By Adrian Horton
Publication Date: 2026-01-28 02:40:00
AAre we heading towards an AI catastrophe? Is AI an existential threat or an epochal opportunity? These are the questions at the heart of a new documentary at Sundance in which leading AI experts, critics and entrepreneurs, including Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, offer their views on the near- to medium-term future, ranging from doom to utopia.
“The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist,” directed by Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell and produced by Daniel Kwan (one half of The Daniels, the Oscar-winning duo behind “Everything Everywhere All At Once”) explores the controversial topic of AI through Roher’s own fears. The Canadian filmmaker, who won an Oscar in 2023 for the documentary Navalny, first became interested in the topic while experimenting with tools released by OpenAI, the company behind the chatbot ChatGPT. The sophistication of public tools—the ability to create entire paragraphs or create illustrations in seconds—both thrilled and unsettled him. AI was already…
