Terminator Zero–A good time to be reminded why AI left unchecked is bad

It’s 2024. Artificial Intelligence just helped me find the release date for Terminator Zero, an anime series coming to Netflix, taking audiences back to Judgment Day–the day AI destroys the world that you know. Doesn’t that bother you? Shouldn’t it? By 2010 the Terminator franchise had made $3 billion, meaning a lot of Earthlings have seen at least those first two movies. All you see on the Internet is how wonderful AI is going to be for everyone. In truth experts–the ones not backed by the mega-corporations and data miners themselves–will tell you none of those time-saving promises will touch most people. What is in process is the ownership of your data, your creative works via generative AI scraping everything you ever touched, being pulled away from you, if it hasn’t already. If the Terminator franchise was warning us of anything (and warning us of the consequences of technology is a big piece of what science fiction is all about), it was warning us against those big corporations that tap into every part of your life, that are here and now, just like Cyberdyne, Skynet, and Genisys.

So what better time for a reminder of what is coming for you.

Terminator Zero is an eight-episode anime series, arriving on Netflix August 29, 2024, with some real backing, including Skydance. One of the twists is the action happens in Tokyo. The other is that it doesn’t include Sarah or John Connor. The Mandalorian actor Timothy Olyphant will voice the new Terminator, with Rosario Dawson as Kokoro, an advanced AI–Japan’s answer to Skynet. Ex Machina co-star Sonoya Mizuno voices the role of Eiko, a resistance fighter. Quarry and The X-Files’ Ann Dowd will provide the voice of a mysterious character called The Prophet. André Holland will play a new key character named Malcolm Lee, “a genius computer programmer and father of three, haunted by prophetic nightmares of an apocalyptic future. He’s spent the last decade creating a secret artificial intelligence that he believes will be humanity’s last hope.” Sound like anyone you know?

Here is Netflix’s teaser for Terminator Zero:

Don’t forget Terminator is up there with sci-fi’s biggest and best franchises with Doctor Who, Planet of the Apes, Star Wars, Alien, Star Trek, and Predator. Like the fifth movie in the series (Terminator: Genisys), and the sixth (Terminator: Dark Fate), Terminator Zero is going back to the beginning–to Skynet. According to the marketing, “2022: A future war has raged for decades between the few human survivors and an endless army of machines. 1997: The AI known as Skynet gained self-awareness and began its war against humanity. Caught between the future and this past is a soldier sent back in time to change the fate of humanity. She arrives in 1997 to protect a scientist named Malcolm Lee who works to launch a new AI system designed to compete with Skynet’s impending attack on humanity. As Malcolm navigates the moral complexities of his creation, he is hunted by an unrelenting assassin from the future which forever alters the fate of his three children.” It sounds like the same trip with different players. How many times do we need to watch this story play out before we listen?

Let’s get our arms around AI and regulate it before we have that Skynet moment, shall we? Who knows if there will be any heroes left to save Earth when a real Cyberdyne takes away your ability to do anything.

Here are some images from the series: