Nicolas Cage got real about AI dangers while accepting his best actor trophy at Sunday’s Saturn Awards.
The star didn’t hold back, warning about letting artificial intelligence creep into acting, even just a little bit.
“I am a big believer in not letting robots dream for us,” the 61-year-old actor said. “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.”
His warning drops over a year after SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers finally settled their beef, which dragged on partly because studios wanted to keep using AI somehow.
While SAG-AFTRA had to bend a bit to seal the deal, Cage’s speech hints that if actors aren’t careful, studios and producers might try to grab more control.
“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,” Cage continued. “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,” he concluded.
Nicolas Cage takes a stand against AI: ‘Robots Cannot Reflect the Human Condition for Us’
