![\"'The](\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/wp-content\/themes\/pmc-deadline-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\n\tThe promise and peril of artificial intelligence has become one of the most urgent topics for humanity, triggering eager speculation among investors and a lot of anxiety in other quarters. The rapidly advancing technology gets a full-scale cinematic exploration in the new film The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, directed by Oscar winner Daniel Roher (Navalny) and Charlie Tyrell, which just premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe title gives a sense of the filmmakers\u2019 view of AI, suggesting optimism tempered by fear of disaster.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cAn \u2018apocaloptimist\u2019 is someone who does not give into binary,\u201d Roher said of the coinage when he and his fellow filmmakers stopped by Deadline\u2019s Sundance Studio. \u201cWhen being asked to choose between a perspective of apocalyptic doom or unbridled optimism, the apocaloptimist seeks the third way, the narrow path, recognizing that both of these things exist simultaneously and what we\u2019re advocating for and needing is a very cautious optimism because we have the intelligence to build this technology, but we need to have the wisdom to deploy it and incorporate it into our world.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe documentary\u2019s producers include Oscar winners Diane Becker (Navalny), Shane Boris (Navalny), Daniel Kwan (Everything Everywhere All at Once), Jonathan Wang, and Ted Tremper.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cOne of the things our film hopes to do is to give people ownership of basically their agency to learn about this in an entertaining and comprehensive way,\u201d Tremper notes. \u201cI refer to it as like \u2018a first date with artificial intelligence\u2019 where they can then learn how they relate to it \u2014 because one\u2019s relationship to technology is a relationship, and we have to really be conscientious about how we move forward with it because we don\u2019t want it to end very poorly.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tKwan observed, \u2018The thing that we need to understand about AI is that it is capable of both potential good and potential bad. And the scale and speed at which this technology is being created, which direction that we steer it, is actually really important because the consequences are huge and could impact all areas of society.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tKwan cites the emergence of social media as a cautionary tale. \u201cThat to me is the most recent example of how I believe we failed in making sure that we also had our hands on the steering wheel. Because if we aren\u2019t steering, we\u2019re letting the tech industry and the people \u2014 a handful of people \u2014 decide for us the future of our relationship with this technology. And I believe that if we don\u2019t learn from that mistake, the consequences could be really dire.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\u2018The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist\u2019<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFocus Features<\/p>\n
\n\tTristan Harris, cofounder of the Center for Human Technology, who appears in the documentary, expresses concern over the lightning-fast growth and implementation of the technology in so many areas of our lives.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWith AI, the incentive is the race to get there first to this magic prize, which means taking as many shortcuts as possible. It\u2019s like, \u2018There I am, I\u2019m using Chat GPT and the blinking cursor tells me why my baby is burping.\u2019 This is awesome. This is great. It\u2019s not that the blinking cursor is the catastrophe or the apocalypse, it\u2019s that the race to build the most powerful, inscrutable, uncontrollable technology we\u2019ve ever invented, releasing it under the maximum incentive to cut corners on safety \u2014 that\u2019s where the kind of darker futures that we need to steer away from is about.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tCoincidentally, Roher and Tyrell both became fathers recently. Their kids, born a week apart, are now 2 years old and are growing up in a world where AI could provide enormous benefits, or destroy humanity.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re at a pivotal moment right now where we need to set them up for success,\u201d Tyrell said of children in general. \u201cWe need to make sure that they still have an agency with this technology rather than let all the groundwork be done now so that they get what they get. I think it\u2019s very important that we interact with it now to make sure that their futures and even well beyond them \u2014 however long the species is around \u2014 still get to have a say in what it does.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist is the rare Sundance documentary to come into the festival with theatrical release already locked down.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe have distribution; Focus Features and the might of their brilliant marketers are on the case,\u201d Roher said. \u201c[The] film\u2019s coming out March 27th in theaters. Buy a ticket for yourself and your mom and your dad and your dog and go and see this on a big screen. We pulled off the miracle of making a film about AI that is cinematic and deeply felt and deeply emotional.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tWatch the full conversation in the video above, including Roher\u2019s explanation of why he spent the length of the interview with a sketchbook in hand. <\/p>\n
\n\tDeadline Studio at Sundance presented by Casamigos.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The promise and peril of artificial intelligence has become one of the most urgent topics for humanity, triggering…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275035,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[133956,100348,100349,93,61,60,270,22221,129705,133957,133958],"class_list":{"0":"post-275034","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-charlie-tyrell","9":"tag-daniel-kwan","10":"tag-daniel-roher","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-movies","15":"tag-sundance","16":"tag-sundance-studio","17":"tag-ted-tremper","18":"tag-the-ai-doc-or-how-i-became-an-apocaloptimist"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}