Serendipity35

If you’ve found yourself both fascinated and/or unsettled by the accelerating pace of artificial intelligence, THE AI DOC; OR HOW I BECAME AN APOCALOPTIMIST offers one way to lean into that tension rather than avoid it.

This week it was my film for the Film Matinee Club with Montclair Film. Our discussion after viewing the film was "spirited." Artificial intelligence certainly pushes people's intellectual and emotional buttons.

Directed by Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell and hosted by Roher. It is about making a documentary, and it is about AI, and it is also a personal narrative centered on Roher’s own fears about the future, especially as he and his wife contemplate having their first child in an AI-driven world.

Across all sources, the documentary’s expert roster includes top AI CEOs, pioneering researchers, alignment and ethics leaders, and public intellectuals. The film intentionally spans “doomers,” “optimists,” and “apocaloptimists,” giving a wide-angle view of the AI debate.

Roher becomes an Apocal (as in apocalypse) optimist because (spoiler alert) as he learns more and understands AI's capabilities, he begins to see more positive possibilities. And yet the answer to whether AI will cause the end of us or make our lives very much improved is still an open question. Even the experts don't know no matter what side they take on the AI debate.

The film very deliberately does not settle on a single answer about the future of AI. The film’s whole structure is built around the tension between optimism and existential risk, and it ends by embracing that unresolved state rather than resolving it./p>