‘The AI Doc’: What AI leaders told Daniel Roher will keep you up at night

The Sundance Film Festival is currently generating excitement about the new documentary The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist. The film which Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell directed and Daniel Kwan produced asks the question about whether it is safe to raise children in an artificial intelligence-dominated world.

Oscar-winning director Roher of Navalny conducts interviews with prominent AI experts and sceptics and researchers to investigate the topic.

What is The AI Doc about?

The documentary features interviews of some of the world’s popular tech giant owners, including Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Demis Hassabis. To showcase a combination of concern and hope regarding the Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) on society, Roher has also added the interviews of AI critics, including Tristan Harris, Center for Humane Technology, and researchers like Yoshua Bengio and Ilya Sutskever.

Some experts predict that AI could become superhuman in this decade alone, potentially surpassing humans altogether. EleutherAI Co-Founder Connor Leahy compared the future of humanity with AGI to humans constructing highways through anthills, where we may not mean to cause harm, but the effects could be apocalyptic. 

On the other hands, accelerationists inclduing XPRIZE Founder Peter Diamandi believes that AI is a solution to big problems like climate change and global healthcare shortages.

Altman says, OpenAI is committed to these measures, yet he admits it is impossible to guarantee everything will be okay.

The AI Doc presents a balanced view, neither fully doomerist nor purely optimistic, coining the term "apocaloptimism". It highlights the need for global coordination and regulatory oversight. Roher’s interviews suggest AI companies must ensure transparency, legal accountability, and continuous safety testing. As Anthropic CEO puts it, “This train isn’t going to stop.”

The documentary screens at Sundance and is set for release on March 27, inviting everyone to reflect on the world AI is creating.