From depicting a dream thief in Inception to assassinating time-traveling targets in Looper, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is no stranger to science fiction. In his latest guise, however, the actor is not contending with fantastical thoughts about the future. Instead, he has become one of Hollywood’s most consistent and articulate campaigners on artificial intelligence.
If you scroll through Gordon-Levitt’s social media feeds, you’re far more likely to find him posting about AI than his latest movie project. In recent years, he has spoken on the subject at UN-convened conferences, written op-eds in the New York Times, and given evidence to Utah lawmakers.
Different platforms, but Gordon-Levitt is usually preaching the same message: Big tech should not be allowed to unscrupulously profit from a whole history of human creative endeavor.
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The Dark Knight Rises star traces his fascination with technology back to the vivid memory of his software engineer father bringing a personal computer into his childhood home. The embers of his interest were stoked by HitRecord, the online community created with his late brother Daniel, which went on to raise $6.4 million. Gordon-Levitt says he tuned into early conversations about the power and potential of AI in the 2010s, when academics and engineers started expressing “grave concerns” about what was coming.
“I’m not concerned about the technology itself. The technology is really exciting for a lot of reasons. It’s the business practices that I think could lead us down some dark paths,” he says. “If anybody can have a good idea or work stolen and monetized without compensation, what kind of world are we going to live in? We’re going to live in a world where all of the capital and power concentrates into the hands of five or six companies. That’s not a free society. That’s totalitarianism.”
Though an actor, Gordon-Levitt tends to talk about the inequities of AI as a societal problem, but he does believe that the entertainment industry is a “canary in the coal mine.” It’s why he co-founded the Creators Coalition on AI, which wants to be the industry’s voice at the table, calling for fair compensation, job protections and deepfake guardrails. The coalition’s signatories are a who’s who of Hollywood, with supporters including Natalie Portman, Kristen Stewart, Ben Affleck and Octavia Spencer.
But who is sitting at the other side of the table? Not necessarily the tech companies, says Gordon-Levitt. He believes it is futile to be “chasing around business leaders” who have fiduciary duties to their shareholders, not to safeguarding the creative industries. Instead, he advocates for influencing legislation and litigation. “The principles of intellectual property law still apply, but they need to be updated for this new technology,” he adds.
Gordon-Levitt has spoken in support of the stalled AI Accountability and Personal Data Protection Act and admits that changing the law in America will be an “uphill battle.” He takes solace in the fact that regulating big tech remains a bipartisan issue. “The American people very broadly agree that we don’t trust these tech companies. We don’t like the influence that they’re having on our lives, and we think it would be good for them to follow more laws. It’s the fight of our generation.”
In the meantime, Gordon-Levitt says studios should be forging partnerships with AI companies that protect IP and creators. Though declining to comment on Disney’s now-defunct $1 billion deal with OpenAI, and its subsequent cease-and-desist letter to Google, he says the moves were “directionally correct” because they signaled the Mouse House’s AI values.
“I would love to see more cooperative, solutions-oriented conversations. Those are much harder to have than conversations that point out problems,” he adds.
Gordon-Levitt is also channeling his interest into a Netflix feature about AI, which will star Rachel McAdams and shoot later this year. Jeff Daniels, Joel Edgerton, Caleb McLaughlin and Nnamdi Asomugha also joined the cast recently.
He conceived the movie nearly a decade ago but waited for AI to percolate into the collective consciousness before pursuing a greenlight. Gordon-Levitt is attached to direct, with Kieran Fitzgerald (Snowden) co-writing. They share a “story by” credit with Poker Face star Natasha Lyonne, who has her own horse in the AI race through her Asteria production company. He is tight-lipped on the plot, saying simply that it’s a “thriller.”
It’s probably safe to say that the story is unlikely to be a love letter to the tech titans currently building their AI empires. But for Gordon-Levitt, it’s also another creative way to amplify his voice in the urgent drive to establish AI accountability in Hollywood.