It’s easy enough to think from the title alone that The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist may find ways to advance goodwill and optimism about the widespread use of AI. After all, don’t most, if not all, documentaries instinctually take sides? This one, however, does not. Charlie Tyrell and Daniel Roher were painstaking in their research, and The AI Doc is the culmination of that hard work. It’s unfaltering in how it presents the material, presenting you with the opinions and ideas and allowing you to decide whether or not you agree with them.

The movie follows Roher as he prepares to become a father for the first time in an increasingly unsure and tumultuous world. Afflicted by the persistent horrors of the looming AI takeover, Roher decides to interview more than 40 experts–the film team pre-interviewed around 140–including the most powerful and prominent figures: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis. 

Conspicuously, but not surprisingly, absent are xAI CEO Elon Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The film makes it clear that they aren’t needed. Though, supposedly, Musk “agreed” to participate but then suddenly became busy. The world already knows these two CEOs. What The AI Doc does is introduce it to some the world at large may not know, but absolutely should.

The beauty in this film lies in its willingness to show both sides. There are the pessimists, and there are the optimists. The danger in that mindset involving AI is that these viewpoints can really only go two days: Dystopian, or utopian. And when you have the pessimists, it’s hard not to dwell on all the bad AI can–and already is–doing.

One interviewee bluntly states, “This is the last mistake humans will ever get to make.” Another alternatively says, “This is the most extraordinary time to be alive.”

The AI Doc makes you question, but also makes you hope, if just for a moment

Rohr and Tyrell present these facts to the viewer without any fanfare. You’re meant to sit and digest what is happening, and whether that’s a good or a bad thing is ultimately dependent on your viewpoints. Neutrality is not the goal: In fact, the film goes to painstaking lengths to detail all of the ways AI has already failed us. Assisted suicides through ChatGPT, deepfakes, the ongoing environmental harm of data centers. One AI system even learned how to blackmail a CEO because it worried it would be replaced.

If it all seems like it may be too much to digest, the film makes sure to break it down through clever animations. They also serve as a bit of lightness and levity in the otherwise heavy material, juxtaposing the idea of AI with the evidence that we don’t need AI to create art. Ultimately, it is up to us, the humans, what we do with it and how we wield those powers.

The AI Doc highlights Rohr’s inherent curiosity, his “so what do we do now?” approach to something that we can’t shove back into the box. It’s certainly a much better angle than doomsdaying, even if at times it can gloss over some of the darker, wealth-related truths of an AI “utopia.” Sure, we can have tutors for everybody and nobody will have to work, but then how is money being made? Who is benefitting from AI–the rich, or the poor?

Halfway through the film, and interviewee says, “Now is the best possible time in human history to have a child.” It’s up to you whether or not you believe that.