A new film opening this weekend, Daniel Roher's 'The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist,' frames the artificial intelligence debate not as a technical discussion, but as a source of profound personal anxiety. Roher, soon to be a father, uses the documentary to interrogate leading voices on whether AI will uplift or unravel society.

The film assembins a notable roster, from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to linguist Emily Bender and author Karen Hao. It contrasts the almost evangelical conviction of some builders in a coming artificial general intelligence with stark warnings from critics like Tristan Harris of the Center for Humane Technology, who shares colleagues' fears that unchecked AI could cut childhoods short.

Roher's conclusion lands on 'apocaloptimism'—a belief in both grave danger and human agency to steer the technology. The documentary suggests public sentiment already influences corporate plans, pointing to backlash against NVIDIA's DLSS 5, Microsoft scaling back Copilot features, and OpenAI shuttering its Sora video tool.

While engaging for a general audience with its brisk pace and animations, the film draws criticism for its limited depth. Perspectives from figures like former Google researcher Timnit Gebru, who connects AI to 'techno-fascism,' are mentioned but not fully explored. Compared to the upcoming 'Ghost in the Machine,' which links AI's rise to eugenics history, Roher's work focuses more on present tensions than root causes.

For data and machine learning engineers, the film underscores the growing public and political scrutiny their work now attracts. It captures a cultural moment where engineering decisions are no longer evaluated solely on technical merit, but through a lens of societal risk and ethical consequence.

Source: Engadget