Model Citizen

In his new documentary, Oscar winner Daniel Roher speaks with Silicon Valley demigods, dystopian futurists and dejected scientists about the perils of AI. Somehow, he's still optimistic

- BY ERIN HERSHBERG

Your new project, The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, is terrifying. What is an “apocaloptimist?” AI is often framed as a technology that will either end the world or save it. An apocaloptimist like myself refuses the binary. Apocaloptimism isn’t naïve. It’s the discipline of acknowledging awe and anxiety simultaneously. It’s choosing to live in the paradox. I try to be clear-eyed: some AI tech is objectively awesome. I use Anthropic’s Claude to help with research, for instance, and it feels empowering. At the same time, there’s AI that’s destabilizing and ethically murky, and systems are being put on the market faster than we can absorb them psychologically, socially or politically.

Given that uncertainty, you still don’t think we’re doomed? The worst thing we can do is to say that we’re powerless in the face of Big Tech. Fuck that. I have a two-year-old son at home. I want him to have a life filled with passions to chase and problems to solve—not one defined by a crisis of purpose. We have agency. We may not control technology, but we have a say in how it shapes our lives. That’s our responsibility.