Hollywood director James Cameron recently said that despite obvious political differences, he still agrees with Elon Musk on space exploration and artificial intelligence safety. In a podcast interview, the liberal director praised Musk's achievements at SpaceX. "I can differentiate between a person, his politics and what he's trying to accomplish as long as they align with what I think are good goals," he said.
Musk responded to Cameron's interview shared by a netizen on X, saying, "Jim understands physics, which is rare in Hollywood."
Cameron and Musk have had a technical bond for years. Back in 2011, Cameron told NBC News: "Elon is making great strides. I think he is the person most likely to succeed the space shuttle program and provide humans with a path to low-Earth orbit." Cameron was right, SpaceX is now the dominant force in American spaceflight.
Cameron refused to sever ties with Musk even after Musk embraced conservative politics, serving as a senior adviser in the Trump administration and head of the Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE).
Both have warned that artificial intelligence could pose an existential threat to humanity, although Musk noted that Tesla's products, like Optimus Prime, could usher in an era of sustainable abundance. Musk recently predicted that money and jobs could become irrelevant as artificial intelligence develops, while Cameron warned of a deeper crisis.
"Because in general, the whole risk of artificial intelligence ... is that we lose our purpose as humans. We lose our jobs. We lose a sense of, 'Okay, what are we here for?'" Cameron said in an interview. "We are these flawed biological machines, and computers can theoretically be more precise, more correct, faster, all of those things. It's going to be a threshold existential problem."
He concluded: "I just think it's important as a human civilization to prioritize this. We're going to turn the Earth into our spaceship. That's what we really need to think about."