When James Cameron released The Terminator in 1984, the idea of artificial intelligence becoming powerful enough to threaten humanity seemed like pure science fiction. The movie imagined Skynet — an artificial intelligence system that becomes self-aware, takes control of weapons and launches a nuclear war against humanity. At the time, it was a terrifying movie premise. Four decades later, Cameron says some of the things he imagined back then no longer feel quite so fictional. In a 2023 interview, the filmmaker famously joked, “I warned you guys in 1984 and you didn’t listen.” But behind the joke was a serious concern: Cameron said he shared the worries of AI researchers who believe rapidly advancing artificial intelligence could create serious risks for humanity. And Cameron hasn’t stopped thinking about it. In 2024, as he discussed the possibility of another Terminator film, he admitted that writing science fiction has actually become more difficult because we are increasingly living in a world that resembles science fiction. He said AI’s existential threat wasn’t quite here yet — but described it as “close” and “adjacent.” Then in 2025, Cameron became even more direct. He identified three major existential threats facing humanity: climate and environmental degradation, nuclear weapons and super-intelligent AI. But the part that particularly concerns him is what happens when artificial intelligence becomes connected to weapons systems. It’s that humans could deliberately put increasingly powerful AI into systems capable of making decisions at incredible speed — including military and nuclear systems. Cameron has pointed out that humans have already made mistakes that brought the world dangerously close to international conflicts.