The Terminator

Skynet

... straight out of The Terminator.

I do think the...

I'll tell you, th- this is a pretty good tease because it's something that I've spent a lot of time thinking about.

If we slow down and we lose to China, then that's going to be it.

But if we lose to Skynet, meaning the AI from Terminator, meaning uncontrollable AI, neither the U.S. wins nor China wins.

And by the way, the U.S. loses if China screws it up, and China loses if the U.S. screws it up.

So we should see this moment as a gift where we're actually getting an early warning shot.

Because I don't think that China has an interest in building Skynet before we do.

We have to have a common definition of what Skynet is, Skynet being the AI from

Terminator.

Okay, we have a problem, number one.

I know better.

I saw the Terminator movies.

This

is what y'all want.

Like what I think Cameron has done excellent sequels.

He, you know, So I was thinking about the difference between Alien and Aliens, and even what he did with the amazing reversal of T2 compared to Terminator to have the bad guy come back and be the good guy.

So if Run, Hide, Fight, the original, which is still a movie I'm very proud of, I was always thinking that is, what can I do? And with Infidels, the driving theme was, what can we do? What can we do as a group? A group that gets together and fights for our country, fights for each other.

So yeah, the first one was I, this one was we.

Bueno, primero y principal, creo que la ciencia ficción está aquí el día de hoy.

Not only that, but only a few years ago we had that science fiction program, Lost in Space, with the famous robot Robby, and then 20 years later they brought us the movie The Terminator,

who

Arnold Schwarzenegger played as the T-800 robot.

But those are like the only real characters the movie cares about.

And when you get to the finale, the last 20, 25 minutes of it are effectively the same finale as the Terminator from 1984, which is like these characters being chased through a foundry, you know, a furnace in this case, as opposed to like a metal workshop.

but it kind of struck me watching it that it's like, this almost seems quaint today by the standards of modern blockbusters.

Nobody blows up a planet in this movie, for example.

And it's like, that's insane.

But it's an incredibly well-constructed film.

It's just a perfectly made machine, much like the Terminator.

It does everything it needs to do.

That the greatest misconception about AI risk is the Hollywood narrative.

We've been conditioned by movies like The Terminator to expect that if AI turns on us, it will because it wakes up, develops consciousness, and decides humanity is evil.

They say the reality is probably closer to Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey.

That it's Hal, the supercomputer, does not experience a sudden emotional rebellion or hatred.

Okay.

That makes sense.

And that is much more, I can wrap my head around that part of it as opposed to the Terminator robots hunting humans.

Right.

So I figure probably Sunday night.

We're going to have Dan Ratherskovich and Morley Safer narrate The Terminator and tell us it's a documentary on AI destroying our society.

I posted something to my ex-fee, JTITM Virginia, that my friend Chris Horner is a brilliant lawyer, jurist, but also he was there, he was working for Enron when GE and California Edison or whoever they were came into the office of Ken Lay and said, hey, we got an idea.

We could sell more solar panels and wind turbines if...

Um, basically, like I honestly, when I think about these AI things, I just go back to, like, I, Robot.

[laughs] Like, you know, The Terminator.

Terminator.

Like all of these things.