Movie Review: AI: Probably Nothing to Worry About

Mentions of AI are virtually unescapable right now, with it having firmly supplanted blockchain and the metaverse as the tech industry’s trend-du-jour. As with both of those other technologies however, it remains widely misunderstood and, in my opinion, wildly overhyped. Director Nick Holt’s new documentary aims to help viewers get a better grasp on the tech and its origins, though he is decidedly less interested in helping to negate the other problem.

Much of the movie is given over to following and talking to Geoffrey Hinton, whose groundbreaking work on artificial neural networks landed him the title of the “Godfather of AI.” He is an interesting, well-spoken figure, and while he does offer up the occasional aside that indicates he sometimes questions the long-term value of what he’s unleashed, he largely seems to have fully bought into his own genius. And why shouldn’t he? He certainly appears to be one. But when he takes offense at the notion of people calling these modern AI tools “chatbots” and then tries to refute the notion by spelling out what exactly the machines are doing—which sounds very much like the description of a chatbot—one wonders if he might not have drank a little bit too much of his own Kool-Aid.

Other figures are interviewed, such as his one-time student Demis Hassabis who went on to lead Google’s DeepMind project, and we take some amusing side trips to witness key events, like the time that DeepMind defeated the popular South Korean Go champion Lee Sedol, but by-and-large this content falls very much into the awestruck, almost fawning way of looking at AI. There is a look at the death by suicide of 14-year-old Sewell Setzer, III, allegedly at the urging of a Character.AI chatbot that he had become romantically involved with, which does go some way towards pointing out the risks of allowing this technology to be set free without any meaningful regulation, but that’s really the only time the movie gets serious about a realistic potential harm we might be having unleashed upon us.

Some focus is of course given to Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and it is somewhat funny to see how the former’s opinions morphed over time from alarmism to veneration once it became financially advantageous for him to do so. That said, despite the obvious unreliability of his opinion, too much of what he is shown saying is presented to us as if we should take it deathly seriously. He, and many others in the industry, have fiduciary reasons to make us all think that their products are unfathomably smart, for good or ill, but as anyone who has used the versions of these tools that are currently available will tell you, after the novelty wears off it doesn’t take a genius to see that they are maybe more “artificial” than “intelligent”.

Still, the history of these developments is fascinating, and many of the movie’s excursions are highly entertaining to watch. Even if Holt is perhaps a little too credulous of his subjects, most viewers are likely to walk away from AI: Probably Nothing to Worry About having learned at least a little. With slick pacing, a playful sense of humor, and a keen sense of how to explain complex subjects in ways that most can understand, it’s a genuinely well-made documentary, that doesn’t need to try and reinvent the format to keep its audience engaged.

The only contribution that AI is claimed to have made towards the film is to suggest the title, and it is a good one. I also happen to agree with the statement. Not because I think whatever the tech turns into will be benevolent, or because I think those leading these companies will make the right decisions to keep us safe, or because the world’s governments will step in and keep things in check. No. It’s “probably nothing to worry about” because, at least for now, it just isn’t all that smart. ★★★½