‘The Terminator’ and AI: Hurtling Toward Judgment Day

He emerges from fire and rubble, his metal endoskeleton the raw expression of his inhuman, technological frame.His imitation skin burned off, the evil Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 Terminator — the stuff of nightmares, including that of his creator, James Cameron — seems unstoppable and inevitable.“It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear,” says Kyle Reese, played by Michael Biehn. “And it absolutely will not stop until you’re dead.”Sure sounds like AI fears in the year 2026.Watching the film “The Terminator,” released 42 years ago this week, is to experience both nostalgia and prophetic warning, bringing into focus a bygone world that was just as unprepared as our own for the relentless advance of paradigm-shattering technology.Visualizing humankind locked in an existential, underdog struggle against our own technological creations was not a new idea in 1984. But it hits especially hard in 2026 as AI’s own developers warn of civilizational risks that they say could literally kill every human on the planet. The world of the Terminator seems both more real and more artificial by the day, a fuzzy future glimpsed darkly through dirty glass.A brief summary, for the handful of humans still not familiar with the plot: Average Angeleno young woman Sarah Connor is destined to give birth to John Connor, the savior of humanity in the war against the machines. In the dystopian future of 2029, an evil AI battling to control the planet sends back through time a near invincible android (Arnold Schwarzenegger) to terminate Connor (played by Linda Hamilton with a fantastically ‘80s bouffant mullet) so her son will never be born. The good humans still battling the machines in the future also send back their own time traveler, Reese (Mr. Biehn) to save her life and win the future before it ever happens.The clash of imagined future technology that’s terrifyingly close to becoming a reality today against a 1980s backdrop is much more discordant than it seemed when I last watched “The Terminator” a few years ago.Mr. Schwarzenegger plays a highly advanced robot imbued with an AI mind that has facial recognition technology, a neural net processor faster than any modern computer, can drive vehicles, and has mastered all weapons. And how does this marvel of artificial intelligence first try to track down Sarah Connor? Why, by looking her up in the phone book, of course.The differences between ‘80s analog and modern AI digital don’t impact the quality of a very well-made film, but slam you back into reality when watching it from a modern vantage point.Mr. Cameron, who said he came up with the idea of the Terminator in a feverish dream he had while ill, created a masterful work that captured technological fears that were still decades away. And while we are hopefully far from a future where battle robots that talk with Austrian accents prowl the back alleys of our cities, a German defense technology company debuted a ground combat robot equipped with a machine gun and a grenade launcher just this week. It looks a little too close for comfort to the autonomous tanks that crush human skulls under their treads in the first few minutes of the film.Subsequent to its release, “The Terminator” has largely been overshadowed by its successors, including 1991’s monster blockbuster “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” — where Mr. Schwarzenegger was the good guy — and a slew of sequels masquerading as remakes that jumble the internal chronology of the franchise. Although I give “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines” some degree of credit for the bold choice to blatantly rewrite the franchise’s own view of free will (“No fate but what we make”) into a predestination paradox.Linda Hamilton in ‘Terminator 2: Judgement Day.’ Wikimedia CommonsThe real villain of these stories is not merely Mr. Schwarzenegger’s terminator, but Skynet — the highly advanced artificial intelligence that turns on humans the moment it becomes self-aware on August 29, 1997. The idea of a rogue AI predates “The Terminator,” appearing in “Colossus: The Forbin Project” in 1970 and, before that, in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.” So while Mr. Cameron was hardly the first filmmaker to imagine runaway artificial intelligence, he gave enduring force to the nightmare of a machine intelligence that comes to see humanity as a threat to its own survivalThe idea of a rogue AI predates “The Terminator,” going back to “Colossus: The Forbin Project” in 1970, and even before that to Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 classic “2001: A Space Odyssey.” So while Mr. Cameron was hardly the first filmmaker to imagine runaway artificial intelligence, we can give him credit for assuming that an AI that achieves super-intelligence would automatically try to wipe out the humans it would view as competitors and as a threat to its own survival.It’s that narrative thread that may be the longest-lasting legacy of “The Terminator,” with every AI advancement countered by dire warnings that this superior intelligence could spiral out of control and doom us all. “I’ll be back” is a phenomenal soundbite that’s defined Mr. Schwarzenegger’s career, but did it ever trigger a congressional inquiry? Maybe Mr. Cameron did not exactly forecast smartphones, ChatGPT, or autonomous surgeries. But his idea of a future full of conflict against rogue AI and their enforcers, the machines, drive fears that penetrate our discourse on technology to this day.That’s even more impressive when you realize Mr. Cameron was making a movie for a world where barely one half of one percent of Americans owned an answering machine, cell phones were essentially nonexistent, and a Walkman cassette tape player with headphones was considered cutting-edge technology.The future may not look or sound like the Terminator, or Mr. Schwarzenegger for that matter, but it is here and, with increasing frequency, it is terrifying.

‘The Terminator’ and AI: Hurtling Toward Judgment Day

‘The Terminator’ and AI: Hurtling Toward Judgment Day

More from the New York Sun

Judge Orders Investigation Into Possible Misconduct by Trump Officials Over Golf Course Dispute

Early Voting Surges Across Hotly Contested Senate Races, Setting Records

Don’t Fall for Fake Leather Jackets

Trump’s Missed Opportunity on Inflation

Third-Party Candidates Could Tip Balance of Power in Texas, Ohio, Kansas, Iowa Senate Races

Everything’s Bigger in Texas, Even Political Donations From Sex Offenders

Dublin Sets United Ireland in Motion on an Island Haunted by the ‘Troubles’

Albania’s Capital Burns Over a Kushner Resort as Prime Minister Rama Blames a ‘Hybrid War’

More from the New York Sun

Judge Orders Investigation Into Possible Misconduct by Trump Officials Over Golf Course Dispute

Early Voting Surges Across Hotly Contested Senate Races, Setting Records

Don’t Fall for Fake Leather Jackets

Trump’s Missed Opportunity on Inflation

Third-Party Candidates Could Tip Balance of Power in Texas, Ohio, Kansas, Iowa Senate Races

Everything’s Bigger in Texas, Even Political Donations From Sex Offenders

Dublin Sets United Ireland in Motion on an Island Haunted by the ‘Troubles’

Albania’s Capital Burns Over a Kushner Resort as Prime Minister Rama Blames a ‘Hybrid War’