Paul Mescal interviews Ridley Scott: ‘I was so ahead of the game. The Oxbridge lot were aghast’
Paul Mescal interviews Ridley Scott: ‘I was so ahead of the game. The Oxbridge lot were aghast’
As Gladiator II roars into the arena, its Oscar-winning director and star talk about horse-riding, Blade Runner, vodka, Scorsese, Elon Musk, vulnerability, AI … and Russell Crowe
(This interview between Mescal and Scott is brilliant.)
RS: [Elon] Musk will be the first one on Mars. He’s so far ahead of bureaucracy he can make decisions.
PM: But he’s also innately attached to modern-day bureaucracy.
RS: I don’t wanna really go there because I think there’s something even worse down the line. The world in Blade Runner is run by two people and we’re heading in that direction, if not worse.
And with AI, the first thing you ask of it is to design an AI smarter than itself. Then you get one smarter than you are. At what moment do you overload it with so much information it gets pressure? Pressure is emotion. And when that thing’s emotional, we are in trouble. If the AI doesn’t like us, we’re in deep shit. They could switch us off for fun.
PM: And then it’d be game over.
RS: Are you kidding? You’d be medieval in six weeks. You switch that off and we are so helpless it’s crazy. Have you got candles in your house? Have you got matches? I have candles, matches and guns because I live in LA. Do I ever want to use a gun? God forbid no, but you ought to be always slightly conscious of where the world is going right now.
