{"id":1860011,"date":"2026-04-01T14:57:47","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T11:57:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1860011"},"modified":"2026-04-01T14:57:47","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T11:57:47","slug":"the-ai-docs-director-was-scared-shitless-by-ai-so-he-made-a-movie-about-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1860011","title":{"rendered":"The AI Doc&#8217;s director was &#8220;scared shitless&#8221; by AI, so he made a movie about it"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[analyse_image type=&#8221;featured&#8221; src=&#8221;https:\/\/s.yimg.com\/ny\/api\/res\/1.2\/8MuEXkaLW36ofBnNCka19w&#8211;\/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTEyMDA7aD02NzU-\/https:\/\/d29szjachogqwa.cloudfront.net\/images\/user-uploaded\/ai_fp_00003_2484.jpg&#8221;]<\/p>\n<article id=\"article-9c67e600-859e-48a0-8d04-93762ab35079\">\n<div>\n<div class=\"mx-auto flex flex-row justify-between md:px-10 md:max-w-[1220px]\">\n<div class=\"min-w-0 flex-1 self-start\" data-i13n-boundary=\"true\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<nav class=\"relative mx-4 mb-4 border-b pb-4 md:mx-0 md:mb-6 md:max-w-[750px] md:pb-6\" aria-label=\"breadcrumbs\">\n<ol class=\"no-scrollbar overflow-scroll whitespace-nowrap text-battleship\">\n<li class=\"inline\">\n<li class=\"inline-block cursor-default last:pr-10 md:last:pr-20 font-bold\">Entertainment<\/li>\n<li class=\"inline-block cursor-default last:pr-10 md:last:pr-20 ml-2 before:mb-0.5 before:mr-3 before:inline-block before:size-2 before:rotate-45 before:border-r-2 before:border-t-2 before:border-battleship\">TV &amp; movies<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/nav>\n<header class=\"mb-4 px-4 md:mb-6 md:max-w-[750px] md:px-0\">\n<h1 class=\"layout-h1 my-2 font-bold leading-tight\">The AI Doc&#8217;s director was &#8220;scared shitless&#8221; by AI, so he made a movie about it<\/h1>\n<h2 class=\"rightrail-h2-subheadline my-2 text-[18px] font-light leading-5 md:text-[20px]\/[28px]\">Daniel Roher explains why he\u2019s adopted an \u201capocaloptimist\u201d worldview on the Engadget Podcast.<\/h2>\n<div class=\"flex-col items-start lg:flex lg:flex-row lg:items-center lg:justify-between mt-6\">\n<div class=\"relative md:mr-[10px]\">\n<div class=\"flex items-center\">\n<div class=\"flex mr-2\">\n<div class=\"shrink-0 cursor-pointer inline-block size-[42px]\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt role=\"img\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full rounded-full object-cover object-center shadow-[0_0_0_2px_#ffffff]\" src=\"https:\/\/s.yimg.com\/ny\/api\/res\/1.2\/pm9NNYx6s2hTLTQZ6v82Dw--\/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTgwO2g9ODA-\/https:\/\/s.yimg.com\/os\/creatr-uploaded-images\/2024-01\/7bf86900-aa5a-11ee-af37-00cf16fbdc05\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"inline-block\">\n<div class=\"w-max text-[0.875rem]\/[1.25rem] font-semibold flex items-center\">\n<div class=\"flex flex-col\">\n<div class=\"flex w-max items-center\">Devindra Hardawar<\/div>\n<p><span class=\"font-normal sm:before:inline-block\">Senior Editor<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"text-[0.75rem] text-dolphin dark:text-shark md:text-[0.875rem]\/[1.25rem] lg:pt-[5px]\">\n<div class=\"inline-block\"><time datetime=\"2026-04-01T14:57:47.000Z\">Wed, April 1, 2026 at 2:57 PM UTC<\/time><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"ml-0 mt-4 flex items-center lg:ml-3 lg:mt-0\">\n<div class=\"ml-0 mr-2\">\n<div class=\"relative flex\">Add Engadget on Google<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"mx-4 md:mx-0\">\n<div class=\"grid grid-cols-[[fullbleed-start_body-start]_minmax(auto,750px)_[body-end_fullbleed-end]]\">\n<figure class=\"relative col-body mb-4\">\n<div class=\"relative overflow-hidden fig-image-round \"><img decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"object-cover object-center\" src=\"https:\/\/s.yimg.com\/ny\/api\/res\/1.2\/DxdMAriLO22hJ18fOZrz6g--\/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTEyNDI7aD02OTk-\/https:\/\/s.yimg.com\/uu\/api\/res\/1.2\/ekWxhKrMFXMnuV4uxIM8jg--~B\/aD0xNDA2O3c9MjUwMDthcHBpZD15dGFjaHlvbg--\/https:\/\/d29szjachogqwa.cloudfront.net\/images\/user-uploaded\/ai_fp_00003_2484.jpg\"><\/div><figcaption class=\"relative text-[0.875rem]\/[1.25rem] figure-caption mt-1 line-clamp-2 mt-2.5 md:mt-2 pr-2.5\">\n<div><span class=\"[&amp;_p]:inline\">Daniel Roher in The AI Doc.