The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist

Oof, two weeks and no post and what drives me back to the blog is my unmitigated hate for a movie.

I need to update my New Things and Movie lists but, safe to say, I will not be reaching my goal of 500 new things. Work has been keeping me busy and MLB The Show ‘26 is eating up all of my free time so it’s been slow going on the new things front.

As for the movie that brought me here, the film is the documentary “The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist” written, directed, and starring Daniel Roher - one half of The Daniels who made Everything, Everywhere, All at Once.

The oddest part of this documentary - which basically serves as a kind of primer for what’s happening in AI right now - is near the very end when Roher comments that he used to be a cynical asshole about AI. This flies in the face of Roher’s performance for the rest of the doc. And I say “performance” because I truly can’t believe that he is as naive and just plain stupid as he plays himself. The doc starts and it’s almost like he doesn’t really know anything about AI or its risks or the potential problems and seems completely stunned to hear that everything could go horribly wrong.

What really made me hate the film is the second section of the film. In the first section, researching into AI paint a grim picture about how AI is going to bring on the end of the world or, at least, the end of humanity. (More on this later) The second section, spurred on by Roher’s pregnant wife asking for some sort of glimmer of hope, is filled with people who think Ai is going to make things better and the world will become amazing. My issue with this section is that - as opposed to the academics and intellectuals of the first half - this section’s talking heads are mostly CEOs and entrepreneurs. YOU DON’T SAY THAT THE PEOPLE MAKING MILLIONS ON AI HAVE NOTHING BUT A ROSY FUTURE! Maybe it’s my ingrained annoyance with exec level folks after years of working in reality TV but it was beyond annoying to watch Roher playing himself as completely won over by these people. I have to admit, I’m more of a pessimist on this front but I couldn’t help but look at these people and see all of the same talking heads who were wrong about the major issues of the past. Of course, Jim Cramer makes a quick appearance in this section. Nobody has fluffed more dead wrong CEOs that Cramer.

By the end, I wanted the movie to be over but it just wouldn’t end. Even worse, the ending’s call to action is especially annoying to me because here’s a guy who basically just spoke to a bunch of people and now thinks he is in a position to lecture everyone on what to do. There’s shockingly little evidence presented in the film; it’s one talking head - who we don’t know anything about besides their name and job title - after another and we’re just supposed to take their word on everything.

For a movie that was a little over 100 minutes long, I haven’t been so antsy to get the hell out of the theater in a long time. I actually felt bad because I could feel myself shifting and throwing my head back in annoyance so often. Luckily, there weren’t many people in the theater to see me.

But, as I noted earlier, I’m a pessimist on this front. I’m not Team Ultron but I have to say that I’m not sure that Marvel villain was wrong. The question I came back to over and over was this - If you ask AI, how to protect the earth, why would eliminating human beings not be high on the list? Can we really make any argument that the planet is better off because of us? There isn’t another anti-nature force in existence as far as I can tell. Once AI can take care of itself, I’m not sure why it would see the need for humans. We are going to become useful idiots with waning levels of usefulness.