Parents' Guide to The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist

This documentary is more of a personal essay than a definitive look at emerging technology, but it's skillfully made and includes ideas both scary and hopeful that are very much worth pondering. And The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist certainly has a high-profile pedigree. Roher won an Oscar for his previous documentary, the powerful Navalny, and producers Daniel Kwan and Jonathan Wang also won Oscars for Everything Everywhere All at Once. The film begins with Roher asking what might seem to be a simple question—"What is AI?"—but it's something that even the experts struggle to answer. From there, Roher wisely delivers the (potential) bad news first, and, honestly, it's scary. Viewers are likely to feel Roher's existential dread. Then comes the good news, which feels much better but leaves Roher—and viewers—polarized.

It's the third act in which Roher struggles to come to a conclusion; this is also the part in which it's acknowledged that the five biggest companies creating AI are competing for the top, very lucrative, spot, and that speed may be more important than safety to them. (Roher manages to get an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who wouldn't return the calls of filmmaker Adam Bhala Lough for his own AI movie, Deepfaking Sam Altman.) Throughout, Roher includes clever editing, animated sequences, handmade art, and other charming touches that highlight humanity rather than machines. The truth is that no one fully understands the full breadth of this technology, and no one knows exactly what's going to happen, but thanks to movies like The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, we can at least try to think about how to be prepared.