The Terminator at 40: this sci-fi ‘B-movie’ still shapes how we view the threat of AI

Arnold Schwarzenegger played a cyborg sent back in time by an all-powerful AI called Skynet.& Maximum Film / Alamy Stock Photo by Tom F.A Watts, Royal Holloway University of London October 26, 2024 marked the 40th anniversary of director James Cameron’s science fiction classic, The Terminator – a film that popularized society’s fear of machines that can’t be reasoned with, and that “absolutely will not stop … until you are dead”, as one character memorably puts it. The plot concerns a super-intelligent AI system called Skynet which has taken over the world by initiating nuclear war. Amid the resulting devastation, human survivors stage a successful fightback under the leadership of the charismatic John Connor. In response, Skynet sends a cyborg assassin (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) back in time to 1984 – before Connor’s birth – to kill his future mother, Sarah. Such is John Connor’s importance to the war that Skynet banks on erasing him from history to preserve its existence. Today, public interest in artificial intelligence has arguably never been greater. The companies developing AI typically promise their technologies will perform tasks faster and more accurately than people. They claim AI can spot patterns in data that are not...