Joseph Gordon-Levitt, in his new U.N.-appointed role, addresses AI impact

As to the Times‘ first and most obvious question—why should anyone listen to an actor about issues such as these—Gordon-Levitt was curt. “Very fair question,” he said into his phone outside the U.N. “Don’t listen to an actor. You should read Human Compatible by Stuart Russell. Go look up [AI pioneer and ethical use advocate] Yoshua Bengio. Read posts by people who work in alignment and safety and policy. You don’t want to read all those things? Well, I did! So, you know, if you want to listen to me, that’s a shortcut.” 

“What we don’t want is a bunch of people confused or apathetic while these very fast-moving businesses design the future by themselves just in the interests of their own profits,” he said. “A lot of what needs to happen, I think, has to do with communication, which is ultimately kind of what acting or filmmaking is.” When asked what truly worried him about AI, Gordon-Levitt chafed at the prospect of his efforts being reduced to clickbait. (*coughs, chuckles nervously*) “At the risk of annoying The New York Times, I would object to that question just because reducing these concerns into one sound bite of fear—that’s one of the problems […] The thing that worries me is a lot more complicated and a lot more boring to talk about because it’s a lot more dense. The decline of democracy, the decline of human empathy. These companies are betting on the notion that they’re going to take over the entire economy. That would be totalitarianism, and that would be really bad.”

It’s worth noting that Creators Coalition On AI, which Gordon-Levitt co-founded in 2025 with Affleck among its cosignatories, isn’t anti-AI, but advocates for responsible AI use in the entertainment industry, including transparency, fair compensation and protections for creatives, and guardrails against deepfakes. For his efforts, he was named one of Time‘s “100 Most Influential People In AI” earlier this year. You can watch Gordon-Levitt touch briefly on such subjects as how tech giants are training their models to get people to fall in love with them and whether the U.N. can be effective in worldwide AI regulation (he’s hopeful!) in the video below.