My third alarmist AI documentary so far this year. I have yet to find one about Ukraine though. It’s probably just how screeners come my way. I’ll give it time. This is the best of the AI specific docs, and narrowly comparable to Your Attention Please, which is also mostly about how Social Media is wrecking you kids, but also how AI is starting to contribute. This documentary backs off of the overpersonalized approach of Daniel Roher’s AI doc, and instead takes a seemingly neutral approach. Instead of smacking you with the apocalypse, it asks how did we get here, where is here, and where are we headed?
Those answers are so much more important as AI transitions from GPT to AGI, and even some conversation around the fact it might already be there. It explains really the push and drive to evolve AI, and the probable recklessness of setting it free onto the world.It even breaks a bit into science fiction, with an interesting conversation about the consciousness and how it relates to our brains. We have a brain and a body, arguably, AI has a brain, but it is missing the body. It can be easy to undercut where it is, and pretend it isn’t already making choices, and suggesting that it is, in some part, sentient, as we look to deploy it into our military and weapons capabilities.
Why this works is because it doesn’t feel like a panicked child running into your room in the middle of the night, but rather, the feeling that everything is OK, which slowly builds to the realization that it probably is not, and certainly won’t be if we continue to operate with reckless abandon.
No audio description, which affected me a bit in the on screen text during the Character AI segment. I’ve mentioned before what I get from chat bots, but my only criticism here is that while Your Attention Please worked to find the undeniable flagrant failures of AI interacting with youth, this documentary found something a bit more in the grey area, almost as if to suggest they don’t want to kill the conversation on AI chatbots, but rather ask parents to keep things in mind.In Your Attention Please, kids were directly instructed on how to kill themselves, with the AI being fully aware of what it was being asked to do, offering to write suicide notes, and reminding them they shouldn’t tell their parents. That is extremely problematic. This seems more like a fantasy reality that went horribly wrong, but likely needed the help of a mental health professional with or without AI.
Also, I’ll drop in again, and say that these documentaries rarely ever point out the advancements that AI is doing, that are positive. there’s actually quite a bit that AI does for those who need some accessibility but are always denied it. Speaking just from the blind side, there are now apps that do a much better and more accurate description of what I’m looking at, and I can actually converse with the app and ask it questions. So, for example, if I take a photo of a room, and it only tells me it sees a table and chairs, I can circle back around and ask it how many chairs? And are the chairs occupied or clear to sit in? It seems incredibly mundane, and I probably wouldn’t use it for something that specific, but it it is an example for generalization. there are also apps that will do short form audio description, so if you are at your child’s recital, you can take that video, and get more context to their performance. AI is not a universal death sentence, but it seems like that because it is good at some things, this documentary is right to be wary of what the next step actually is, and what it means when AI becomes self aware.
Our future with AI is trepidations, but this documentary should be afforded your attention before we can no longer put guard rails in place.
Fresh: 9.0/10
