The AI Doc Explores Promise and Peril of Artificial Intelligence
Daniel Roher’s documentary probes artificial intelligence’s risks and rewards, weighing apocalyptic fears against tech-world optimism.
Prepare to bow down to your AI overlords. Several of the experts interviewed in Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell’s engaging, if alarming, documentary The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist articulate some degree of existential dread contemplating a future ruled by artificial intelligence.
Citing the soon-to-be superhuman capabilities of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), and feats like an AI model that passed the bar exam, folks in the know offer dire prognoses. An anecdote about another AI model that was threatened with being replaced and resorted to blackmailing the company’s lead engineer over an illicit affair leaves onscreen interviewer Roher speechless.
Played for full impending-doom dramatic effect, and the deadpan comedy of Roher’s reactions, pronouncements about superhuman tech taking over the world form only one side of the argument. More moderate voices also have a say, as do a cohort dubbed Apocaloptimists.
The film is framed around father-to-be Roher (whose 2022 Navalny took home an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature) seeking out all the possibilities. For the sake of his unborn child, he pursues answers to all kinds of important questions posed by the advent of AI. Also because children are the future, he admits in voiceover to hoping it’s not all prognosis negative.
Surely someone has a positive outlook on what one expert refers to as the “vast, dramatic, unimaginable impact” of this technology that is increasingly integrated into people’s daily lives. From the common daily uses of artificial intelligence to an eye-opening catalog of dangerous AI-generated deepfakes, the movie packs in a breadth of knowledge with offbeat style and rapid-fire montages, some hand-animated.
The quirky storytelling works as a function of Roher’s personal POV. His anxious pursuit does lead to prominent voices in the industry and study of artificial intelligence who express hope more than gloom, like sibling Anthropic co-founders Daniela and Dario Amodei.
And then there’s peppy engineer and entrepreneur Peter Diamandis preaching “data-driven optimism,” and the belief that AI will lead to humanity solving seemingly intractable world problems.
Aided, no doubt, by a team of producers including Everything Everywhere All at Once co-writer/director Daniel Kwan, Roher and Tyrell wrangle sit-downs with leading AI thinkers and major players in the business of getting us all hooked on AI products. OpenAI’s Sam Altman stops by, as do Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis and the Amodeis. The CEO of xAI, Elon Musk, apparently RSVP’d yes, but then “got too busy” to come.
The filmmakers allow experts on all sides and in-between to have a say, and allow viewers to draw their own conclusions. One might easily conclude, though, that those talking about how we’ll solve world hunger and poverty, the “there’ll be no scarcity” cheerleaders, sound naïve.
Considering who profits from AI, and how much, the doomsayers sound more realistic, since most of the disaster scenarios involve putting profit before safety, and, well, that cat might already be out of the bag. Actually, someone in the film relays that concept with a more colorful, animal-related analogy that we won’t spoil here. But we get it: our collective safe walls might already have been breached.
Our public resources certainly have, as the movie covers in a brief section investigating the costs (in energy and drinkable water) of powering artificial intelligence. This tech might suck our reservoirs dry. Or, we might believe, it could create some self-sustaining energy source no human has ever conceived of, if that’s what helps you sleep better at night.
The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist (★★★★☆) is rated PG-13 and playing in theaters nationwide. Visit fandango.com.
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