(electronic music)
- (Greg) Hey Wisecrack, Greg here. Today we’re going to talk about why you don’t really need to
be afraid of some AI fueled robot with AK’s for arms coming to snuff you out.
No really: Talk about The Terminator series tends to center around fears of the coming
robo-pocalypse. You know, the day when a bunch of roided-up R2D2s finally come for us.
- (Kyle) And it absolutely will not stop, ever! Until you are dead!
- (Greg) But what if the Terminator is really warning us
not about some far-fetched apocalypse, but a more subtle danger that’s already here?
We’ll explain in this Wisecrack edition on the Terminator series. And, of course, spoilers ahead.
- (Greg) And now, a quick recap. When an AI system designed to run America’s defense network becomes
self-aware, it decides that the safest course of action is to nuke the hell out of humanity. And,
honestly, I get it. Anyway, after the mushroom clouds disperse, a war rages on between man and
machine until the robot army decides to send a Terminator back in time with one mission:
Kill this perfectly-nice lady, Sarah Conner, BEFORE she gives birth to the future leader of
the human resistance. But humans from the future send back their own soldier to protect her,
and the race is on: Who will get to Sarah Conner first and change the course of history?
- (Kyle) Come with me if you want to live!
- (Greg) Subsequent films in the series have given us good Arnold,
bad Arnold and stay-at-home-dad Arnold:
- (Terminator) His name is Mateo. I met his mother Alysia a few months after I killed John.
- (Greg) But each new installment revolves around this same basic premise:
An evil AI tries to kill us all and a robo-soldier goes back in time to try and save us all,
even people who drink hot coffee through straws. While the sequels have really leaned into the
sci-fi action thing, the original is essentially a horror film. Like many classic slashers,
it sees a cold-hearted, human-but-not-human entity stalking relentlessly after what film
scholars call a “Final Girl,” aka the female character fated to survive all
the villain’s bullshit. Unlike other horror antagonists, but exactly like Mark Zuckerberg,
the Terminator puts the cold, ruthless precision of a computer into a human body. It’s creepy as
all hell. This basic juxtaposition, between humanity and dead-eyed machine-like logic,
is what makes the movie so scary. It also makes you wonder what Siri’s REALLY capable of.
- (Siri): I could kill you and they would never find the body.
- (Greg) Personally, that’s way scarier to me than global nuclear war.
But let’s put killer robots aside. Because the REAL strength of the series’ commentary
is the way it highlights the subtle dangers already posed by existing technology.
The original movie was set, and released, in 1984, at which point our daily lives
had become increasingly automated, and increasingly reliant on machines. And
it’s this dependence on technology that primes many of the Terminator’s victims for the kill.
Take Sarah’s roommate,
Ginger. While her boyfriend is being attacked by a burly android invader, she remains
blissfully unaware thanks to the headphones blaring those irresistible eighties tunes.
(glass breaking, music in background)
- (Greg) Cut to 2020, and we’re so dependent on technology that I, for one,
have basically hot glued my airpods into my ear holes.
And not to sound like a Boomer, but I’d say that spending most of our lives on screens
often cuts us off from the outside world. And it’s not just about how you almost got hit by
a car cause you were sexting, either. It’s also how technology stops working for us.
Throughout the first movie, the communication technology that the characters rely on
constantly fails them. Phone calls are missed, voicemails go unchecked and Ginger’s
boyfriend embarrassed himself by launching into a steamy monologue to his girlfriend’s roommate.
- (Boyfriend) And then... I'll pull your panties off with my teeth.
- (Sarah) Who is this? - (Boyfriend) I uh-
- (Greg) Happens to the best of us! I've been there man, believe me.
And even after the police know that Sarah is in trouble they still can’t get a hold of her.
- (Officer 1) Call her. - (Officer 2) I
just called her- - (Officer 1) Call her again!
- (Greg) And when she tries to call them?
- (Sarah) The police keep transferring me around. I'm gonna give them another try.
- (Greg) Here, the web of connections that is our safety net comes unraveled in a time
of real crisis. And that was just in 1984. These days, if the internet went out, the world would
probably collapse into chaos. Basically, when so much of our communication takes place from
a distance and is mediated by technology, we’re left vulnerable in more ways than one. The scene
in which Ginger has sex with her boyfriend without removing her headphones can even be read as
a comic indication of how technology has come to interrupt even our most intimate forms of contact.
A study from last year found that 20% of AirPod users have enjoyed a similar experience,
hopefully while listening to This American Life. However, the recording that plays out in response
to the police’s unanswered calls indicates an even deeper problem.
- (Sarah) Hi there...hahaha fooled you, you’re talking to a machine.
- (Greg) The T-800 tracks Sarah down by impersonating her mother on the phone,
showing how easily good technology can trick us.
- (Terminator) I love you too sweetheart.
