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The Terminator: How James Cameron's 'science-fiction slasher film' predicted AI fears, 40 years ago
Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, the 1984 blockbuster The Terminator has become synonymous with the dangers of superintelligent machines. But it "helps and hinders" our understanding of AI.
In one episode of the HBO sitcom Silicon Valley, Thomas Middleditch (Richard Hendricks) is explaining his machine-learning platform Pied Piper to a focus group when one participant inevitably compares it to James Cameron's 1984 film The Terminator. "No, no, no," insists the exasperated Middleditch. "I can assure you that there is no Skynet type of situation here. No, Pied Piper will in no way become sentient and try to take over the world." Too late. He's lost the room.
With its killer robots and its rogue AI system, Skynet, The Terminator has become synonymous with the spectre of a machine intelligence that turns against its human creators. Picture editors routinely illustrate articles about AI with the chrome death's head of the film's T-800 "hunter-killer" robot. The roboticist Ronald Arkin used clips from the film in a cautionary 2013 talk called How NOT to build a Terminator.
