Love it or hate it, AI has burst into our lives over the past few years. But could it also be humanity’s undoing?
That’s the question at the heart of The AI Doc: Or How I Became An Apocaloptimist. Directors Daniel Roher (Academy Award winner Navalny) and Charlie Tyrell interview AI enthusiasts and detractors alike about what’s next for the technology. Roher approaches the film from the lens of a father-to-be: With the rise of AI, is now even a good time to be bringing a child into the world?
Based on The AI Doc‘s trailer, it certainly doesn’t seem like it.
“I know people who work on AI risk who don’t expect their children to make it to high school,” Center for Humane Technology co-founder Tristan Harris tells a shocked Roher in the trailer.
Elsewhere, Harris’ colleague Aza Raskin compares the threat of AI to that of global nuclear war.
Harris and Raskin are both AI “doomers,” but The AI Doc also features the voices of leading AI “accelerationists” like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google DeepMind CEO and co-founder Demis Hassabis, and Anthropic CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei.
“I want you to promise me that this is gonna go well,” Roher tells Altman before they begin their interview.
“That is impossible,” Altman responds. Reassuring!
The AI Doc‘s trailer isn’t all doom and gloom, though. It also highlights AI’s benefits, especially when it comes to research. Still, the message remains one of caution, even in the face of what can often feel like a runaway AI train. Fitting then, that Daniel Kwan, Everything Everywhere All At Once co-writer/co-director and co-founder of Creators Coalition on AI, is a producer on the doc, as he’s actively engaged in how AI can be ethically incorporated into filmmaking.
The AI Doc: Or How I Became An Apocaloptimist screens at SXSW this year. It hits theaters March 27.
