'Terminator' creator wants scientists to 'take oath' to avoid robot apocalypse

Terminator and movies like it might be fiction now, but as science and technology continue to make huge, exponential leaps, it may not stay that way for long.

And while the growth of A.I. continues all around us, so does the vague chance of the robot apocalypse.

But not if Gale Anne Hurd has anything to do with it.

Hurd, who with James Cameron co-wrote and produced the 1984 sci-fi classic, has said that she wants those working in the tech industries to promise to use their power for good over evil.

The producer was appearing at the annual Screamfest event in Hollywood, where she was being given a lifetime achievement award, when she made the comments.

“The one thing that they don’t teach in engineering schools and biotech is ethics and thinking about not only consequences, but unintended consequences,” she said.

“If you go to medical school, there’s the Hippocratic Oath, first do no harm. I think we really need that in all of these new technologies.”

The oath dates back to somewhere between the fifth and the third centuries BC, authored by the Greek physician Hippocrates, and was the first written expression of medical ethics.

She went on to say: “We are cutting edge. We create and think about things that the people who are being paid so much money, the scientists and the physicists, the mathematicians, biotech people aren’t even considering.

“The more leaps and bounds are made in technology right now, the more fearful we should be that these scenarios may come to pass.

“Stephen Hawking only came up with the idea that we need to worry about A.I. and robots about two and a half years before he passed away. I remember saying to Jim, ‘If he’d only watched The Terminator.’”

Hawking told Wired in 2016 about his concerns about the power of artificial intelligence.

“The genie is out of the bottle,” he said. “We need to move forward on artificial intelligence development but we also need to be mindful of its very real dangers. I fear that AI may replace humans altogether.

“If people design computer viruses, someone will design AI that replicates itself. This will be a new form of life that will outperform humans.”

Nothing terrifying about that, then. Nope.

Terminator 6 is currently in production, and is set for release in November, 2019, hopefully before the robot apocalypse.

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