<\/span><span> (Focus Features)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"grid grid-cols-article-mobile md:max-w-[750px] md:grid-cols-article\" data-article-body=\"true\">\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">If you&#8217;re feeling anxious about AI and what it means for the future of humanity, you should watch <em>The AI Doc: Or, How I Became an Apocaloptimist<\/em>. As I noted in my review, the film aims to deliver some clarity amid all the hype. Now that it&#8217;s in theaters, we sat down with director Daniel Roher, who won an Oscar for his film <em>Navalny<\/em>, to dive deeper into his complicated feelings around AI.<\/p>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">The entire topic made him nervous, Roher said, so he decided to team up with similarly anxious colleagues to demystify AI using film. He describes the goal of the project to be a sort of &#8220;first date&#8221; with AI, a way to hear about its potential benefits from AI boosters, while also taking in the many negatives brought up by critics. It\u2019s probably too late to stop AI entirely, but he thinks we can at least try to find ways to limit the worst impulses of the tech industry.<\/p>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">&#8220;I wanted to make this movie because I was scared shitless, that&#8217;s the crux of it,&#8221; he said in an interview on the Engadget Podcast. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t understand what AI was. I didn&#8217;t understand why everyone was talking about it and why it seemed to be this thing that came outta the woodwork and all of a sudden, people were talking about it like it was the apocalypse or like it was gonna be the most optimistic, greatest thing ever.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div class=\"col-fullbleed mb-4 bg-marshmallow pb-5 dark:bg-ramones md:invisible md:mb-0 md:h-0 md:overflow-hidden md:pb-0\">\n<div class=\"py-2 text-center text-xs uppercase\">Advertisement<\/div>\n<div class=\"flex w-full flex-nowrap justify-center\">\n<div class=\"flex\" id=\"_R_lgb7b4ilfeiv5tilbH1_\">\n<div class=\"flex size-full items-center justify-center bg-marshmallow text-center leading-3\">Advertisement<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"col-body mb-4 hidden pb-5 dark:bg-ramones md:block\">\n<div class=\"flex w-full flex-nowrap justify-center\">\n<div class=\"flex\" id=\"_R_15gb7b4ilfeiv5tilbH1_\">\n<div class=\"flex size-full items-center justify-center bg-marshmallow text-center leading-3\">Advertisement<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">Ultimately, Roher arrived at the term \u201capocaloptimist,\u201d which balances the contradictory ideas that AI can both seriously harm society, and that we can still shape the future by criticizing or outright rejecting it. &#8220;It&#8217;s a worldview. It&#8217;s choosing not to buy into a binary that&#8217;s asking us to see this as either apocalypse and the end of the world, or through the rose-colored glasses of unvarnished optimism, which is also sort of a fallacy,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">On the one hand, he&#8217;s well aware the major players pushing AI are, at best, flawed. When I mentioned Marc Andreessen\u2019s recent comments about proudly having no inner thoughts, Roher added,\u201d They&#8217;re just fucking weird. They&#8217;re just nerds who became billionaires because they were born at the right time and they had the right interests. They&#8217;re brilliant in their own way and they have abilities, but they don&#8217;t understand what it is to exist. They don\u2019t know what real human beings navigate and go through.They have a very narrow worldview that&#8217;s callous and cold and calculated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">For many, the overnight ubiquity of this largely untested technology and the collective wealth and power of those supporting it means rampant negative externalities are all but guaranteed. But Roher&#8217;s apocaloptimism (we&#8217;ll see if the term quite catches on) chafes against cynicism and doomsaying. He points to OpenAI\u2019s Sora video generation app, which was heavily criticized as a tool that could lead to more realistic deepfakes, but was unceremoniously killed last week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">&#8220;I think people were [made] uncomfortable by it, and <em>good<\/em>,\u201d Roher said. \u201cAnd, shame on OpenAI for releasing this thing without any thoughtfulness. I guess the low bar of like, at least they had the decency to pull back and retract it, but only after public condemnation.&#8221; He added, &#8220;to the cynical people saying we&#8217;re all fucked, I&#8217;m like, no <em>fuck you<\/em>, we&#8217;re not. Collective action matters.