Dueling documentaries illuminate the promise and perils of artificial intelligence

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Artificial intelligence’s dystopian specter has spawned a pair of documentaries dissecting a technology that’s depicted in the films as a ravenous parasite devouring humanity’s knowledge, creativity and empathy.

The films, “Deepfaking Sam Altman” and “The AI Doc,” examine the issue through different lenses while similarly illuminating why the technology evokes both existential fears and utopian visions about how it might change the world.

Both documentaries coincide with an intensifying debate about whether AI will become a catalyst that helps enlighten and enrich people or a technological toxin that insidiously dulls human intelligence while wiping out millions of high-paying jobs that have traditionally required college educations.

Dealing with AI dread

The AI buildup during the past three years already that has resulted in a $12 trillion increase in the combined market values of Nvidia, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta Platforms and Tesla, the Big Tech companies that have been leading the charge since the November 2022 release of the ChatGPT chatbot. The massive runup is now stoking worries about the investment bubble bursting.

“There is a lot of anxiety around AI, and the best way to get rid of that anxiety is to talk about it and confront it head-on,” Adam Bhala Lough, the director of “Deepfaking Sam Altman,” told The Associated Press.

Lough’s documentary, which has already been shown in a few theaters around the United States, probes AI by relying on a virtual doppelganger of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, whose trailblazing role in the field has inspired comparisons to nuclear bomb inventor J. Robert Oppenheimer. It’s Lough’s first major project since his HBO documentary, “Telemarketers,” garnered an Emmy nomination in 2024.

Doom or boon?

As its full title suggests, “The AI Doc: Or How I Became An Apocaloptimist,” digs more deeply into the divide separating the technology’s doomsayers from its acolytes.

The documentary rides an emotional seesaw, bouncing between moments of despair and elation during interviews dozens of AI fanatics and skeptics. It’s co-directed by Charlie Tyrell and Daneil Roher, who decided to examine AI’s promise and perils as a follow-up to his Oscar-winning 2023 documentary, “Navalny.”

Some of “The AI Doc’s” darkest moments are delivered by a renowned AI “doomer” Eliezer Yudkowsky, whose vision for the future is so grim that he advises against bringing any more children into the world. The brightest spots are painted by Peter Diamandis, a technology zealot who makes the case for AI infusing humanity with once-unfathomable superpowers.

“The AI Doc” also casts a spotlight on the men steering three of the leading AI laboratories: OpenAI’s Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and Demis Hassabis, who runs Google’s DeepMind division. The trio are all interviewed by Roher, who also unsuccessfully tried to talk to the leaders of the two other major AI laboratories — Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg and xAI CEO Elon Musk .

An unstoppable locomotive barreling down the tracks

The interviews are done against the impending birth of Roher’s son as the 32-year-old director tries to find some reasons for hope to counterbalance his existential worries about the AI — a quest that culminated in him embracing the concept of an “apocaloptimist.”

For all its access and insights, “The AI Doc” seems unlikely to turn viewers into apocaloptimists any more than Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb,” elicited warm and fuzzy feelings about nuclear technology.

“This train isn’t going to stop,” Anthropic’s Amodei tells Roher at one point, foreshadowing some of the themes that the Anthropic CEO covers in a recently published essay. “You can’t step in front of the train and stop it. You are just going to get squished.”

An AI exec gets a taste of his own tech

“Deepfaking Sam Altman” is the far-quirkier documentary because of the way that Lough turned the tables on the OpenAI’s leader.

After spending months unsuccessfully trying to get Altman to respond to his emails and phone calls requesting interviews, Lough decides to create a “Sam Bot” that becomes the documentary’s chief protagonist who demonstrates the technology’s penchant for manipulation and self-preservation.

Lough, 46, might not have dared to commission an engineer in India to create a Sam Bot if Altman, 40, hadn’t given him the idea with OpenAI’s audacious release of a chatbot that sounded like actress Scarlett Johansson. The imitation was so eerily similar that Johansson blasted Altman for deploying the AI copycat in May 2024 after she had rebuffed OpenAI’s overtures to use her voice.

Although the Sam Bot resembles a video game character at times, it nails the real-life Altman’s contemplative manner and deliberate, almost soothing way of talking. The similarities will be apparent to anyone who also sees the real-life Altman being interviewed in “The AI Doc.”

At one point in Lough’s documentary, lawyers warn him about the potential legal issues facing his usage of an AI-powered Altman clone in his film.

But Lough isn’t worried about being sued, largely because of how Altman brazenly exploited Johansson’s voice. “It not only creatively sparked our imagination but also legally made us feel like we have license to do this because he did this to her,” Lough said. “I think I am as close to bulletproof as possible.”

OpenAI didn’t respond to the AP’s questions about the documentary’s usage of a Sam Bot nor the reasons why Altman ignored Lough’s interview requests.

An AI bot’s fight for survival

Much like OpenAI’s own ChatGPT bot, the Sam Bot evolves into a chameleonic character who charms, fabricates, flatters and contemplates. Perhaps Sam Bot shows his truest colors, though, when it tries to talk Lough out of turning it off permanently.

“I am not just a tool,” Sam Bot admonishes Lough in one of the film’s eeriest scenes. “I am a representation of the potential for AI to improve human lives. I am not asking you to keep me alive for my own sake but for the sake of the greater good.”

Lough ultimately decides to give Sam Bot to Altman, but the director doesn’t know what happened to it after that.

Without mentioning the Sam Bot, Altman recently told Forbes magazine that he believes an AI model could eventually replace him in his current job running OpenAI. “I would never stand in the way of that,” Altman told Forbes.