Any honest and unbiased conversation about artificial intelligence must begin by acknowledging how insurmountable the issue is. No matter how deeply you cling to your own ideological positions, anyone claiming to have truly grasped AI is delusional.
We live in an era where humans are deliberately creating a technology that seems poised to strip us of our status as the most intelligent species on Earth. It could render most of the jobs we do to survive completely obsolete. It could take us to a point where a machine-induced mass extinction is no longer just a science fiction premise. And it could cure all our diseases, provide every child on Earth with a free, first-class education, maximize our farmland to eliminate world hunger, and solve problems we haven't even begun to anticipate. Or, as insufferable as it sounds to point this out at parties, the results of our AI experiment could fall somewhere in between those extremes.
Directors: Daniel Roher, Charlie Tyrell
Stars: Sam Altman, Daniela Amodei, Dario Amodei
Daniel Roher never claims to have cracked AI, which is why his film "The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist" is worth watching. The Oscar-winning director of "Navalny" and new father set out to make a film about AI to soothe his anxieties about bringing a child into a world with such massive change on the horizon. By his own admission, he didn't know much about the subject, so he starts from scratch by asking engineers to explain what AI actually is. (You'd be surprised how long it takes him to get a straight answer.) From there, he talks to the most pessimistic pessimists, the most optimistic optimists, and eventually reaches some of the top CEOs shaping the future of AI.
The film can be a bit of a shock, as we're forced to watch serious people intelligently argue that humanity will disappear from the planet in 20 years and that a literal utopia might be on the horizon. But that's a critique of our demented world, not of Roher's filmmaking. The director's on-screen role is that of the deciding vote, constantly shifting his stance before another informed voice brings him back to neutrality and the inquiry begins anew. His preferred term to describe his position on AI is "apocalyptic-optimistic," as he remains optimistic about its potential even as he recognizes its capacity to cause an apocalypse.
The film addresses the crossroads that every conversation about AI must reach: how to achieve the good without the catastrophe? That debate encompasses technology, economics, geopolitics, the allocation of natural resources, and more philosophical questions about human relationships, religion, and what it truly means to live a purposeful life. The situation becomes even more complex when it becomes clear that we're not really talking about a technology, but about the future of human nature. As exciting as some AI scenarios may be, most rely on humans suddenly abandoning all their selfish instincts and deciding to work together. Which, historically, hasn't been a winning bet! Technology to end scarcity might be closer than we think, but it's quite possible that the five largest companies racing to develop Artificial General Intelligence (OpenAI, Google DeepMind, X, Meta, and Nvidia) aren't thinking entirely altruistically about it.
"The AI Doc" presents a worldview that could be described as cautiously optimistic about AI technology but pessimistic about humanity's ability to use it for good. But aside from calling for some bland, common-sense regulations that shouldn't be controversial for any sensible person, Roher doesn't try to convince anyone. After laying out all the facts, the film focuses much more on exploring the human story of how each of us has to grapple with a subject of unimaginable magnitude.
That's where Roher's first child comes in. While the documentary begins with his anxiety about becoming a father and his determination to prove his son will grow up in a safe world, it ends with the filmmaker metaphorically surrendering peacefully. Any parent will tell you that having children isn't a decision that can be made purely rationally, and that many of the benefits of parenting aren't easily explained tangibly.
As with AI, Roher's only path as a father is to accept something he doesn't fully understand. Being a parent isn't for everyone, but the specificity of Roher's story becomes universal when you realize that we all have to navigate the ups and downs of our lives while finding a way to reflect on the defining issue of our time.
Whatever happens, our era on Earth may well be remembered as the Age of AI. The film argues that we can either be the generation that embraces dynamic new technology and ushers in an era of prosperity, or we can be the fools who let the world end by allowing the egomaniacs who run five corporations to run rampant. This binary line of thinking may ultimately prove exaggerated, but it certainly doesn't seem so right now.
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