It seems that those in the AI community are despairing at the latest film from the Terminator franchise, Dark Fate. They think it gives the general public a biased rendition of where AI is headed.
Looking at some of the quotes from those engaged in AI research, where the technology (according to them) is all about enhancing our lives, it reminded me of the early days of the world wide web. Mainly used by academics to expand their research horizons with others in academia. New horizons, sun filled uplands and blue skies thinking etc. Look at it now. Chiefly used for commerce and pornography, controlled by global corporations.
Of course, we could not live our modern life without it but what if its potential misuse and dark side could have been foreseen? Would it have been possible to engineer-in at its incept, checks and balances?
There is great potential for AI not to be our servant but our master. Already we see the wide spread use of AI facial recognition to track and oppress, deepfake videos to change opinion or even cause us to believe in nothing, as what can you trust? Election manipulation by bots and analytics. All this is at the dawn of AI too!
Maybe we should watch Dark Fate and reflect where we are and let us consider how we go forward?