‘Battlestar Galactica' star says show's AI warnings more timely as sci-fi fantasies come to life
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — "Battlestar Galactica" star Tricia Helfer feels the show was a prescient warning about artificial intelligence when it debuted more than 20 years ago.
"We did warn against AI while we were shooting it," Helfer told Fox News Digital at the Beverly Hills Film Festival this week.
She continued, "It was 20 years ago, and I've recently re-watched it and went, 'Oh my gosh, it's even more relevant now.' So I think we just really need to be careful. It's a slippery slope between using it to our advantage and having it maybe be able to control us a little bit."
"I think we're a little bit far off from the humanoid Cylons yet and humanoid robots, but I don't know, they're coming," Helfer added.
"Battlestar Galactica" debuted on the SyFy channel in 2004, reimagined from the 1978 original series, and follows the battle between humans and Cylons, the humanoid sentient robots humans created that turned on them and launched a nuclear attack that nearly wiped out the entirety of humanity.
Helfer played a Cylon in the series, named Number Six, who played a key role in the story as both antagonist and ally.
Regarding AI, the Canadian-born actress said, "It's not going away, so I think it's something that we're going to have to embrace. But I think one of the things 'Battlestar Galactica' did was warn about it. And that's, I think, something that we need to make sure [is] that we have is regulations and an understanding of how quickly and how overwhelming this technology could become."
WATCH: 'Battlestar Galactica' star says show's AI warnings more relevant than ever
A "Battlestar Galactica" reboot was in the works at Peacock with Sam Esmail, the showrunner behind "Mr. Robot," but it has since been halted and shopped elsewhere, per Variety.
In 2023, Esmail spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about how the new version's view of AI would be evolving from the original.
"The world is changing way too fast for us. I mean, when we started working on it, I obviously was aware of AI, but now, four or five years later, it's in the public consciousness and now that's so influential in how we're going to tell the story," Esmail told the outlet. "The allegory piece is something that is crystallized in a different way, too. The focus is the same, which is the fear of tech and how it might take over, but this idea of just 'the robots are going to be our overlords' is a very facile and overly simplistic way of looking at it. Now that the audience is more sophisticated about the consequences, I think we have to match that with 'Battlestar.'"
"It's a slippery slope between using it to our advantage and having it maybe be able to control us a little bit."
While Helfer believes humanoid robots are still in the somewhat distant future, there are some attempts to create them in the present day.
Suzanne Somers' widower, Alan Hamel, recently worked with an AI company called Hollo to create a "twin" of his late wife.
"I am working with Hollo, an AI company to create Suzanne AI. It's very exciting to think about being able to interact with Suzanne's twin," Hamel told Fox News Digital in a statement last month.
The robot replica of Somers trained on her film and TV appearances, as well as her books, to bring back the "essence" of the "Three's Company" star, according to Hollo.AI CEO Rex Wong.
When it came to the Suzanne AI, Wong said, "The robot, which we did in collaboration with Realbotix, is the first of many AI versions of Suzanne, but AI Suzanne can also be accessible via call, chat and text. AI Suzanne highlights how we can extend a person's legacy and bring it to the next generation, and one of the services we will be rolling out will be the ability to preserve one's legacy for future generations or bring back a loved one."
Somers died in 2023 after a long battle with breast cancer.
Hamel told the New York Post that the idea for the Somers AI-powered bot "absolutely did come from her" and that "She may have known her life was going to be shortened [after a lifelong battle with cancer]."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Chicago Tribune
16 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Lawyers for R. Kelly claim wrongdoing by prosecutors, say imprisoned singer's life in danger
Lawyers for imprisoned R&B superstar R. Kelly claim they have uncovered evidence of government wrongdoing and that the Chicago-born singer's life is in danger. Kelly's legal team said in a news release Tuesday they will be filing an emergency motion in Chicago federal court documenting their allegations and seeking Kelly's immediate release from a federal penitentiary in North Carolina, where he's serving a 30-year sentence for sexual misconduct. The motion, the lawyers say, will be 'backed by concrete evidence and declarations that expose a disturbing pattern of government corruption and criminal misconduct' by federal prosecutors in Chicago and New York as well as officials with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. The news release claims the officials unjustly manufacture charges against Kelly and are trying to cover it up. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in Chicago could not immediately be reached for comment. Kelly's lead attorney, Beau Brindley, and other members of his office plan to hold a news conference outside the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago this afternoon. Kelly, 58, was convicted in 2022 in Chicago of child pornography for making explicit videos of himself and his then-teenage goddaughter, who testified at trial under the pseudonym Jane. He also was convicted of inappropriate sexual relations with Jane and two other teenage girls, 'Pauline' and 'Nia.' The jury acquitted Kelly and two co-defendants on charges they conspired to retrieve incriminating tapes and rig his 2008 trial by pressuring Jane to lie to investigators about their relationship and refuse to testify against him. Kelly was also found not guilty of filming himself with Jane on a video that jurors never saw. Prosecutors said 'Video 4? was not played because Kelly's team successfully buried it, but defense attorneys questioned whether it existed at all. Brindley represented Kelly's former manager, Derrel McDavid, in that case, but has since been hired by Kelly. Meanwhile, Kelly was also convicted in federal court in New York in 2021 of racketeering conspiracy charges alleging his musical career doubled as a criminal enterprise aimed at satisfying his predatory sexual desires. He's serving his time in a medium-security federal prison facility in Butner, North Carolina, and is not eligible for release until the year 2045, records show. Kelly also has a pending lawsuit against the Bureau of Prisons alleging a former employee leaked his jail calls and other information to a video blogger.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Scientists make jaw-dropping discovery after satellite images reveal what's hiding over a mile beneath Antarctic ice: 'It's like uncovering a time capsule'
