Cate Blanchett ‘deeply concerned’ by artificial intelligence impact

Cate Blanchett has told the BBC she is “deeply concerned” about the impact of artificial intelligence (AI).

Speaking on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, the Australian actress said: “I’m looking at these robots and driverless cars and I don’t really know what that’s bringing anybody.”

Blanchett, 55, was promoting her new film Rumours – an apocalyptic comedy about a group of world leaders trapped in a forest.

“Our film looks like a sweet little documentary compared to what’s going on in the world,” she said.

Asked whether she was worried about the impact of AI on her job she said she was “less concerned” about that and more “about the impact it will have on the average person”.

“I’m worried about us as a species, it’s a much bigger problem.”

She added the threat of AI was “very real” as “you can totally replace anyone”.

“Forget whether they’re an actor or not, if you’ve recorded yourself for three or four seconds your voice can be replicated.”

The actress, who has won two Oscars for her roles in The Aviator and Blue Jasmine, said she thought AI advancements were “experimentation for its own sake”.

“When you look at it one way it’s creativity, but it’s also incredibly destructive, which of course is the other side of it.”

In Rumours, Blanchett plays the Chancellor of Germany who hosts a G7 summit for other world leaders.

She said the political characters were not based on real politicians and she “deliberately stepped away from that as that’s what an audience is going to bring to bear”.

The film’s director, Guy Maddin, added that he intentionally does not reveal the ideologies or allegories of the characters because “there’s an attempt when making sense of a movie for an audience to project on to it a message, a lesson, to find themselves in it”.

Maddin explained that he started creating the characters “from a point of sheer contempt”, but as the film progresses and more ludicrous things start to happen “you feel for them a little bit”.

“They’re not politicians for very long, the structures that make them world leaders evaporate incredibly quickly,” Blanchet told the BBC.

“What you witness is that they don’t know who they are and that’s part of the artificiality of the way they have very little to do with the real world.

“People talk about actors being infantilised and indulged, but there’s something about politicians being infantilised and indulged by the system.”