Simon Pegg believes AI could encourage us to “up our game”
Shaun of the Dead star Simon Pegg has addressed the blossoming issue of Artificial Intelligence (AI), claiming that the advanced tech could serve to improve human approaches to creation.
Pegg, who is soon to appear in the seventh Mission Impossible movie alongside Tom Cruise, gave his optimistic outlook during a recent conversation with The Daily Telegraph. “[AI] might be a good thing in that it will stop us from being mediocre,” he said.
“There is a lot of mediocrity out there sometimes. Things that pass for entertainment are not quite as good as they should be,” the Hot Fuzz creator added. “So if it ups our game because we want to escape the velocity of this creeping threat, then it’s a good thing.”
Pegg reasoned that AI technology will never be able to compete with the cutting edge of human creativity, especially in the back and forth of drafting movie scripts.
“I think the writing process, it is a process, and when you write a first draft you write something that you know is going to improve and you will improve,” he said. “If we get AI to write those first drafts the whole time people are only ever going to be doctoring scripts or giving notes.”
“There’s going to be no sort of genesis in them, no kind of heart,” he continued. “I read a funny thing that says AI hasn’t had any childhood trauma so it’s never going to make good art. But it’s true.”
Elsewhere, in a recent conversation with Men’s Health, Pegg remembered how his performance in Shaun of the Dead won him his first Mission Impossible role. Asked whether he had always been Beji, his character in the action franchise, Pegg replied, “I think so. J.J. [Abrams] had seen Shaun of the Dead, and called me up, and just offered me the role”.
Adding: “He didn’t go through any of my representatives or anything. It was just, straight, man-to-man, which is very, very J.J. He’s a very can-do guy, so he just got my number, called me, and said Hey, do you want to come and do this? And I was a bit flummoxed by it! He did the same thing with Star Trek—and I love that about him.”
Watch the trailer for Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One below.
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