“The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist” Review
Director: Daniel Roher, Charlie Tyrell Cast: Daniel Roher Distributor: Focus Features Running Time: 104 min. MPAA: PG-13
As artificial intelligence grows increasingly unstable, resource-hungry, and frighteningly integrated into government, it’s important to understand this concerning technology. The AI Doc, despite its title, isn’t a movie built to tackle this subject matter. This isn’t the documentary for someone who wants to understand the AI debate and its crucial details. This is for the doomscroller who needs a cinematic sedative on the issue, lulling them to sleep with a comfort so artificial it might as well be AI-generated.
The biggest problem is that the film’s director, Daniel Roher, approaches it from a highly personal angle that does more to reduce the issue than make it relatable. As an expectant father, he’s worried by the flood of AI news. Some say AI will be essential to the future and will benefit all of humanity. Others say it’s a deeply flawed system that will only lead us further toward the apocalypse. Daniel poses the same question to these talking heads: Is this a good time to have a child? You can probably guess who will say what based on their perceptions of AI. But if you’re faced with an existential threat about the world you might be bringing a kid into, which answer would you favor? For somebody like Daniel, he favors hope, even if there isn’t much to back it up. It’s less about being informed about this technology and more about having faith that it won’t erode our society.
And therein lies the fatal flaw with a movie like this. Daniel is not only ill-equipped to dive into AI, but too fearful to go to the deep end where we all should be on this topic. The documentary starts off on a bad note with Daniel asking AI to explain itself to him. Most answers seem to make Daniel’s brain hurt, as he takes off his glasses and sighs with every expert trying to find the right words. Even the artsy framing of trying to visualize AI through stop-motion and computer graphics adds little to the discussion. As Daniel starts learning more about AI, he starts hearing the dark facts. He’s not happy with how AI is framed, and it makes him weep for his child’s future. His pregnant wife, not desiring to be stressed, demands that Daniel be strong and find some hope. But given how little Daniel understands this technology, thoughts of doom keep arising; he needs to hear good news from somebody who knows what he’s talking about, instead of some documentarian who tosses quirky animations between talking-head interviews.
Maybe, Daniel theorizes, if he could speak with the developers of AI, he’d be put at ease. Enter Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, sitting down for an interview to give Daniel some good news. Daniel, desperate for any good news, openly accepts Sam’s promise of a better tomorrow. He admits relief at Sam’s words, remarking that this hope seems most genuine when coming from THE AI guy. After all, why would Sam lie? What would he have to gain? I mean, aside from absurdly lucrative contracts with other businesses and the government. It’s not like Sam is going to say the AI he’s developed is unstable and currently in hot water for breaking numerous laws. That would mean scaling back and potentially ending his company. Of course, Daniel looks about as much into Sam Altman as he does into AI itself, taking the word of the loudest voices at face value without much of any questioning. Mercifully, Daniel didn’t manage to get Elon Musk for this documentary, and I likely would’ve put a fist through the wall if I’d had to watch Daniel fawn over Elon’s artificial arguments for AI’s necessity.
It is incredibly misleading to label this The AI Doc, given how little it understands about the issue or bothers to explore AI in general. The added title of “apocaloptimist” would be more fitting, as it is a term Daniel picks up from one of the interviews, referring to somebody who can look at all the world-ending developments but still hold some hope for the future. That sounds like stoicism, but I’m sure the cute name sounds better, in the same way that AI experts glaze over the issue as a technological evolution of humanity and not something that should be held to higher scrutiny. This film can never rise to tackling such an issue, where even the harsh criticism from Daniel’s wife about the initial ending centering on babies isn’t replaced with something better. What might feel like a reassuring feel-good documentary for expecting parents who want comfort in this AI hellscape will only aggravate those who don’t buy into the idea that AI is unstoppable. Perhaps those new parents should just flip on some narrative-based comfort movies instead of being lied to by AI advocates pitching vibes from a platforming filmmaker too emotional to investigate those vibes.
