Most AI discourse picks a lane. Doom or boom. Pick one.
The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist refuses. I saw it this weekend with my wife and daughter, and that refusal is what makes the film work.
The lineup is impressive: Altman, Dario and Daniela Amodei, Hassabis, Yudkowsky, Harari, Tristan Harris. The editing is kinetic. The hand-drawn animation keeps it from feeling like a parade of talking heads. And the framing device—a filmmaker about to become a father, trying to understand the world his kid will inherit—gives it genuine emotional stakes.
The film operates at 30,000 feet. Will AI end civilization? Will it cure cancer? These are real questions. They deserve serious treatment, and they get it.
What’s missing is the ground floor.
I wrote Spanning Change: Software Engineering in the AI Era because the existential debate, while important, skips the part where millions of professionals need to figure out how to actually do their jobs differently. The film asks whether AI will replace us. The more urgent question for most people is how to work with it without sleepwalking through the transition.
My wife is a music educator, and my daughter is a high school senior. Neither lives in the tech bubble. Both left the theater engaged and asking sharp questions. That’s the film doing its job.
See it, ideally with someone who doesn’t work in tech. Then have the conversation the film is designed to start.