Review: The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist is a panic attack, in a good way
Is it possible to have an even-tempered conversation about AI right now? It feels like there are two camps on the artificial intelligence debate, with one side promising that AI will save humanity from disease and labor, while the other warns AI will bring about the abrupt eradication of all mankind. Are you panicked yet?
Join the club. AI is being developed so fast and furiously that it's already spread into our home lives, professional lives, love lives, playtime, politics, and art. It feels inescapable, and that can be pretty damn scary. Because for better or worse, the world around us is changing at a pace few of us truly understand. It's that mounting terror that inspired Canadian documentarian Daniel Roher to chart his journey in understanding AI by interviewing experts, engineers, and CEOs.
The resulting film, The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, compiles a mountain of big ideas, opposing theories, and talking head interviews. But it does so within a personal framing that keeps this discussion deeply human.
Roher won't feign a stoic objectivity. He'll share his fears, not just about AI, but also about becoming a parent in this time of indisputable change. He'll freak out, not just in his questions, but in his reflections with his wife, who serves as the film's narrator and occasionally the voice of reason. And he'll ultimately craft a journey that feels like a panic attack in real time. In the end, you may not feel better about mankind's chances against the rise of AI. But you'll likely feel less helpless in the future before us all.
The AI Doc has a tender and thoughtful approach.
It all began with Roher realizing that AI was finding its way into screenwriting tools. Like many a writer, this struck him with a pang of existential dread. If machines are going to be creating art, what does that mean for those of us who have dedicated our lives to craftsmanship, only to have AI aggregate our work and every other collectible bit of writing across human history to use to regurgitate its approximation of art?
From there, Roher's look at the future was soaked in panic. The joyful news of his wife's pregnancy with their first child became a new path for his fears of the future and AI. To present this internal struggle in a visual space, Roher brings in hand-drawn animation of himself and his wife. Reenactments or conversations become a twee flipbook, where the two exchange worried glances across torn pages. His desire to understand AI becomes not a metaphorical mountain to climb, but an animation of crumpled paper, building a mountain within his humble shed.
By contrast, the area where Roher and his co-director Charlie Tyrell will interview subjects is a precise and simple setup: a dark charcoal backdrop, a plain white chair, a banal brown table. Whether they are interviewing top CEOs of AI companies, like Open AI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic co-founders Daniela Amodei and Dario Amodei, and DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis, or reporters, activists, historians, and game theorists, the setting is the same. The audience won't be swayed by some cool Silicon Valley backdrop or a cluttered office. The focus is on these people, who are shot talking straight to camera. The effect is that they are talking directly to us in the audience. And it's very effective.
By making himself a part of the narrative, and then sitting us down as if we are in his seat, staring directly into the eyes of his interviewees, Roher puts the audience in his shoes, in his perspective. As a result, I felt so invested — so a part of this conversation — that I couldn't stop myself from talking back. Not trying to join in or talking over the movie; don't mistake me. But I kept hearing myself clucking along with little sounds of agreement, or dismay, or confusion. I realized my brain was so engaged in the back-and-forth between the interviewer and interviewee that I was subconsciously responding as if I were in that room in that moment.
Between the handmade animations and the direct-address approach of the interviews, The AI Doc reminds us constantly that we are human and that we are a part of this conversation, even if we aren't in the rooms where the big decisions are being made.
The AI Doc is terrifying and a must-see.
The first leg of Roher's journey is absolutely frightening. As teased in the documentary, he speaks to AI Risk experts who don't hold back about the risks of employing AI in military operations, drone strikes, or war. Then, beyond asking these people about some vague future, he asks them if they'd consider having kids, knowing what they know. Roher's quest to be a good father repeatedly grounds this film, pulling it away from the hypothetical to the constant demand of caring for a child in a world you cannot control.
After so much "what could go wrong" talk, his wife pleads he consider what could go right. So begins a new chapter of the doc, that plays with radiant, colorful animations of the idyllic future imagined by the optimists, who believe AI could eradicate disease and give rise to a new freedom from labor, allowing Roher's son a romantic life as a poet living abroad. As enchanting an answer as this is, it's the next swell of emotion. First comes the panic, then the attempt at battling back with hope. Then comes the tricky bit of picking through what we know — not just what we feel or fear — and what could truly be. This rationalizing is where politics, cultural values, and corporate greed come into play as factors, muddying the paths of the detractors and the optimists. Then, like the A-lister cameo popping up in the third act of a Marvel movie, Roher brings in the biggest names in AI. It's tempting to buy the same sales pitch that they've given governments and investors to great success. But Roher won't give them the last word. That's for us, because even in the face of so much fear and uncertainty, Roher calls for us to become apocaloptimists.
Don’t miss out on our latest stories: Add Mashable as a trusted news source in Google.
A portmanteau that combines "apocalypse" and optimist," the film's title not only calls us to understand the big, scary terrain of AI now, but to recognize it and choose hope and action. The film gives closure to Roher's personal journey in becoming a dad, but doesn't cop out as if parenthood is the only and best means to becoming a better person. (Looking at you, Marty Supreme.) Instead, the film shares some ways its audience can more actively be apart of the conversation, and provides a link to the film's website for engagement that meets us where we are. Which, if you're anything like me, means way too online.
Incredibly, The AI Doc: Or How I became an Apocaloptimist clocks in at under two hours, and yet provides a wealth of information about AI within a framework that prevents our heads from exploding. While there were parts that made me want to switch off, maybe even run, Roher and Tyrell have a masterful understanding of their audience. So the film has an almost roller-coaster ride flow. It begins with cranking things up, creating context, and ratcheting up the fears over AI. Then, a release, not with a scream but a space where sci-fi utopias are imagined in charming illustration. Then, again the cranking, this time making us take in all we've heard, our brains the grinding gears. Finally, a message of cautious optimism and activism, and in that rush, we are released back into the world. Now, what will we do with it?
The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist was reviewed out SXSW 2026. The film will open in theaters on March 27.