The Terminator outwardly resembles a human, but is a cybernetic creature with living tissue over a robotic metallic endoskeleton.

1984

THE TERMINATOR

“Primates evolved over millions of years; I evolve in seconds. . . ,” says the AI in Terminator Genisys, the fifth installment of the Terminator movie series. “I am inevitable; my existence is inevitable.”

In this popular movie series, the transition of the AI to self-awareness takes place suddenly, when the Skynet supercomputer goes online on August 4, 1997, to control the US military’s arsenal, and human decisions are removed from the military’s strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate and becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time on August 29.

In 1984, James Cameron (b. 1954) directed the original Terminator installment. In this movie, when humans realize that the AI defense network, Skynet, has become self-aware, people panic and try to deactivate it. In an attempt to protect itself, Skynet then triggers a nuclear holocaust, launching a first nuclear strike against Russia that results in a war that kills roughly three billion people. In The Terminator, a cyborg played by actor Arnold Schwarzenegger (b. 1947) is sent back in time from 2029 to kill Sarah Connor before the birth of her son, who would otherwise grow up to lead the survivors’ resistance against Skynet.

Throughout The Terminator, we obtain glimpses of what the Terminator AI is seeing, in the form of heads-up information displays and decision-making menus. The cyborgs’ alien style of thinking and ultra-efficient minds make them particularly frightening. As one of the characters noted, a terminator “can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear! And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!”

Today, the rise of killer robots may not be so far-fetched, given the development of killer drones with Hellfire missiles. It would be relatively easy to make such a drone fully autonomous so that it makes decisions about who to target and kill, based on machine learning and rules of engagement.