Austrian-born actor Arnold Schwarzenegger poses for photographers at the premiere of the movie “Terminator Genisys” in front of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France, Friday, June 19, 2015 . (AP Photo/Jacques Brinon)
Terminator actor and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently claimed that the artificial intelligence (AI) in the movie “Terminator” is “real”. AI has come a long way, but it’s not Skynet (his fictional AI movie villain in The Terminator).
In The Terminator, a self-aware AI decides to exterminate humanity. Humanoid execution robots and drones fly overhead on Earth after “Judgment Day”, and they are all trying to exterminate the human race. Luckily, modern America is nothing like the Terminator movie.
Instead, AI could improve medicine, treatment, and dentistry, aid education, help find missing children, fight forced labor, improve 911 response times, prevent cyberbullying, and help people with paralysis walk. , the prevention of suicide, the development of new drugs, and the prevention of cyberattacks. It helps you change tires faster and get orders through your drive-thru. It can also detect diseases early, teach students to code, and improve dating. None of these applications look anything like Skynet from “Terminator”. Also, some applications have the goal of competing against the “Terminator” fictional AI.
AI is not a threat to humanity, but people in Hollywood may need to be more concerned. AI technology is very effective in storytelling (questioning the truth can also generate fiction) and television and film production. Big actors like Schwarzenegger have little to fear because their names draw audiences in. But could the next big name be an AI-generated avatar? You can imagine what benefits it would bring to
In fact, the recent “Terminator” movie deepfake that inserted Sylvester Stallone in place of Schwarzenegger shows how this can now be done. Studios can hire unknown actors to play key roles, then use the same technology to replace them with personas they build and own the rights to over time. Andrew Niccol predicted just this in the 2002 movie S1m0ne. In this film, Al Pacino played a director who lost the film’s star and replaced it with a computer-generated star. And this is not far from reality. Instagram influencer Lil Miquela, who was on his 2018 list of the internet’s most influential people, was also computer-generated.
The Screen Actors Guild has postponed a planned strike by a week and a half, but just as screenwriters’ strikes are fueling interest in AI scripts, strikes like this encourage studios to experiment more with AI actors. It could be the trigger you need. The risk of authors and actors discouraging the use of AI is so great that a new deal could deter its use to some extent. But in the long run, the benefits of having AI write and act are great. Shows can become more interactive, with viewers playing roles and making key decisions, and AI writers and AI animators and actors generating content accordingly.
It would be unwise for film and television studios not to adopt AI content generation. Video game developers who are less bound by SAG or WGA contracts may find that they can produce similar content for similar audiences. A recent change in the credit format used by Warner Bros. Max Service suggests this may be at least part of the studio’s plans. That’s likely because the company now calls everyone involved in the production of a show a creator rather than a separate role. It doesn’t really matter as the AI does a lot of the work.
Given this, it’s no surprise that some in the entertainment industry are trying to fan the fear of AI. But we shouldn’t be afraid of AI.
Studios are well-positioned to join studios in medical, music, automotive, construction, accounting, hospitality, agriculture, education, and many other industries that are using or preparing to use AI. I guess. Government regulation of technological development and quasi-regulation of industry by contract only promotes the interests of those not bound by them, and only delays humanity’s access to those interests.
Jeremy Straub is Director of the Institute for Cybersecurity Education and Research at North Dakota State University.
