George Clooney Says the Government Shouldn’t Regulate AI

George Clooney has said he doesn’t trust the government to regulate AI.

“I don’t know that you want government to be regulating this either, because I sit and watch when Zuckerberg is testifying in front of, you know, a 94-year-old Chuck Grassley, and they’re like, ‘Well, how do you turn that computer on?’” he joked, before adding, “These are not the people that you want to entrust the holy grail with.”

Clooney, who was speaking at a Venice Film Festival symposium hosted by CAA and Finch & Partners, joined the panel on the future of creativity alongside diverse figures including artist Kennedy Yanko, filmmaker Giuseppe Tornator, clergyman Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça and National Gallery of Art president Darren Walker.

The actor said AI was dangerous because it could make people doubt about real things, as well as invent things that don’t exist. “It’s not just that you’ll see lies,” he said. “It also makes you question things that really do exist. It also that sort of world of fake news — suddenly you’re able to take things that really happened and say, ‘Well, that didn’t happen either.”

“You’ll have people who deny the Holocaust, and that will have the same weight in AI as facts.”

Clooney also talked about how his wife Amal Clooney, a prominent human rights lawyer, has come across laws that were invented by AI. They “will hallucinate and make up fake cases, and lawyers who don’t check it will quote those cases, or judges will quote those cases,” he warned.

“I think that’s some of the danger in all of this, is that we’re looking at something going, ‘We’re not sure where this is going to end, and we’re not sure who’s fully in charge,” he said, adding that these AI tools are owned by “richest people in the world.”

The risks presented by deep fakes could also lead to real-life consequences aside from disinformation. “That’s a joke for people, but what happens when you see a video of Putin saying he’s launched the first nuclear strike in the United States? And how do you discern it?”

Talking about his hopes for the next presidential election and for potential candidates, Clooney said, “We’re all very excited by this young senator from Georgia named Jon Ossoff. We’re all excited about Jimmy [J.B.] Pritzker. I’m from Kentucky, I like Andy Beshear as a governor.”

“We need young voices in there that are coming up with some new ideas and some new thoughts,” he added.

Clooney also stressed the “need to have a check and balance — We’re not supposed to agree. That’s the whole idea of democracy.”