A father-to-be tries to figure out what is happening with all this AI insanity.
From directors Charlie Tyrell and Daniel Roher, whose 2022 film “Navalny” won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, comes a sobering look at the implications of Artificial Intelligence and the crossroads where humanity finds itself.
Featuring numerous interviews from scientists, futurists, the engineers directly responsible for building the AI platforms that seem more ubiquitous every day, and two CEO’s of the companies developing them, all framed by Roher’s own artistic talent and sensibilities.
Daniel Kwan, one-half of “The Daniels,” who shared the Best Director Oscar (and just about every other award imaginable) for their 2022 hit, “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” helps produce, and his print is all over this film. The multimedia presentation beautifully frames this documentary as a story of human ‘art’ vs. AI ‘output.’
Aza Raskin, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology and one of the many interviewees in the film, reiterates the message of an open letter to world governments by the CEOs of OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic: “We need to take a threat from AI as seriously as the threat of nuclear war.”
The AI Doc is a beautifully human take on the ever-approaching singularity, the reckoning that will have to be made between humanity and the world-changing AI that already surpasses us in intelligence. The key to our destruction lies in the hands of a few profit-minded CEOs. The most frustrating point of the film for me came when Daniel interviewed Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI.
The businesslike way he speaks about AI’s current and future capabilities and applications made my skin crawl. Daniel, himself preparing for fatherhood during the documentary’s development, asks his interviewees whether now is a good time to bring a child into the world. One responds with the bone-chilling statement that he knows people who work in AI Risk Assessment who no longer believe their children will make it to high school.
The CEOs of these companies, for the most part, insist that they’re developing these technologies to improve humanity’s quality of life, but AI has been around for years now, and we all know that is not the case. The truth is, they are trying to create as much value as possible for their shareholders; this film makes that very clear.
AI, from my admittedly cynical point of view, seems like more tools for the oppressor class to use to rob the 99%. But in this ever-shortening time we have left before every piece of media we consume is just muck spit out by an AI, at least we have films like this.
“The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist” premiered at this year’s 2026 SXSW Film Festival and will arrive in theaters on Friday, March 27th.
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