It has been a while since I ran an entertainment tip. That was on purpose. I only include one when I actually have something to say, rather than manufacture a recommendation to fill a slot.
Then came a few months of too many flights and more bad movies than I care to remember, until one finally broke the streak: The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, from Daniel Roher, the filmmaker who won an Oscar for Navalny. It starts by scaring the crap out of you and then spends the second half trying to tuck you back in.
Roher is about to become a father and spends the film asking a lot of very smart people whether this is a good time to bring a child into the world. It moves in three acts. First, the people who think this AI revolution ends badly (think human extinction). Then, the people who think it saves us. And finally, the ones actually building it, including Sam Altman (ChatGPT), Dario Amodei (Claude), and others.
What struck me was that the builders were oddly somewhere in the middle. They understand the risks, but are still mostly optimistic. They also come across as remarkably relaxed for people discussing a technology their peers just described as an extinction risk.
Nobody in the movie knows how this ends. They just disagree about the odds.
Somewhere over the Pacific, I paused the movie, reconsidered the future of humanity for a minute, and then went back to watching. You know, normal inflight entertainment.
Streaming on Peacock, or you can rent it on Apple TV or Prime. If you’re flying United, it’s currently part of the seatback or BYOD entertainment, which is exactly where I found it, while munching on a stroopwafel.
Fair warning: if you watch it, you may have some weird dreams.
