I saw the new film The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist upon its release in theaters this weekend. It’s a fascinating, scary, and occasionally hopeful look at AI, especially the coming of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
You should see this film as soon as you can, in the theaters now or when it is released to streaming platforms.
The idea around AGI is technology that can understand, learn, and apply knowledge across any intellectual task at a human or superhuman level. Unlike current AI that conducts discreet tasks such as a LLM chatbot that analyzes text or a smartphone map that takes you to your destination via the most efficient route at the time, AGI is technology that combines functions to become vastly more intelligent than humans.
The film’s description: “From the Academy Award®-winning filmmakers behind Everything Everywhere All at Once and Navalny; a father-to-be tries to figure out what is happening with all this AI insanity. The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist is a hand-made, eye-opening documentary about the most powerful technology humanity has ever created... and what’s at stake if we get it wrong.”
I liked the way the interviews were conducted – at a studio built by filmmaker. That means that everybody was on equal footing, with the same lighting, background and details, allowing a focus on what’s being said.
Something like 40 experts were asked to explain AI and AGI. Many were skeptical or downright scared while a few were enthusiastic cheerleaders.
Leaders of three of the five biggest AI companies appeared: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis. (Sadly, xAI CEO Elon Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg declined to participate.)
Here is a taster of some of the things people said in the film:
Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI: “If this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong.”
Tristan Harris, co-founder, Center for Humane Technology: “I'll just be honest. I know people who work on AI risk who don't expect their children to make it to high school. If we can be the most mature version of ourselves, there might be a way through this.”
Aza Raskin, co-founder, Center for Humane Technology: “We need to take a threat from AI as seriously as global nuclear war.”
Dr. Dario Amodei, CEO and co-founder, Anthropic: “Am I hopeful? Yes. Am I confident that it'll go right? Absolutely not.”
Peter H. Diamandis, MD, founder & chair, XPrize and Singularity University: “This is the most extraordinary time ever. The only time more exciting than today is tomorrow.”
At the end of the film, viewers are encouraged to visit a website called The Human Movement, where they see this statement: “Social media’s race for attention took our children. Now, trillion-dollar AI companies are locked in a race to take billions of people’s livelihoods, agency, and future. The human movement is about protecting our humanity and building a pro-human future with AI.”
Several people in the film suggested that governments might be the answer. That thought filled me with dread. I can’t imagine current elected officials in Washington even understanding AI, let alone having the intelligence to figure out how to save humanity from it, should it come to that.
Add to the US government basically ignoring AI the fact that there is an AI arms race playing out with other countries including China. For me, that makes the likelihood of a positive future dimmer.
This film is eye opening and worth the effort to get to a theater to see it.
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