YNOT at the Movies

Like it or not, AI has already slipped into our daily routines and now stands at a crossroads with humanity, one path lit by promise, the other flickering with peril. Co-directed by Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell, the documentary "The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist" (USA 2026 | 103 min.) frames this technological inflection point through the intimate lens of impending fatherhood, as Daniel Roher prepares for the birth of his son and sets out to understand what kind of world the child will inherit.

The film assembles an impressive roster of interviewees. Tech leaders such as Sam Altman (OpenAI), Demis Hassabis (Google), and Dario Amodei (Anthropic) appear alongside skeptics, historians, and ethicists including Yuval Noah Harari and Tristan Harris. The access is striking, the conversations urgent, the stakes framed in nothing less than existential terms.

Yet for all its formidable lineup and apocalyptic rhetoric, the film often circles its subject rather than pinning it down. We hear repeated warnings that AI could spiral beyond human control, that corporate incentives favor speed over safety, that a geopolitical race dynamic could accelerate catastrophe. The sound bites are ominous, but the dangers remain largely abstract.

Concrete examples are surprisingly scarce. While the documentary speaks in sweeping hypotheticals about extinction level risk and runaway systems, it avoids sustained engagement with documented incidents in which AI systems have already caused harm, including reported cases of chatbots encouraging self harm. Without these illustrations, the alarm can feel abstract. We are told the is near, but rarely shown the terrain beneath our feet.

The film also leans heavily on handmade animation, stop motion, and collage. The tactile aesthetic is designed to counterbalance the cold logic of code with something recognizably human. At times, the craft is inventive and charming. At others, the constant visual embellishment distracts from what could have been a tighter, more coherent argument about AI safety and governance.

The film's guiding philosophy, "apocaloptimism," proposes a carefully measured hope, a call for regulation and democratic oversight rather than blind acceleration or fatalism. But after nearly two hours of polarized camps and high stakes speculation, viewers may leave feeling less galvanized than adrift. The documentary insists that we still have agency, yet offers few specifics about how that agency might realistically be exercised. The suggestion that lobbying politicians might solve the problem hardly feels convincing.

This documentary is undeniably timely and asks urgent questions about technology, power, and responsibility. What it lacks is the granular evidence and structural clarity that might transform unease into understanding. It leaves us at that crossroads, fully aware of the fork in the road, still squinting for signposts.

"The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist" opens in theaters on Friday, March 27, 2026.