George Clooney has said he doesn’t trust the government to regulate AI.
Clooney, who was speaking at a Venice Film Festival symposium hosted by CAA and Finch & Partners, joined the panel on the future of creativity alongside diverse figures including artist Kennedy Yanko, filmmaker Giuseppe Tornator, clergyman Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça and National Gallery of Art president Darren Walker.
The actor said AI was dangerous because it could make people doubt about real things, as well as invent things that don’t exist. “It’s not just that you’ll see lies,” he said. “It also makes you question things that really do exist. It also that sort of world of fake news — suddenly you’re able to take things that really happened and say, ‘Well, that didn’t happen either.”
“You’ll have people who deny the Holocaust, and that will have the same weight in AI as facts.”
Clooney also talked about how his wife Amal Clooney, a prominent human rights lawyer, has come across laws that were invented by AI. They “will hallucinate and make up fake cases, and lawyers who don’t check it will quote those cases, or judges will quote those cases,” he warned.
Talking about his hopes for the next presidential election and for potential candidates, Clooney said, “We’re all very excited by this young senator from Georgia named Jon Ossoff. We’re all excited about Jimmy [J.B.] Pritzker. I’m from Kentucky, I like Andy Beshear as a governor.”
Clooney also stressed the “need to have a check and balance — We’re not supposed to agree. That’s the whole idea of democracy.”
