Cate Blanchett Says AI Cannot Replicate Human ‘Mortality’: ‘It Doesn’t Understand That Deep Existential Dread’
Cate Blanchett offered her thoughts on artificial intelligence during a wide-ranging conversation at Toronto Film Festival.
During an audience Q&A section of the interview, conducted by TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey, the “Carol” and “Lord of the Rings” star was asked about the positives and negatives of AI.
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“I’m very proud of the industry, actually, for going on strike about it,” Blanchett said, prompting applause. “We’re a very front-facing industry. And if you think about before the strike, people were talking about [AI], but it was not a dinner table, mainstream conversation. I think it’s really important to discuss any new technology. I think we should be very cautious with it, because innovation without imagination is a very, very dangerous thing.”
Blanchett, who is in Toronto promoting her black comedy film “Rumours” and the Alfonso Cuarón series “Disclaimer,” assured the Canadian audience that AI is “not just going to affect the [entertainment] industry. It’s going to affect everybody.”
“The thing I do feel profoundly, though, about AI is that the thing we fear most and disregard most and put to the back of our mind most is our mortality,” she said. “We know that our time here is finite, and that is something that AI will never understand. It can imitate it, but it doesn’t understand that deep existential dread, and it doesn’t understand the preciousness of each moment in its cellular makeup, not that it necessarily has cellular makeup yet. That is something that can’t be replicated.”
Blanchett remembered calling her agent and asking what the agencies were doing to protect artists.
“The voice is going to be replicated first, as we’ve already seen, and then the image will take a little bit longer to catch up,” she said.
Blanchett then emphasized the need across all industries and people to “prize the authentic.”
“When you prize the authentic, then we start to make a parallel lane where AI can exist — and there are many positive things we can get from it — but it is not authentically human. It is inauthentic in that way,” Blanchett said.
She finished by saying that instead of passively waiting for AI to determine the future, we must “actively prize the human connection” by participating in events like this one, with thousands of people gathered together in a theater.
“The things that we can touch, the gathering, the caring, the genuine face-to-face conversations … that can be replicated,” Blanchett said. “The smell of someone’s breath — that can’t be replicated! All of the positives and negatives about public gatherings, I think it’s really important to elevate and remind ourselves. It’s right back to the ancient Greeks.”
Elsewhere in the conversation, Blanchett praised the communal theatrical experience celebrated by film festivals, even when it comes to television projects like Apple TV+’s “Disclaimer,” which is showing at TIFF.
“Even when making something for the small screen, as ‘Disclaimer’ was originally made, the ideas are bigger when it’s up here [on the big screen],” Blanchett said. “And believe me, I’ve consumed as much serialized storytelling on the small screen as anybody, and I love it, but it’s a different experience. It is a different experience, and I hope that one doesn’t swamp the other.”
Talking about that glorious sense of “event” when it comes to consuming art, Blanchett segued into the resurgence of physical music.
“Someone gave ‘Brat’ to my 9-year-old [daughter],” she said, drawing laughter, “and watching my 9-year-old putting on vinyl … that’s what I love.”
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