Joseph Gordon-Levitt Says A.I. Is Being Trained to ‘Hijack Your Intimacy’: ‘We Should Be Concerned’

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who has added United Nations’ global advocate of human-centric digital governance to his resumé, has warned the public to be “concerned about the people building A.I.” and how the technology is being trained to “hijack your intimacy” in a vlog-style video interview with The New York Times published on Saturday.

When the outlet asked what he fears most about AI, the “500 Days of Summer” actor said he doesn’t want to reduce “these concerns into one sound bite of fear.” “That’s one of the problems. To me, saying: Oh, I’m scared that A.I. could exterminate all of humanity — that doesn’t really get at the substance of the concern. There’s real validity to that concern. But that’s not the thing that really worries me,” Gordon-Levitt said.

He continued, saying what worries him is the “decline of democracy, the decline of human empathy.” “These companies are betting on the notion that they’re going to take over the entire economy. That would be totalitarianism, and that would be really bad… Simultaneously, these models are being trained to hijack your intimacy, to make friends with you, to get you to fall in love with it. We shouldn’t be scared of an A.I. We should be concerned about the people building A.I.”

Gordon-Levitt was appointed to a brand-new United Nations position in March. At the time, the organization defined it as “a newly established role designed to strengthen public understanding of how digital technologies shape everyday life, rights and opportunities.”

The actor and director has long been outspoken about A.I., and in January, joined more than 700 artists, writers and creators, including Scarlett Johansson and Cate Blanchett, in supporting an anti-AI campaign calling out tech companies exploiting copyrighted work without permission.