The AI Doc or How I Became an Apocaloptimist (2026)
Directed by: Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell
Premise: A documentary about artificial intelligence. Filmmaker Daniel Roher interviews experts in the field, trying to determine if development of AI will be a benefit to humanity or a catastrophe.
What Works: The AI Doc or How I Became an Apocaloptimist matches intellectual inquiry with an urgent and earnest person interest. The documentary unfolds from the point of view of filmmaker Daniel Roher who wrestles with anxiety about the future and specifically about the impact of artificial intelligence. Roher and his wife Caroline Lindy are expecting their first child which changes the nature of the inquiry. Roher is genuinely worried for himself and for his child and the first set of interviews don’t do much to set him at ease. These experts anticipate AI will have apocalyptic consequences that could spell doom for humanity or cripple civilization. These doomsday predictions are offset by testimony from optimists who expect AI to unleash a wave of scientific and technological advances that will uplift our standard of life. The following section is the most provocative as Roher and his interview subjects discuss the technology industry and the political and commercial forces driving the development of AI. The AI Doc depicts an arms race between governments and between businesses with everyone incentivized to cut corners and skip safeguards for the sake of being first. This section tends to validate the worries of AI’s critics but the documentary is not just a bummer. As dark as some of it may be, The AI Doc is a mostly sober assessment of AI’s potential, both good and bad, that is also personal and occasionally funny. It’s also a personal expression of Daniel Roher’s anxieties and in that respect The AI Doc is about more than technology. It’s about the uncertainty of the future and how we face it.
What Doesn’t: The AI Doc is formatted as a talking head documentary. Daniel Roher has assembled an impressive roster of interviewees and the film’s personal angle spices up the material but the format limits the scope. The interviewees explain the potential dangers and the benefits of artificial intelligence but their predictions remain hypothetical and academic. AI is already here. It’s having real world consequences. The filmmakers don’t account for that. The AI Doc acknowledges comparable technological breakthroughs such as the industrial revolution and the advent of nuclear energy but it doesn’t historicize AI in that larger context nor does it draw useful lessons from that history. Most of the documentary remains an abstract projection rather than drawing conclusions based on evidence.
Bottom Line: The AI Doc or How I Became an Apocaloptimist is both intellectually substantive and personally engaging. Although its implications are grim, this isn’t a doom spiral. The AI Doc takes us through the perils and potentials of this technology to inspire us to take responsibility for the future.
Episode: #1093 (April 5, 2026)