfake appears and until it is exposed as false, “he predicted.
Deepfakes could be the gateway to a real Skynet, according to James Cameron
As we said at the beginning, we live in a time of constant advances when it comes to artificial intelligence and machine learning. And although today it seems that we are still far from reaching the point of global danger in the style of Skynet, James Cameron believes that we should not be overconfident.
We should all be skeptical of new technologies. All the technological advances that have been created so far have been weaponized. I say this all the time to AI scientists; and they always say no, that they have it under control, that they give it the right targets. But who decides what those goals are? Those who finance research, which are large corporations or the Ministry of Defense. This means that these new sentient entities will be taught to be greedy or murderous.
James Cameron, on artificial intelligence How would deepfakes and Skynet be related, then? The director of the first two installments of Terminator believes that if Skynet existed and wanted to eliminate the human race, we would not see missiles flying through the sky. James Cameron assures that AI would take advantage of the current global panorama to pit people against each other, feeding misinformation and conspiracy theorists.
If Skynet wanted to take over and take us out, it would look a lot like what's going on right now. You wouldn't have to annihilate the entire biosphere and environment with nuclear weapons to do that. It would be much easier and require less energy to turn our minds against ourselves. All Skynet would have to do is deepfake a few people, pit them against each other, instigate them, and just run this giant fake on humanity
James Cameron on how he thinks Skynet would act in real life A weapon double edged James Cameron's statements could be considered a double-edged sword. Although during the interview the filmmaker also emphasizes the need to use reliable data sources and combat misinformation and conspiracies, there is also the feeling that his statements about technological advances lack nuance; because he seems to consider that everything is white or black, and that there is no place for grays. This could be as dangerous as paranoia and denial, since it would feed a single vision of the future for developments that are still in very early stages.
