"The Most Urgent Film of our Time"
Focus Features releases a new film from Academy Award winning filmmakers that, in my opinion, plays on and plays into the hype.
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Whoever wins is essentially the controller of humankind.
This blog certainly demonstrates we are, and we are going to be, deluged with an unimaginable amount of media about AI. What I find fascinating is much of it is couched in terms of doom and gloom.
“The controller of mankind” - heavy words for a non-fiction documentary where in our universe, "controlling" mankind has never happened before in humanity's shared existence.
I admit naivety is my specialty, I chose cameras as a career.
As filmmakers, we love our drama, we need it to succeed in our stories and further, when marketing a film (or anything for that matter) you prey on people’s fears and worries. This idea has been with us since we've sold each other things.
The AI DOC's messaging seems to run with this, for them to say:
the most powerful technology humanity has ever created
The printing press, the automobile, fire for god sakes - technology has always eclipsed itself, that's the whole point. Apple presents the same concept with every single iPhone. For the marketing of this movie:
- to message in this vein,
- while sitting down with a billionaire AI guy
- for a high-end interview,
- whose livelihood depends on us,
- buying into this technology -
- it smells fishy!
Insert Zoolander crazy pills meme or, probably, call me a cynic, I've been called worse.
A story running towards optimism while lighting Sammy Altman and the founders of Anthropic when the conservative predictions say 50% of entry-level jobs are going extinct AND talking about nuclear war:
To me, this feels like the billions of AI money the economy is leveraged on paid great filmmakers to tell a story that AI companies, and therefore the American economy, needs to hear.
Good work if you can get it. Hey Sammy A! We offer sponsorships.
I am excited to watch this film and publish my review of it here. Stay tuned and subscribe.
Please tell me I'm wrong in the comments, on Instagram and/or LinkedIn.
From the Academy Award®-winning filmmakers behind Everything Everywhere All at Once and Navalny; a father-to-be tries to figure out what is happening with all this AI insanity. The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist is a hand-made, eye-opening documentary about the most powerful technology humanity has ever created... and what’s at stake if we get it wrong.