- (Greg) Today, Twitterbots and chatbots alike are both effective because they give us the
sensation of speaking to a real human being. Of course, whether they’re being used to rile
us up or calm us down, they elicit an emotional response, and that response can be exploited.
And this is a fear that becomes more potent every year. The T-800’s vocal mimicry might
have been sci-fi back in 1984 but it’s eerily real in the age of Deep Fakes.
- (Fake Buscemi) I don't want to have to say it because who knows when you're going to run
into these people. (Crowd laughs)
- (Greg) Just last year, an AI was able to impersonate Joe Rogan’s voice well enough to
convince listeners they were speaking with the podcaster himself. At the same time,
visual Deep Fakes are becoming an easy way to spread very convincing misinformation.
- (Fake Obama) President Trump is a total and complete dip****. Now see I would never say
these things, at least not in a public address. But! Someone else would. Someone like... Jordan Peele.
- (Greg) These days, fear of being lulled into a false sense of security by computer tricks is
very, very real. And Samantha, I don’t care if you’re actually a 71 year old inmate named Rod,
what we had was special and I’ll never regret
it. And, of course, unlike in 1984, computers are now integral to the fabric of our daily lives.
This reality was explored in a fun, if not completely successful sequel from last year,
Terminator: Dark Fate. Once again, the series tries to warn us about the very real technological
threats we face today, threats Mackenzie Davis’ robot arm can’t possibly protect us from.
Dark Fate puts its hero, Dani, in much the same position as Sarah and John Connor before her
-aware that a single-minded killing machine is on her trail and desperate to disappear. Of course,
it’s basically impossible to get off the grid when the grid is everything.
- (Sarah Connor) Now anyone with a phone is a walking sensor platform. How every intersection,
every Gas station and 7-11 has cameras? No one walks through this world without leaving a digital
trail a mile wide.
- (Greg) Throughout the movie, the Rev-9 is able to track its prey by tapping the
huge web of internet-connected devices that now span the globe. In the original film,
the T-800 happens to be in Sarah’s apartment when she leaves a voicemail revealing her location.
- (Sarah Connor) Ginger this is Sarah! Pick up if you're there. I'm
at this place on Pico Boulevard called Tech Noir!
- (Greg) The Rev-9 doesn’t have to rely on such old-school tricks. Thanks to our smartphones and
other devices, we all leave a Godzilla-sized digital footprint everywhere we go. While it
may save us from getting stranded like this, it also makes it impossible to hide. Whether
from facial recognition technology or from Facebook harvesting our very personal data.
In short, a world in which computers track our every move
isn’t the stuff of futuristic sci-fi, it’s a world we, and Dani, are already living in.
- (Dani) Hey! - (Sarah) Might
as well be wearing a tracking bracelet.
- (Greg) But it's not all stolen personal data and targeted Facebook ads. The Terminator films
have always centered around the most terrifying technological risk of all:
what happens when computers are the ones with the guns? Ooo!
And before you laugh at the thought of your Roomba pulling a gun on you, consider this:
the Korean border is being patrolled by robotic sentries equipped with actual machine guns.
Now, to be clear, the manufacturers maintain that the bots still require human authorization
to fire. So we aren’t yet in a world with fully-automated death machines,
but things sure seem headed that way. As in Dark Fate, we’ve witnessed an increasing use
of lethal drones, particularly by the United States, which moves us further towards a more
mechanized vision of warfare. Recently, the U.S. agency that researches and develops
emerging warfare technology, announced that it has successfully tested an autonomous drone swarm.
- (Terminator) It's a far more
effective killing machine. - Oh, great! That's great.
- (Greg) So, even if we won’t be seeing anything like a T-800 stomping down the street
any day soon, the military possibilities of our increasingly advanced computers
should certainly give us pause. Which brings us back to the real problem with our continued panic
about interconnected networks of murder and leather-clad killbots: Not only does it freak
us the fuck out, but it also distracts from the much more concrete dangers we face today.
The world depicted in the Terminator isn’t coming any time soon. But there are plenty
of potential dystopias we could land in along the way if we’re not careful. From the privacy threat
you carry around in your pocket to that deep fake of you cheating on your spouse with their dentist,
the computers which we should be wary of are already here. But, for all the time it spends
teaching us to be terrified of anything with wires, the Terminator series always ends on
a hopeful note. Because technological progress is not preordained – we get to choose what shape the
world of tomorrow will take. Especially if you’re Elon Musk. Come on, man, don’t f**k this up.
At its core, the Terminator series is about what technology can do to us
if we’re not careful, and about questioning the role computers should play in our lives. It’s
great that we can ask Alexa to set a timer for 4:20 to, um, take our vitamins. It’s
less great when we relinquish all of our privacy in the process.
So what do you think, Wisecrack? How far is too far when it comes to computers? Should we
keep pressing forward and hope things turn out more “Next Generation” than “Judgement Day”?
Or should we be a little more worried about the Rise of the Machines?
Let us know in the comments. Big thanks to our patrons for your support.
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