A Wildly Diverting New Documentary About AI That Already Feels Out of Date

The last time I quoted the author Robert Heinlein in these pages was when writing about Don Siegel’s “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956). Much like Heinlein’s observation on how each generation that comes along considers itself the generation that invented sex, every new cohort of filmmakers sees fit to put a spin on Siegel’s allegory on mass conformity.Given all the news reports have it that Gen Z’ers are undergoing a “sex recession,” perhaps it’s best to put that literary trope on hold. But what about the end of the world? We’ve been hearing about that for millienia as well. Back in 2009, a Chicago-based rock ‘n’ roll troupe, Wilco, put out “You Never Know,” a song that offered a gentle dressing-down of the sentiment: “Come on children, you’re acting like children/ Every generation thinks it’s the end of the world.” The tune’s jauntiness put a winking spin on the self-importance of youth, as well as those who predict the end of times. A similar sentiment is voiced by Caroline Lindy in “The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist,” a picture co-directed by Charlie Tyrell and Daniel Roher. Ms. Lindy is a filmmaker — her genre-bending update of “Beauty and the Beast,” “Your Monster” (2024), garnered respectable notices — who is about to have her first child. Toward the end of “The AI Doc,” we watch Ms. Lindy berate the father-to-be who is, let’s face it, a real drag with all his dooming-and-glooming. “You have to try to figure out a way,” she tells him, “to try to find hope.” The husband is Mr. Roher, an Oscar-winner for the 2022 documentary “Navalny” and whose upcoming narrative film, “Tuner,” looks to be a nail-biter. In the meantime, he’s been biting his own nails fretting about the impact AI will have on the country, the cosmos, and a baby that will soon be in his and Ms. Lindy’s care.Mr. Roher has seen and read enough “science fiction bullshit,” as he terms it, to know the tidings of AI are dire. In case we’re inclined not to believe him, he and his co-director include a clip from James Cameron’s “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” (1991), as well as a grainy black-and-white excerpt from a 1963 television program featuring the writer Arthur C. Clarke. “The present day electronic brains are complete morons,” quoth the kindly man surrounded by twinkly lights, “but this will not be true in another generation . . . [computers] will start to think and eventually they will completely outhink their makers.”Clarke was part of the brain trust that introduced to the world a heuristically programmed algorithmic computer better known as the nefarious HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968). Being of the here-and-now, “The AI Doc” is replete with a bevy of contemporary innovators, experts and “smartest nerds” in the field, including CEO of Open AI, Sam Altman, and the president and co-founder of Anthropic, Daniela Amodei. The author of “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,” Yuval Noah Harari, is on hand to provide historical and philosophical grounding. Mark Zuckerberg refused to participate; Elon Musk pulled out at the last minute.“The AI Doc” is a clever, amiable, and probably too cute entertainment that already feels past its sell by date. Technological innovations and societal shifts move more swiftly than can be scheduled by even the canniest of filmmakers. The directors’ cinematic gee-whizzery does have the benefit of being wildly diverting— so much so, that it will keep fatalists of all stripes quiet for 90 minutes. That, in and of itself, counts as a blessing.

A Wildly Diverting New Documentary About AI That Already Feels Out of Date

More from the New York Sun

Houthis’ Entry Into Iran War Poses New Threat to Global Energy Supply

How Long Before Airport Security Lines Go Back to Normal?

Kerfuffle Over Kimmel’s Barb Against ‘Plumber’ Emerges as Warning Against Mocking Voters

More from the New York Sun

Houthis’ Entry Into Iran War Poses New Threat to Global Energy Supply

How Long Before Airport Security Lines Go Back to Normal?

Kerfuffle Over Kimmel’s Barb Against ‘Plumber’ Emerges as Warning Against Mocking Voters

The First Lady of American Theater Gets a First-Rate Biography

Proceeds From Tehran-Owned Fifth Avenue Tower To Go to Victims of Iranian Terror

Men Behaving Badly: Brazil Bill Puts Misogyny on a Par With Racism, Punishable With Fines and Jail Terms

Last on the Leaderboard, First in Value: Tiger Woods’ Son Charlie Navigates Golf’s New Era

Pittsburgh Parents Perplexed by Planned Public School Closures During NFL Draft