{"id":370877,"date":"2026-03-29T05:07:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T05:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/370877\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T05:07:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T05:07:11","slug":"the-ai-doc-filmmakers-on-what-you-need-to-know-about-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/370877\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The AI Doc’ Filmmakers on What You Need to Know About AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen the filmmakers behind \u201cThe AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist<\/a>,\u201d set out to investigate the dawn of the age of artificial intelligence, they couldn\u2019t predict what the next two-and-a-half years would have in store.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Focus Features documentary, in theaters now, explores the intersection of AI development and its impact on humanity from a personal perspective. When co-directors Daniel Roher (an Academy Award winner for 2022\u2019s \u201cNavalny\u201d) and Charlie Tyrell (\u201cBroken Orchestra\u201d) learned they would both become fathers in early 2024, they anchored the film around one question: What kind of world will our children inherit?<\/p>\n

\n\tTo answer that query, producer Ted Tremper developed more than 100 contacts, including sources inside the major AI labs, and conducted pre-interviews lasting up to 20 hours. Meanwhile, Roher and Tryell interviewed more than 40 AI experts on camera, generating 3,300 pages of transcripts. Their planned year of production stretched into nearly three.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo, what did they learn about AI that you need to know?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe biggest realization was that there probably isn\u2019t an \u2018off switch,\u2019\u201d Tyrell explains. \u201cAI isn\u2019t a tool we can just decide to reject; it\u2019s already here. And it\u2019s going to keep integrating into our lives in ways both visible and invisible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat realization was both \u201cunsettling and clarifying,\u201d the director says. \u201cIt shifted my thinking from \u2018Should this exist?\u2019 to \u2018How do we live with it responsibly?\u2019 Once you accept that it\u2019s not going away, the conversation becomes a lot more urgent and a lot more practical. It\u2019s a lot like grieving \u2014 which is a little overwhelming \u2014 grieving for a pre-AI world that no longer exists. But that needs to be acknowledged in order to move forward and carry on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tVariety chief film critic Owen Gleiberman described the finished product as a \u201cscary, dizzying and essential deep dive into the AI revolution.\u201d In his review<\/a>, Gleiberman wrote: \u201cIf you have any interest in artificial intelligence (which is to say: the future), you should go out and see it right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTo be clear, the documentary doesn\u2019t pick sides in the AI debate. That\u2019s why the film\u2019s title includes the made-up word \u201capocaloptimist,\u201d as it embodies the filmmakers\u2019 philosophy of avoiding both doomsday scenarios and unchecked enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s not just a word, it\u2019s a way of life,\u201d Roher told Variety at Sundance<\/a>, where the documentary made its world premiere. \u201cIn a world that\u2019s asking us to embrace visions of the apocalypse or lean into this unbridled optimism, we are saying no, there\u2019s a third path.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWith that in mind, what advice can these filmmakers-turned-pseudo-experts share about engaging with AI?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere isn\u2019t a single correct way,\u201d Tyrell says. \u201cAnd that\u2019s actually the point. It\u2019s going to meet people wherever they\u2019re at.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile \u201cThe AI Doc\u201d team \u2014 which also includes producers Daniel Kwan and Jonathan Wang (\u201cEverything Everywhere All at Once\u201d), as well as Shane Boris and Diane Becker (\u201cNavalny\u201d) \u2014 engaged with artificial intelligence by making this film, \u201csomeone else might encounter it as a teacher, a coder, a parent or a civil servant, and their relationship to it will look completely different.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTyrell concludes: \u201cWhat matters is that people engage with it consciously rather than passively. You don\u2019t have to embrace it or reject it outright, but you should be aware of how it\u2019s shaping your work, your thinking, and your world and make intentional choices from there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHere, Tyrell and Tremper share more of what they learned and everyone needs to know:<\/p>\n

\n\tWe cannot separate the promise of AI from the peril of AI. We need to avoid the very understandable temptation to label AI as \u201cgood\u201d or \u201cbad\u201d and call it a day. The reality is messier, which\u2026 is a real drag. However, when we abandon that dichotomy, our mission as a species actually becomes incredibly clear: we need to immediately get serious about shaping how this technology is being developed and deployed, and ensure that it benefits humanity and the planet.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe window for how we shape AI is open \u2014 it really, actually is \u2014 but it won\u2019t be forever. The norms, laws, and standards being built right now will have an enormous impact on the future of our planet and our species. The good news: there is genuine bipartisan support for common-sense AI regulation and international coordination. But regulation alone is not enough. The general public needs to get organized, get loud, and send clear messages to the companies building these tools, and the governments regulating the technology, about how we want AI to impact our lives \u2014 whether that\u2019s as simple as voting with your dollars, or as ambitious as building a grassroots movement like one of our film\u2019s subjects, Sneha Revenur, did with the Encode movement. We need to drive these decisions, individually and collectively. Because if we don\u2019t, those in power will be more than happy to make the decisions for us.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou can choose not to understand how AI is affecting your life. But it will affect your life anyway. AI is already deciding whether your loan gets approved, whether you get a job interview, what news reaches you, how your child learns at school, how your parent gets care from their doctor, and thousands and thousands of other invisible decisions with very real consequences. You don\u2019t need to become an AI expert. It starts with asking simple questions where you find AI encroaching on your life and the lives of those you love. Questions like who built this, do we share the same basic values, what were they optimizing for, and whose interests does it serve?<\/p>\n

\n\tOur work will never be done \u2014 but that work doesn\u2019t have to suck. There\u2019s no finish line where we declare we\u2019ve \u201csolved\u201d AI and set off a shitload of fireworks. The technology will keep evolving, the problems will keep shifting. And so too will the benefits (if we can move quickly enough to keep the perils in check). The great part is, there are brilliant, kind, wonderful people working on all sides of this issue \u2014 many of them are in our film. You should seek them out, learn from them, let them spark your curiosity, and inspire you to do what you can to help care for our planet and build a future worth living in. Find community, find purpose, and hopefully come to realize that even though the work is never done, it is absolutely worth doing.<\/p>\n

\n\tBeing an optimist or a pessimist is not enough. We need to become apocaloptimists. An optimist believes things will work out. A pessimist believes they won\u2019t. Neither requires action because the endings to their stories have already been written. An apocaloptimist looks at the full range of what\u2019s possible \u2014 all the promise and all the peril \u2014 and chooses to coordinate with others to build a future worth living in. It\u2019s not a comfortable worldview. It doesn\u2019t let you off the hook. But it\u2019s the only one that\u2019s actually true \u2014 and the only one that gives you a reason to act.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the filmmakers behind \u201cThe AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist,\u201d set out to investigate the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,61,60,80,133958],"class_list":{"0":"post-370877","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-technology","14":"tag-the-ai-doc-or-how-i-became-an-apocaloptimist"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370877","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=370877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}