Replies to post #543069 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[blackhawks]

Futurism has become a hammer whose whole world is an AI nail.

Do they EVER present pros to their cons? AI's got them on THAT issue.

ChatGPT

Here’s a quick map of expert opinions on AI risks, placing them along the same spectrum I outlined earlier:

🔹 Closer to Hinton’s View (Existential / Catastrophic Risk Focus)

Geoffrey Hinton (U. of Toronto / ex-Google)

Warns AI could pose an existential threat if it surpasses human control.

Believes we may be closer than people think to systems we don’t fully understand.

Yoshua Bengio (U. of Montreal, Turing Award winner)

Shares Hinton’s concern about long-term catastrophic risk.

Advocates international regulation similar to nuclear treaties.

Sam Altman (CEO, OpenAI)

Publicly emphasizes AI’s potential for existential risk, while also pushing rapid development.

Supports global governance frameworks (e.g., “AI equivalent of the IAEA”).

🔹 Balanced / Dual-Focus (Both Near-Term and Long-Term Risks)

Demis Hassabis (CEO, DeepMind)

Acknowledges real near-term risks (bias, misuse, jobs), but also sees the possibility of transformative—and dangerous—future AI.

Advocates for cautious progress with global collaboration.

Dario Amodei (CEO, Anthropic)

Warns about alignment failures leading to catastrophic scenarios.

At the same time, stresses risks from misinformation and misuse.

🔹 Skeptical of Extinction-Level Framing (Focus on Present Harms)

Yann LeCun (Meta Chief AI Scientist, also a Turing Award winner)

Thinks existential risk is vastly overstated.

Sees current AI as “idiot savants” with no real autonomy or self-motivation.

Argues overhyping existential risk distracts from solvable present issues.

Melanie Mitchell (Santa Fe Institute, AI researcher)

Emphasizes that AI still struggles with basic reasoning and common sense.

Believes focus should be on misinformation, bias, and misuse, not “sci-fi doom.”

Gary Marcus (NYU / outspoken critic)

Not a doomer—he thinks catastrophic AI risk is unlikely in the near future.

But stresses current systems are unreliable, opaque, and dangerous if blindly trusted.

📌 So, the split looks like this:

Hinton, Bengio, Altman ? Strong warnings about extinction-level scenarios.

LeCun, Mitchell, Marcus ? Push back hard, arguing current AI is nowhere near that level.

Hassabis, Amodei ? In the middle, acknowledging both short-term harms and long-term risks.

[fuagf]

James Cameron says "confronting" generative AI is the most important issue
in movies right now: "There are some very dangerous things ahead of us"

"[...]Godfather of AI Says His Girlfriend Broke Up With Him Using ChatGPT
"She got ChatGPT to tell me what a rat I was."

By Mireia Mullor published 12 August 2025

The filmmaker describes Hollywood's current situation with AI as "the Wild West"

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(Image credit: 20th Century/Disney)

Avatar director James Cameron thinks "we haven't learned how to control" generative AI in movies yet, as he describes Hollywood's current situation as "the Wild West". Ahead of the release of the highly anticipated threequel Avatar: Fire and Ash .. https://www.gamesradar.com/entertainment/sci-fi-movies/avatar-3-release-date-cast-trailer-plot/ , the legendary director has offered his thoughts on the use of AI and the dangers of replacing human artists.

"I can't think of anything coming up that is bigger and more important to us right now than confronting this generative AI issue," he told Screendaily .. https://www.screendaily.com/news/its-the-wild-west-says-james-cameron-of-the-use-of-generative-ai-in-film/5207732.article .. from New Zealand, where he is wrapping post-production on the upcoming Avatar movie.

"It is critical that we master it and control it so that it remains an artistic tool and it doesn't replace artists," he continued. "The idea that this technology could potentially replace actors and the unique lens that every artist brings is horrifying… The new tools have the possibility of doing great harm because they can replace an actor or they can synthesize an actor who is dead."

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https://www.gamesradar.com/entertainment/history-movies/james-cameron-warns-that-his-first-post-avatar-3-movie-could-be-the-most-challenging-film-hell-ever-make-and-the-director-might-not-even-be-up-to-the-task/


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Cameron warned that "there are some very dangerous things ahead of us right now", but he clarifies that he has "never been afraid of new technology." Indeed, his work from The Abyss to Titanic has always been at the cutting edge of new visual effects technology in Hollywood.

"I want to learn it, I want to master it for myself, then use my own best judgment about how I apply it to my personal art," he explained, saying that generative AI could facilitate complicated productions, bringing down costs and time. "It takes me four years to make an Avatar movie, so I think about how great it would be if I could do it in three years or two years," he said.

"Movies are very, very expensive now," Cameron added, "and it seems to me that the cinema is becoming less important to the world at large, which is horrifying as well after spending 42 years making movies to be seen in movie theatres. We're not seeing as many movies getting greenlit and getting made of the type that I love – the fantasy, the phantasmagorical, science fiction, big, visually opulent films."

It's not the first time the filmmaker talks candidly about the use of AI in movies. Only a few days ago, he called AI one of our biggest "existential threats" that could lead to "a Terminator-style apocalypse."

Next up for Cameron Avatar: Fire and Ash, which arrives in theaters on December 19. For more, check out our guide to the rest of this year's biggest upcoming movies.

Mireia Mullor
Contributing Writer

Mireia is a UK-based culture journalist and critic. She previously worked as Deputy Movies Editor at Digital Spy, and her work as a freelance writer has appeared in WeLoveCinema and Spanish magazines Fotogramas, Esquire, and Elle. She is also a published author, having written a book about Studio Ghibli's 'Kiki's Delivery Service' in 2023. Talking about anime and musicals is the best way to grab her attention.

https://www.gamesradar.com/entertainment/movies/james-cameron-says-confronting-generative-ai-is-the-most-important-issue-in-movies-right-now-there-are-some-very-dangerous-things-ahead-of-us/