The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, which premiered Tuesday at the Sundance Film Festival, takes a compelling human approach to artificial intelligence. It both explains the technology and its dangers while allaying the most extreme fears.
Daniel Roher, who co-directed with Charlie Tyrell, set out to understand AI. Through a wealth of experts in the field, archival footage, creative illustrations and candid personal footage, the film charts his journey.
The first wave of experts confirms the worst fears of AI's negative potential. The second wave offers so many positive potential uses that it seems utopian.
Further exploration demonstrates how both are tied together. The same AI that could cure cancer could make bioweapons. The same AI that can tutor a child can spy on that child and manipulate them for a corporation's benefit.
Daniel's wife, Caroline Lindy, keeps him accountable. When he's too utopian, she brings him down to Earth and when he's too pessimistic, she forces him to reconcile it.
This keeps all the tech talk grounded in human concerns. The experts do explain how AI models use data to learn to speak and address users, but the focus is on where humans still fit once AI exceeds us.
Humor also makes it human, from Daniel roping Caroline into narrating to expressing his panic with impeccable comic timing. Some of the original visual representations are Daniel's literal mountain of anxiety and animated conversations between him and Christine.
Proponents of data driven optimism acknowledge that every advancement comes with potential downsides. They remind Daniel and viewers that we keep trying to solve them, and AI might help address the problems of its own design, such as environmental impact.
The hope for coexisting with AI has stakes for humans and families. The film asks many questions that remain to be answered, such as if nobody has to work anymore, how will people make money?
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The film suggests AI could one day offer better health care, but that begs another question the film does not ask: if AI can improve health care, how would we decouple that from the health insurance industry?
The point of the film is that there are infinite questions that need to be asked and addressed.
Fortunately, the film offers guides to exploring those answers, and knowing what follow-up questions to ask. While the film introduces brand new fears on top of the usual ones, it also suggests hopeful possibilities.
Three of the five biggest AI CEOs -- OpenAI's Sam Altman, Anthropic's Dario Amodei and DeepMind's Demis Hassabis -- sat down with Daniel to address his concerns. Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk did not, both for different reasons.
Soundbites and montages are edited very fast to reflect the human energy of processing all this and flow through all the concepts in a digestible way. Roher goes from curiosity to fear to ease to reconciliation, back to fear, a little bit of denial and finally acceptance.
The AI doc ends on a human note, too, empowering viewers to get involved with AI if it concerns them. Experts offer five direct forms of action, and the film suggests ways to be ready for even the unforeseen battles to come.
Focus Features will release The AI Doc March 27.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
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