{"id":80125,"date":"2025-10-14T15:16:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T15:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/80125\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T15:16:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T15:16:15","slug":"evil-ai-is-boring-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/80125\/","title":{"rendered":"Evil AI Is Boring Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cMy world is coming and they are going destroy yours,\u201d warns a glowing red-pinstriped Jared Leto<\/a> in Tron: Ares<\/a>, where a digital realm run by an evil AI threatens to seize control of our real world.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne would think this concept would benefit from opening a few short months after several AI thought leaders published an eye-opening manifesto<\/a> titled \u201cAI 2027,\u201d which predicted artificial intelligence could destroy humanity within a decade (\u201cWe\u2019re two years away from something we could lose control over,\u201d said<\/a> MIT professor Max Tegmark). And earlier this month, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt warned<\/a>: \u201cBoth open and closed AI models can potentially be hacked \u2026 for harmful purposes, including killing people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut chances are, you didn\u2019t read \u201cAI 2027,\u201d see Schmidt\u2019s quote or watch Tron: Ares \u2014 given its low-wattage opening weekend box office.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tYou also likely didn\u2019t see this summer\u2019s Megan 2.0<\/a> (about an evil AI seeking global domination) or Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning (evil AI seeks to nuke the world), given both struggled to find audiences as well.<\/p>\n

\n\tThese titles each had their own challenges apart from their choice of digital villain (Tron: Ares, in particular, has a bunch). Still, it\u2019s fair to say the \u201cevil AI\u201d trope in movies feels as dead as MS-DOS, and at the most ironic possible time: When the threat from actual AI has never been more real.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne reason for audience disinterest is that Evil AI villains have already been around for decades. In 1968, Stanley Kubrick introduced HAL 9000\u2019s unblinking red eye and eerily clam, smug voice in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Ridley Scott smartly evolved the trope with 1979\u2019s Alien and 1982\u2019s Blade Runner. And Alex Garland ushered AI into the modern age with 2014\u2019s Ex Machina. <\/p>\n

\n\tThen ChatGPT entered the, well, chat, and became omnipresent and many multitudes of useful. <\/p>\n

\n\tNow we\u2019re in a deeply weird moment where many Americans tell pollsters<\/a> they\u2019re concerned about AI technology, and experts warn AI is considered a pending existential threat that can destroy humanity \u2014 but it\u2019s also a handy tool for planning beach vacations, or figuring out which Korean skincare products to use. It\u2019s difficult to muster fear of something when it also helps advise you whether the break-up text you\u2019re writing is overly harsh.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn other words, AI was far more scary when we weren\u2019t actually using it. So when Mission: Impossible characters darkly warn, \u201cThe Entity has since become sentient \u2026 whatever its ultimate goal is, we\u2019re powerless to stop it \u2026 any move we make, it\u2019s probably considered it.\u201d We\u2019re all: Sure, AI might wreck the world, but it can also tell me if my dog is sneezing too much, so\u2026 <\/p>\n

\n\tOne ongoing issue is the trickiness of representing AI on film. Movies need characters. How do you turn AI into a character that feels fresh? Is it an ominous screen saver like in Dead Reckoning? A killer robot like in Megan 2.0 or in Tron: Ares? Making AI into a villain with goals and a personality tends to feel either unoriginal or silly. There\u2019s only so much a writer can do with a disembodied intelligence.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen it comes to existential threats, focusing on nuclear weapons is easier and remains potent. Hollywood has arguably played a role in helping keep the world rightly terrified of nukes for the last 80 years. James Cameron has made a fear of nuclear weapons a plot point in several of his blockbusters. HBO\u2019s 2019 nuke plant meltdown miniseries Chernobyl<\/a> was terrifying. Netflix\u2019s upcoming A House of Dynamite is another strong cautionary tale. It helps that nukes can put on quite a show and can\u2019t assist with our taxes or boost our 401k accounts. <\/p>\n

\n\tBut with AI, Hollywood\u2019s efforts to caution us \u2014 or at least use AI as a convenient, inoffensive super-villain \u2014 no longer seem to strike a chord in an age of AI ubiquity. Tom Cruise might as well be warning us about a Roomba.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cMy world is coming and they are going destroy yours,\u201d warns a glowing red-pinstriped Jared Leto in Tron:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,52240,61,60,24570,52241,80,20836],"class_list":{"0":"post-80125","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-chernobyl","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-jared-leto","15":"tag-mission-impossible-8","16":"tag-technology","17":"tag-tron-ares"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}