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Any fan of knows this. Terminatorthe film saga that was born forty years ago, with the initial title of 1984, the direction of James Cameron and the prominence of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the almost indestructible humanoid robot that travels back in time in search of Sarah Connorthe woman who will bear John Connor, the man who in the future will lead the resistance against Skynetan artificial intelligence designed as a defense system that wants to take over the planet.
What do you know? That the August 29 is “Doomsday”the date on which, according to the plot of the film, the artificial intelligence Skynet begins its fight against the humanity that created it. But the phrase circulating on social media is, unfortunately, incorrect. It says: “I tell you that in May 1984, Karl Reese told Sara Connor that Skynet was going to wake up on August 29, 2024 at 02:14 hrs and kill three billion people… Today is the 29th and AI has already been created.”
To begin with, the date (August 29) is only mentioned in Terminator Genesis, released in 2015 with Emilia Clarke in the lead role. The phrase is spoken by the man who – like Terminator – travels back in time to meet Sarah Connor: it is Kyle Reese, John Connor’s father at the time. But Doomsday is not in 2024, but in 1997: The date is chosen based on 1984, when John Connor was conceived. It makes clear how previously they believed that general artificial intelligence (i.e. self-aware) was just a few years away.
It was a fear of the times: at the time of the film’s release (the last years of the Cold War, and five years before the fall of the Berlin Wall) the fear was, more than anything, in the growing automation of defense systemsand in the belief that one of them could decide negatively in the name of humanity. A year before Terminator was released War gameswhere the teenager played by Matthew Broderick befriends another artificial intelligence, Joshuawhich in that fateful 1983 confuses reality with a game and brings the world to the brink of total thermonuclear war.
Today, it is true, we have at our fingertips Generative AIs like ChatGPT or Gemini, but they are very, very far from being able to wage war against humanity (if they ever succeed). There is still time: T-800, the original Terminator, travels back in time to 2027so AI can still wake up and try to take over the planet.
In fact, there is a precedent: the use of artificial intelligence systems in the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, although these systems are still not entirely autonomous, and function as assistants to the military: above all, systems for recognition and evaluation of objectives. This was said by the Russian military itself. Sam Altmanthe CEO of OpenAI (the company that develops ChatGPT) wrote just over a year ago in an open letter: “Mitigating the risk of extinction through artificial intelligence “It should be a global priority alongside other societal risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”
Back in 2017 (even before the creation of OpenAI), Argentina was part of the group of 19 countries that formally opposed the use of robots in the military field; in 2023, a dozen countries again asked that these types of tools not be used for military purposes.
For now, luckily, these are -logical- fears about how we will make the development of AI virtuous and not bring more problems. Above all, if it is adopted for military use, as warned by the president himself. James Cameron Last July in an interview: “I think that The weaponization of AI is the greatest danger. I think we’re going to get into the equivalent of a nuclear arms race with AI, and if we don’t build it, the other guys will surely build it, and then the problem will escalate.”
But Cameron also stressed another issue: the sidereal gap that still exists between a digital mind and a human one. “I personally don’t believe that a disembodied mind that just regurgitates what other minds have said, about the life they’ve had, about love, about lying, about fear, about mortality, and just puts it all together in a word salad and then regurgitates it… I don’t think I have anything that will move the audience.. Let’s wait 20 years, and if an AI wins an Oscar for Best Screenplay, then I think we have to take it seriously.”
What does happen today, August 29, 2024, is the debut of Terminator Zero, an animated series on Netflix which takes up the Terminator universe, with a timeline in 1997 and another in 2022, but from that alternative universe where Skynet is intelligent and wants to end humanity.
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