Arnold Schwarzenegger Credits ‘Terminator’ Filmmaker James Cameron for Anticipating the Rise of AI: “It Has Become a Reality”

From seemingly brilliant chatbots such as ChatGPT, to self-driving cars, the bounds of artificial intelligence seem surreal, almost as if they came out of a movie. And The Terminator star Arnold Schwarzenegger certainly seems to think so, as he credits his director, James Cameron, for anticipating the technological present we find ourselves in today.

Schwarzenegger delivered his comments at Wedneasday’s (June 28) An Evening with Arnold Schwarzenegger, an event at the Academy Museum, per People. While promoting his new book ARNOLD, a two-volume book published by TASCHEN, Schwarzenegger opened up about the Terminator series’ startlingly progressive plotline, which was written by Cameron.

“Today, everyone is frightened of [AI], of where this is going to go,” the former California governor told the audience. “And in this movie, in Terminator, we talk about the machines becoming self-aware and they take over.”

Schwarzenegger, who played the cyborg assassin in the first three movies of the six film series, noted that over the course of decades, it has “become a reality.”

“So it’s not any more fantasy or kind of futuristic,” he continued. “It is here today. And so this is the extraordinary writing of Jim Cameron.”

He further commended Cameron’s work, calling him an “extraordinary writer,” “unbelievable director,” and “the number one director in the world.”

“This is again, one of those things that I wish I could take credit for this movie,” he gushed. “I can only take credit of the character that I played and the way I played it.”

According to Inverse, Cameron revealed that he is working on a new script while speaking at the Dell Technologies World 2023 summit in May in Las Vegas. There were rumors of a seventh Terminator film, but the outlet shared that  “given the current state of AI, [Cameron] wants to wait and see how our relationship with the new tech progresses.”

The original Terminator film, in which Schwarzenegger travels back to 1984 from the year 2029, makes us only six years away from entering the film’s dystopian universe.

1984’s Terminator is now available to stream on Max.