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"col-fullbleed mb-4 bg-marshmallow pb-5 dark:bg-ramones md:invisible md:mb-0 md:h-0 md:overflow-hidden md:pb-0\">\n<div class=\"py-2 text-center text-xs uppercase\">Advertisement<\/div>\n<div class=\"flex w-full flex-nowrap justify-center\">\n<div class=\"flex\" id=\"_R_rgb7b4ilfeiv5tilbH1_\">\n<div class=\"flex size-full items-center justify-center bg-marshmallow text-center leading-3\">Advertisement<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"col-body mb-4 hidden pb-5 dark:bg-ramones md:block\">\n<div class=\"flex w-full flex-nowrap justify-center\">\n<div class=\"flex\" id=\"_R_1bgb7b4ilfeiv5tilbH1_\">\n<div class=\"flex size-full items-center justify-center bg-marshmallow text-center leading-3\">Advertisement<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">And notably, the entire goal is to think more deeply about the uses of technology than the people actually creating it. &#8220;These guys, when you actually sit down with them, they don&#8217;t have clarity, they can&#8217;t make you feel better. They don&#8217;t know themselves. They&#8217;re just motivated by the unbridled optimism of the greatest profit-making technology in the history of humanity. &#8220;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"hidden flex-none md:block ml-8\">\n<div class=\"flex size-full flex-col flex-nowrap\">\n<div class=\"flex-auto\">\n<div class=\"sticky flex flex-none\">\n<div class=\"flex\" id=\"_R_sj7b4ilfeiv5tilbH1_\">\n<div class=\"flex size-full items-center justify-center bg-marshmallow text-center leading-3\">Advertisement<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"mx-auto md:px-10 md:max-w-[1220px]\">\n<div class=\"grid grid-cols-article-mobile md:max-w-[750px] md:grid-cols-article\">\n<div class=\"no-scrollbar col-body mx-4 mb-8 mt-2.5 overflow-x-scroll whitespace-nowrap md:mx-0 md:max-w-[750px] md:overflow-x-visible\">\n<div class=\"mx-auto max-w-screen-sm\">\n<ul class=\"inline-flex text-xs md:text-sm\">\n<li class=\"mr-6\">About our ads<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<div class=\"grid grid-cols-article-mobile md:max-w-[750px] md:grid-cols-article\" data-article-body=\"true\">\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">If you&#8217;re feeling anxious about AI and what it means for the future of humanity, you should watch <em>The AI Doc: Or, How I Became an Apocaloptimist<\/em>. As I noted in my review, the film aims to deliver some clarity amid all the hype. Now that it&#8217;s in theaters, we sat down with director Daniel Roher, who won an Oscar for his film <em>Navalny<\/em>, to dive deeper into his complicated feelings around AI.<\/p>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">The entire topic made him nervous, Roher said, so he decided to team up with similarly anxious colleagues to demystify AI using film. He describes the goal of the project to be a sort of &#8220;first date&#8221; with AI, a way to hear about its potential benefits from AI boosters, while also taking in the many negatives brought up by critics. It\u2019s probably too late to stop AI entirely, but he thinks we can at least try to find ways to limit the worst impulses of the tech industry.<\/p>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">&#8220;I wanted to make this movie because I was scared shitless, that&#8217;s the crux of it,&#8221; he said in an interview on the Engadget Podcast. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t understand what AI was. I didn&#8217;t understand why everyone was talking about it and why it seemed to be this thing that came outta the woodwork and all of a sudden, people were talking about it like it was the apocalypse or like it was gonna be the most optimistic, greatest thing ever.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div class=\"col-fullbleed mb-4 bg-marshmallow pb-5 dark:bg-ramones md:invisible md:mb-0 md:h-0 md:overflow-hidden md:pb-0\">\n<div class=\"py-2 text-center text-xs uppercase\">Advertisement<\/div>\n<div class=\"flex w-full flex-nowrap justify-center\">\n<div class=\"flex\" id=\"_R_lgb7b4ilfeiv5tilbH1_\">\n<div class=\"flex size-full items-center justify-center bg-marshmallow text-center leading-3\">Advertisement<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"col-body mb-4 hidden pb-5 dark:bg-ramones md:block\">\n<div class=\"flex w-full flex-nowrap justify-center\">\n<div class=\"flex\" id=\"_R_15gb7b4ilfeiv5tilbH1_\">\n<div class=\"flex size-full items-center justify-center bg-marshmallow text-center leading-3\">Advertisement<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">Ultimately, Roher arrived at the term \u201capocaloptimist,\u201d which balances the contradictory ideas that AI can both seriously harm society, and that we can still shape the future by criticizing or outright rejecting