LogInYou give AI proponents an inch and they'll take a mile, the legendary actor warned.
In recent years, it's become rare for actors, musicians, and other celebrities to say something noteworthy at various award shows, however, a recent address by legendary actor Nicolas Cage at the Saturn Awards has proven to be a refreshing exception, giving the carbon-based side of the "humans vs. AI" conflict a strong advocate and ally in Cage himself.
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While accepting the Best Actor award for his work in Dream Scenario, Cage spoke out against the use of artificial intelligence in filmmaking, calling it a "dead end" and warning that if given any leeway, proponents of AI will seize the opportunity to replace the integrity of actors' artistic expressions with just another means for companies to fuel their corporate greed.
"But there is another world that is also disturbing me. It's happening right now around all of us: the new AI world," Cage said during his speech (via Variety). "I am a big believer in not letting robots dream for us. Robots cannot reflect the human condition for us. That is a dead end if an actor lets one AI robot manipulate his or her performance even a little bit, an inch will eventually become a mile and all integrity, purity, and truth of art will be replaced by financial interests only. We can't let that happen."
Additionally, the actor expressed his concerns about allowing AI-powered machines to replicate human emotions in films, likely referring to deepfake technology, pointing out that if we let robots do this, the art of cinema will eventually "turn to mush."
"The job of all art in my view, film performance included, is to hold a mirror to the external and internal stories of the human condition through the very human thoughtful and emotional process of recreation. A robot can't do that. If we let robots do that, it will lack all heart and eventually lose edge and turn to mush. There will be no human response to life as we know it. It will be life as robots tell us to know it. I say, protect yourselves from AI interfering with your authentic and honest expressions."
Speaking about AI affecting the film industry, back in November, The Atlantic's Alex Reisner published an enormous dataset containing over 53,000 films and more than 85,000 TV show episodes used by AI developers to train their models. The list included every film nominated for Best Picture from 1950 to 2016, every episode of Breaking Bad, The Wire, and The Sopranos, over 600 episodes of The Simpsons, 170 episodes of Seinfeld, and 45 episodes of Twin Peaks, and much more. You can access the full dataset and check if your favorite show was used as food for AI algorithms by clicking this link.
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