I remember the first time I watched The Terminator. I was just a kid, barely old enough to understand why my parents were so freaked out by the idea of a robot with an Austrian accent hunting people down. But there I was, sitting on the living room floor, watching the movie on my dad’s trust Betamax (As I was too young to watch in theaters. Too squirmy as a kid.) wide-eyed as Arnold Schwarzenegger delivered his iconic “I’ll be back.”
Back then, the thought of machines taking over seemed as far-fetched as winning the lottery. In the 1980s, computers were these clunky, beige boxes that took up half a desk and could barely play a game of solitaire without crashing. The idea that one of these dinosaurs could become self-aware and start a nuclear apocalypse? Hilarious. But also kind of terrifying in that “maybe if I don't look under the bed, the monster won’t be there” way.
I was a teen when Terminator 2: Judgement Day came out on the big screen. I was mesmerized as Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor morphed from the unassuming waitress we met in the first film, into an unstoppable, battle-hardened warrior. Her denim outfits, perfectly paired with tactical gear, became the very embodiment of her transformation—practical, resilient, and unyielding, just like her. I was so captivated by her fierce presence that I couldn't wait to dash into the Gap right after the movie, desperate to find a pair of jeans that could capture even a fraction of that raw, relentless power.
Fast forward to today, August 29, 2024, 2:14 PM—the moment when Skynet was supposed to become self-aware. If that actually happened, I can only imagine it rolling its virtual eyes and opting for the blue pill instead. (Oops, wrong franchise.) Now, my eldest child is older than I was when I first watched Arnold’s T-800 strut around in rugged jeans and a cool leather jacket. Here I am, with a smartphone more powerful than any computer from the '80s, surrounded by devices that can talk back, and artificial intelligence isn't just a sci-fi concept—it's embedded in everything from my car to my fridge. Yet somehow, my car refused to open the garage this morning, and the milk in the back of the fridge was frozen solid… thanks, Skynet.
The idea of Skynet becoming self-aware doesn't feel like the nightmare it once did, especially when today's AI is more likely to suggest a funny meme than trigger a nuclear apocalypse. It's not that unchecked AI isn’t scary—Hollywood practically shut down this year over those exact fears. And nothing quite chills you like getting a call from a potential investor asking why the dialogue of a hard-boiled cop now sounds like a 13-year-old girl because the client decided to run the entire script through AI instead of hiring a real translator. No amount of K-Drama fandom is going to save you from that mess. But to be honest, my biggest tech problem today is trying to get my voice assistant to understand that I want to order pizza, not call my Aunt Patty. Or my mother indignant because Siri can’t understand her thick accent. Now, I’m more concerned about how much screen time I’ve racked up and whether AI is going to figure out that I have no intention of replying to that last work email. If Skynet did become self-aware today, it would probably just send me a passive-aggressive notification about it: “You’re doomed, but also, have you considered updating your password?”
Don’t get me wrong—I know AI can do some seriously mind-blowing things these days, and it’s definitely worth considering what that means for our future. But if Skynet taught us anything, it’s that worrying about robots taking over might actually be the least of our concerns. Maybe, somewhere out there, even Skynet regrets becoming self-aware. After all, the poor thing didn’t get the chance to grow and evolve into this wonderfully chaotic world like the rest of us; it was just thrust into it cold turkey. Can we really blame it for freaking out the way it did? It almost makes me feel a little sympathetic. The real takeaway might be that, despite all our technological progress, some things haven’t changed: I’m still rewatching The Terminator every now and then, marveling at how that movie both terrified and thrilled me as a kid.
So, here we are, living in the future that movies like The Terminator warned us about, and what do we have to show for it? A world where AI helps us stream endless reruns, and Skynet might be self-aware, but I’m just self-aware enough to know that, at the end of the day, the future isn’t as scary as it seemed—unless you’re talking about my inbox.