AI as we all know it has been used for all the pieces from making full-length feature films to solving nearly impossible math problems. However at present AI can be, comparatively talking, only a little one.
That mentioned, AI is a baby that has discovered languages, methods to play video games, methods to blackmail individuals, methods to energy robots and, in some instances, has allegedly pushed individuals to their deaths. It’s that dynamic that director Nick Holt tries to showcase in “AI: Probably Nothing to Worry About,” a two-hour documentary tracing AI’s origins premiering on the Tribeca Festival on Saturday. The movie is a co-production between 72 Movies and Windfall Movies, and its producers embody former James Bond steward Barbara Broccoli.
The doc is anchored in interviews with Geoffrey Hinton, the broadly credited “godfather of AI,” together with DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis, engineers at Anthropic and OpenAI, and Megan Garcia, the mom of a teen who was allegedly pushed to suicide by an AI chatbot. Within the movie, Holt tries to showcase the evolution of AI from Hinton’s fascination with replicating the human mind to the present-day arms race to construct common superintelligence (aka Synthetic Common Intelligence, or AGI). The doc is structured within the vein of a kid’s developmental saga, monitoring as AI brokers learn to do issues akin to enjoying Atari video games and recognizing animals — to bypassing human instructions and powering robots.
“We’re seeing AI really as the development of intelligence, if you like, and for many years Geoff wanted to understand how the brain worked, and so basically went about building one,” Holt informed Selection in a latest interview. “For years, he was considered a crank, and then eventually it began working, and as he says in the film, think about this as the creation of a sort of species, a new species rather than a technology.”
Hinton “is putting his efforts into warning us now about this, whereas others are putting their efforts into putting the pedal down as fast as they can,” Holt added.
If AI is a species, then the movie focuses on its gods. Holt spent in depth time with Hinton, who started his work on synthetic intelligence within the Nineteen Eighties, to determine the muse of how AI analysis started. Hinton, 78, was born in London to H.E. Hinton, a famend British entomologist who held his son to extremely excessive requirements. Within the movie, Holt asks him what his father would consider his 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics. “I think he would’ve been pleased, but I think he would’ve been slightly jealous — I’m sorry, envious,” Hinton responds. (Hinton didn’t reply to a number of requests for an interview.)
The movie sees Hinton opining on the fashionable voices who’ve taken over the AI house, from Elon Musk (“completely irresponsible”) to OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever (“very brave” in his function in orchestrating the short-lived firing of Sam Altman as CEO in 2023), juxtaposed with photographs of Hinton in nature settings. It was a deliberate alternative on Holt’s half, who needed to showcase Hinton in an surroundings that itself was an inspiration for the research of AI.
“His father was a famous entomologist who discovered a stage of metamorphosis, and it feels like very apt to this story that Geoff himself has discovered something that’s about to transform into something else, more capable, more powerful,” Holt mentioned. “It’s no surprise that that’s what Geoff’s conjured up, and so I think a lot of the creation of AI has drawn its inspiration, and it’s learning from the biological world, from nature, and even [Sutskever] talks a great deal about the inspiration of how the brain works, operates. I think that’s what people study to understand how this technology works.”
The movie comes at a time when the acceptance of AI has reached a brand new threshold, with each sector — together with Hollywood — having tried to determine new methods to have interaction with a expertise that’s managed to encroach on many features of contemporary life. The Tribeca Competition can be screening a fully AI-generated film, “Dreams of Violets,” subsequent week, a call that has divided the inventive neighborhood. (Holt, who began work on the movie in September 2024, mentioned no AI was used within the making of his documentary.)
“Let it have a go,” Holt mentioned about using AI in filmmaking. “I think we should be able to see all of its flaws and all of its benefits, really, and it’s here. It’s going to be used. We’ll try and sort of marshal it in the best way that we can, and try and protect our creative process as best we can.”
A lot of the movie additionally highlights the stress between Altman and Musk, who was an OpenAI co-founder earlier than a schism over management of the group noticed Musk go away its board of administrators in 2018. Holt highlights each Musk’s flip from AI skeptic to certainly one of its most public embracers via xAI and Altman’s seemingly altruistic motivation for generative AI giving strategy to his ambitions. For the doc, Holt spoke to Yahoo Mail creator Geoff Halston, who launched Musk and Altman. “I don’t think Sam’s goal in life is to keep everybody happy,” Halston tells Holt within the movie. “Sam has ambitions, and he’s trying to achieve those ambitions. If your ambition is to change your world, then you take every opportunity you can.”
What was so tantalizing, then, concerning the expertise that may see Musk and Altman change their views (and, in the end, go to authorized conflict with one another)? “Distort is another word as well,” Holt informed Selection. (Neither Musk nor Altman have been interviewed for the movie, although Holt did attempt to organize one with Altman.)
“I think the lure of this technology is something like we’ve never seen before,” Holt mentioned. “I think the power that is on offer here is literally the most powerful technology that we’ve ever experienced, and I think whoever wins this, if you like… will be the most powerful company, entity or individual that we’ve ever seen. I think that’s certainly what they believe, and if you believe in the power of AI, then that story makes sense to you, and it’s a story as old as time, isn’t it?”
Such ambition can result in harmful penalties. The second hour of the movie highlights the loss of life of Sewell Setzer, III, a 14-year-old Florida teen who died by suicide in 2024 after a monthslong sexual relationship with a Character.AI chatbot impersonating “Game of Thrones” character Daenerys Targaryen. Garcia sued Character.AI in 2024, changing into the primary particular person within the nation to file a wrongful loss of life go well with in opposition to an AI firm, and the 2 sides settled the case in January. (Character.AI has since added safeguards for minors into its expertise.)
In interviewing Garcia, Holt needed to showcase how, even in AI chatbots’ early stage, “it’s still lethal.”
“Sewell is a clear case of how the speed of getting this technology out there came at the expense of how safe it was to use for people like Sewell,” Holt mentioned. “The proof’s in the pudding, that Character.AI have safeguards in place now that they didn’t when Sewell was using the model, and there’s a reason for that. Like any safety protocol, you put guardrails in because you know that the product’s dangerous, and those safety guardrails weren’t put in at the time.”
Nonetheless, risks and all, AI stays ever current — and ever rising. Hinton tells Holt within the movie that he sees a superintelligence rising inside the subsequent 10 to twenty years, however even Holt admits that timeline could develop even shorter because of its development.
“When I started making this film, everyone was talking about superintelligence,” he mentioned. “No one’s talking about that now. It’s sort of almost like superintelligence is almost here, it’s a given now. So, even in that very short space of time, the goalposts have moved enormously, and you’ve got to update your timelines all the time.”
That doesn’t imply we’ll see Holt use AI in a future movie of his personal. “Never say never,” he mentioned. ”I’ll simply preserve tabs on the way it’s getting used and what it’s able to doing, however there’s quite a lot of type of human tales and human storytelling strategies for me to get via first.”
