Mar 30, 2026
3 min read
AI Doctor: Or How I Became a Doomsday Optimist?is seeking a middle ground between the extremes of technology, ultimately letting tech executives like Sam Altman off the hook.
Getting an interview with Sam Altman isn't easy — just ask Adam Bhala Lough, creator of the recent documentary Deepfaking Sam Altman.
Lough originally planned a feature exploring the possibilities and dangers of artificial intelligence that would center around a conversation with the CEO of OpenAI.But after months of ignoring his question, he opted instead for a chatbot that mimicked Altman's speech patterns and used a digital avatar to approximate his facial expressions.
The real Altman sat down, however, for the new AI Doc: Or how I became an Apocaloptimist, which hits theaters on March 27. So did Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, and Demis Hassabis, cofounder and CEO of Google DeepMind Technologies.(Although the filmmakers said they requested interviews with Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and X's Elon Musk, they didn't show up.)
That's a very good level available to documentary filmmaker and actor Daniel Roher, whose 2022 documentary Navalny about Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny won an Academy Award.The problem is, when they're on camera, Altman et al.say little we haven't heard before - and they carefully analyze the answers about the responsibility of the other species.When Roher asks Altman why someone who can trust him to lead the rapid acceleration of AI, given the serious challenges, Altman replies, "You don't have to."That's the end of the line of questions.
AI Doc's shot is Roer's anxiety over the imminent arrival of his son and first child with wife, director Caroline Lindy.He wonders what kind of world his boy will inherit and whether the development of artificial intelligence will eliminate the experiences that shape us into self-sufficient adults.Roer's first few interviews seem to confirm all of his worst fears.Tristan Harris, co-founder of the nonprofit Center for Humane Technology, deals one of the worst knocks on the foreboding: "I know people dealing with the risks of artificial intelligence who don't expect their kids to get to high school," he says, evoking a scenario in which technology destroys the very infrastructure of traditional education.
Despite the growing sense of panic, Roher and co-director Charlie Tyrell deliver an impressively powerful crash course in artificial intelligence and the biggest questions it raises.Visually, the charming man of the film is Roher's colorful drawings and paintings, while the whimsical stop-motion sequences suggest the influence of Oscar-winning director-producer Daniel Kwan from Everywhere All At Once.Amid the signs of suffering, vibrant creativity is the hope Roher desperately seeks.gives a part.
Yet subsequent interviews with Silicon Valley techno-optimists promising artificial intelligence to beat disease and climate change — followed by CEOs striking the usual balance between hype and tones of sober caution — pass without much scrutiny of the grandiose claims.There is hardly a moment to consider why or how we should expect the current array of large, fallible language models to deliver.The mythical "artificial general intelligence" (AGI) that will surpass human cognition has, at best, slanderous admissions (for example, from venture capitalist Reed Hoffman) that any benefit will have unspecified harm.
Even as the big players say the short-term consequences of AI are as important as the emergence of nuclear weapons, they stick to the familiar rules of the game, presenting their products as somehow uniquely important;implying that only they can be trusted to develop them.
The paper rightly explains that the unregulated AI gold rush is driven by the evil motives of global markets and the struggle for dominance.It observes how this mania concentrates wealth and power in the smallest possible circle of elites.Strange, that Doc AI has finally carved out a position that needs to be heard from both sides where the general public, not the executives under the microscope, is tasked with steering the AI revolution in the right direction.Foreigners also think Roher has harshly criticized the AI economy in the news cycle, dismissing it as a "Ponzi scheme."
As he prepares to become a father, Roher talks to his father, telling him that although history has many powers beyond him, he will be a great father no matter what—and that each generation must deal with the pain of saving a life in an emergency.
However, Roer and Tyrrell urge viewers to take action, concluding the film by saying that ordinary citizens can put pressure on governments and companies to ensure that artificial intelligence develops in a safe and beneficial way.For the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, this part of the plan seems to have been created with collective thought.
After a screening of the AI documentary at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles on Monday, Tyrrell, Kwan, Harris, and producer Ted Tremper gave a short interview, each of them reinforcing the idea that the show is an effective way to raise awareness about AI as a very important issue."We're happy to continue this conversation," Quan said at one point.All." But he noted that the film encourages viewers to "join hands with us and try to figure out what we need to do together to walk bravely into the darkness."
Yet the documentary's vision of positive change is murky, perhaps clouded by both the need for a rosy ending for Rohr's extended family and the subtle suspension of disbelief every time a billionaire enters the frame.
In this story, these executives are probably just along for the ride, and their position is just a fluke — which puts them in a bit of a tizzy when they admit they don't fully understand what's going on inside the AI models they've already scaled.If we weren't worried about these programs quickly gaining consciousness or purpose, we might at least consider treating these people as such.
