Last Updated on: 4th December 2024, 06:24 pm
Acclaimed actress shares her apprehensions while promoting new apocalyptic comedy, Rumours
Cate Blanchett has expressed significant concern about the societal implications of artificial intelligence (AI), describing the potential consequences as deeply troubling. In an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday, the Academy Award-winning actress highlighted her fears about the unchecked advancement of AI technology, particularly its impact on humanity as a whole.
“I’m looking at these robots and driverless cars, and I don’t really know what that’s bringing anybody,” Blanchett remarked, emphasizing her unease with the trajectory of AI development. She shared her insights while promoting Rumours, her latest film, an apocalyptic comedy that follows a group of world leaders stranded in a forest.
Blanchett, 55, said her concerns extended beyond the potential for AI to disrupt industries, including her own. “I’m less concerned about the impact [of AI] on my job and more about the impact it will have on the average person,” she said. “I’m worried about us as a species. It’s a much bigger problem.”
The actress warned of the ease with which AI could replicate human voices and identities. “If you’ve recorded yourself for three or four seconds, your voice can be replicated,” she noted, describing this capability as “very real” and a looming challenge for society.
Blanchett, who won Oscars for her performances in The Aviator and Blue Jasmine, criticized AI advancements as “experimentation for its own sake.” While acknowledging the creative potential of the technology, she cautioned against its destructive implications. “When you look at it one way, it’s creativity, but it’s also incredibly destructive, which of course is the other side of it,” she said.
In Rumours, Blanchett takes on the role of the German Chancellor hosting a G7 summit, where political structures collapse amid escalating chaos. She noted that the film’s political figures are not based on real-world leaders and deliberately avoided direct comparisons.
Director Guy Maddin explained that the film was designed to resist clear allegories or ideological messages. “There’s an attempt when making sense of a movie for an audience to project onto it a message, a lesson, to find themselves in it,” Maddin said, adding that the characters evolve from objects of derision to figures of empathy as the story unfolds.
Blanchett reflected on how the film’s portrayal of politicians parallels broader themes of disconnection. “They’re not politicians for very long; the structures that make them world leaders evaporate incredibly quickly,” she said. “What you witness is that they don’t know who they are, and that’s part of the artificiality of the way they have very little to do with the real world.”
The actress concluded by comparing the infantilization often associated with actors to the systemic indulgence of political figures. “There’s something about politicians being infantilized and indulged by the system,” she observed, drawing parallels to the artificial constructs central to her concerns about AI.
Rumours marks another bold project for Blanchett, as the film explores themes of identity, power, and humanity’s response to existential challenges—a conversation the actress has now extended beyond the screen.