Scientists studying the East Antarctic Ice Sheet discovered a 34-million-year-old river-carved landscape hidden under more than a mile of ice, The Brighter Side of News reported. The concealed world offered a unique glimpse into the history and potential future of the critical ice sheet. "It's like uncovering a time capsule," said Stewart Jamieson of Durham University, the study's lead author, per The Brighter Side of News. The preserved landscape, which existed before the formation of the Antarctic sheet ice, spanned nearly 4 million square miles, providing experts with an unprecedented view into the region's geological history. The team used RADARSAT, a Canadian satellite system, to detect the landscape beneath the ice, per The Brighter Side of News. By studying the preserved landscape, researchers can better understand previous cycles of freezing and melting that can be crucial to predicting how future Antarctic ice melt will unfold. Because the Antarctic ice sheets sit on land rather than floating in water like Arctic ice, their melting would have a dramatic impact on sea levels around the world. According to the University of Texas Institute of Geophysics, the basin where the researchers discovered the hidden landscape contained enough ice to raise sea levels by a catastrophic 25 feet or more. Still, the land under the surface of that crucial ice sheet remained more mysterious to researchers than the surface of Mars. "And that's a problem because the landscape controls the way that ice in Antarctica flows, and it controls the way it might respond to past, present, and future climate change," Jamieson told UTIG. Researchers expressed hope that the discovery will lead to similar findings in other regions. "This landscape hanging out there in the middle of the basin is a little bit of an odd phenomenon," said Duncan Young, a research scientist for UTIG. "We're now working to answer why it was preserved and use that knowledge to find others." Combined, the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland contain two-thirds of Earth's fresh water, and they are melting at an astounding rate, according to NASA. The Antarctic ice sheet alone is shedding a jaw-dropping 150 billion tons of ice every single year. While studying the potential future impacts of rising global temperatures is important, it is just as important to prevent planet-warming pollution from entering the atmosphere in the first place. By taking steps like installing solar on your home, switching to an electric vehicle, or growing your own food in a home garden, you can do your part to help limit increasing global temperatures and sea-level rises. While these might seem like small things to do in the face of such a momentous challenge, if we multiply those actions by millions or even billions of people, we can make a real difference. Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Elle
2 hours ago
- Elle
Susan Choi Recommends a Book So Engrossing It Made Her (Almost) Lose Her Luggage
Welcome to Shelf Life, What began as a short story in The New Yorker is now Susan Choi's sixth and latest novel, The Indiana-born, Texas-raised, New York-based bestselling author studied literature at Yale University; was once The New Yorker and co-edited Likes: theater; Dislikes: Good at: rocking her Bad at: cleaning menorahs; coming up with Scroll through the reads she recommends below. The book that…: …made me miss a train stop: It's not exactly a missed-the-train moment, but I was re-reading …made me weep uncontrollably: Philip Roth's …I recommend over and over again: Jenny Erpenbeck's …I swear I'll finish one day: All of Proust. Or even just some decent amount of Proust. I love the prose but also find it so exquisite it's almost unbearable to continue reading for any length of time, at least for me, which makes me feel like a total failure as a reader. I might have to set aside a year of my life just to read Proust. ...I read in one sitting; it was that good: Sarah Moss's …currently sits on my nightstand: …made me laugh out loud: Paul Beatty's …has a sex scene that will make you blush: In Francisco Goldman's ...I've re-read the most: ...makes me feel seen: looking at me, like it knew exactly who I was. The protagonist has, like me, a real culture-clash background, and up to the point in my life when I read the book—the '90s—I'd never encountered that in fiction, so it was very emotional when I finally did. ...everyone should read: ...I could only have discovered at ...fills me with hope: Everything by elating observer of us humans and the strange things we do. Bonus questions: If I could live in any library or bookstore in the world, it would be: The literary organization/charity I support: Read Susan Choi's Book Recommendations Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov Now 24% Off Credit: Vintage Everyman by Philip Roth Now 12% Off Credit: Vintage Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck Now 66% Off Credit: New Directions Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss Now 50% Off Credit: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Real Americans by Rachel Khong Now 32% Off Credit: Vintage The Sellout by Paul Beatty Credit: Farrar, Straus and Giroux The Ordinary Seamen by Francisco Goldman Credit: Grove Press The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald Now 30% Off Credit: Charles Scribner's Sons A Feather on the Breath of God by Sigrid Nunez Now 36% Off Credit: Picador Paper Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie Credit: Riverhead Books
