To all those people that say watching movies is “a waste of time” and that “you don’t learn anything,” may I counter with the fact that the President of the United States is actually learning a lot from modern day cinema.
Specifically, Joe Biden is apparently a fan of Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible franchise, and was catching up on the latest installment (subtitled Dead Reckoning) while he was at Camp David when the movie’s theme concerned him.
For those that haven’t seen the newest Mission Impossible, first off, what have you been doing and why haven’t you seen it, and secondly, here’s the description of the film:
“Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his IMF team embark on their most dangerous mission yet: To track down a terrifying new weapon that threatens all of humanity before it falls into the hands of a mysterious, all-powerful enemy.”
That “all powerful enemy” in the movie is artificial intelligence, which is given the name “The Entity” and showcases its sentient nature multiple times throughout the film.
Bruce Reed, the deputy White House chief of staff, apparently watched the Mission Impossible movie with Biden, and could tell that the themes of the “AI is too powerful” storyline concerned the President.
Reed told Time Magazine:
“If he hadn’t already been concerned about what could go wrong with AI before that movie, he saw plenty more to worry about.”
Mission Impossible might not have been the President’s only motivation to limit artificial intelligence, but it definitely helped to expedite the process. This past week, Biden signed an executive order meant to guide the development of artificial intelligence, which will require more security and safety standards in the tech industry.
Federal agencies will now more actively oversee the exponential growth of the advanced technology, and will also call for AI developers to perform safety tests and send and share their reports (and anything else of value) with the government.
Long story short, Tom Cruise has been credited with saving movie theaters, and now it seems as though the fictitious movies he makes about saving the world are literally helping to save the real world as well.
Tom Cruise can’t be stopped, unless there’s a writers and actors strike. For those looking forward to the next installment of Mission Impossible, it was just recently announced that it would be delayed from June 2024 to May 2025.
Hopefully there’s nothing else in the now delayed movie that could have helped the President of the United States…