it. &#8220;It&#8217;s a worldview. It&#8217;s choosing not to buy into a binary that&#8217;s asking us to see this as either apocalypse and the end of the world, or through the rose-colored glasses of unvarnished optimism, which is also sort of a fallacy,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">On the one hand, he&#8217;s well aware the major players pushing AI are, at best, flawed. When I mentioned Marc Andreessen\u2019s recent comments about proudly having no inner thoughts, Roher added,\u201d They&#8217;re just fucking weird. They&#8217;re just nerds who became billionaires because they were born at the right time and they had the right interests. They&#8217;re brilliant in their own way and they have abilities, but they don&#8217;t understand what it is to exist. They don\u2019t know what real human beings navigate and go through.They have a very narrow worldview that&#8217;s callous and cold and calculated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">For many, the overnight ubiquity of this largely untested technology and the collective wealth and power of those supporting it means rampant negative externalities are all but guaranteed. But Roher&#8217;s apocaloptimism (we&#8217;ll see if the term quite catches on) chafes against cynicism and doomsaying. He points to OpenAI\u2019s Sora video generation app, which was heavily criticized as a tool that could lead to more realistic deepfakes, but was unceremoniously killed last week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">&#8220;I think people were [made] uncomfortable by it, and <em>good<\/em>,\u201d Roher said. \u201cAnd, shame on OpenAI for releasing this thing without any thoughtfulness. I guess the low bar of like, at least they had the decency to pull back and retract it, but only after public condemnation.&#8221; He added, &#8220;to the cynical people saying we&#8217;re all fucked, I&#8217;m like, no <em>fuck you<\/em>, we&#8217;re not. Collective action matters.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"col-fullbleed mb-4 bg-marshmallow pb-5 dark:bg-ramones md:invisible md:mb-0 md:h-0 md:overflow-hidden md:pb-0\">\n<div class=\"py-2 text-center text-xs uppercase\">Advertisement<\/div>\n<div class=\"flex w-full flex-nowrap justify-center\">\n<div class=\"flex\" id=\"_R_rgb7b4ilfeiv5tilbH1_\">\n<div class=\"flex size-full items-center justify-center bg-marshmallow text-center leading-3\">Advertisement<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"col-body mb-4 hidden pb-5 dark:bg-ramones md:block\">\n<div class=\"flex w-full flex-nowrap justify-center\">\n<div class=\"flex\" id=\"_R_1bgb7b4ilfeiv5tilbH1_\">\n<div class=\"flex size-full items-center justify-center bg-marshmallow text-center leading-3\">Advertisement<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">And notably, the entire goal is to think more deeply about the uses of technology than the people actually creating it. &#8220;These guys, when you actually sit down with them, they don&#8217;t have clarity, they can&#8217;t make you feel better. They don&#8217;t know themselves. They&#8217;re just motivated by the unbridled optimism of the greatest profit-making technology in the history of humanity. &#8220;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>[analyse_source url=&#8221;https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/entertainment\/tv-movies\/the-ai-docs-director-was-scared-shitless-by-ai-so-he-made-a-movie-about-it-145747961.html&#8221;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[analyse_image type=&#8221;featured&#8221; src=&#8221;https:\/\/s.yimg.com\/ny\/api\/res\/1.2\/8MuEXkaLW36ofBnNCka19w&#8211;\/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTEyMDA7aD02NzU-\/https:\/\/d29szjachogqwa.cloudfront.net\/images\/user-uploaded\/ai_fp_00003_2484.jpg&#8221;] Entertainment TV &amp; movies The AI Doc&#8217;s director was &#8220;scared shitless&#8221; by AI, so he made a movie about it Daniel Roher explains why he\u2019s adopted an \u201capocaloptimist\u201d worldview on the Engadget Podcast. Devindra Hardawar Senior Editor Wed, April 1, 2026 at 2:57 PM UTC Add Engadget on Google Daniel Roher in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,63],"class_list":["post-1860011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-engadget-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1860011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1860011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1860011\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1860011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1860011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1860011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}