Jana J. Monji

AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist ⭐️⭐️⭐️

When I was in Taiwan in the 1980s, people, usually men, asked to take photos of the White women in our study group. Our hosts warned them that such people often took those photos to create nude composite photos. Decades later, Photoshop would make that easier and now, in 2026, AI makes it easier still. If you think that isn’t a problem, it’s already been used to make porn of classmates.
If you’re a creative the advent of AI should have you worried. If you’re a woman or the parent of girls, AI should have you worried. If you’re a celebrity, you should be worried. William Shatner has both used AI to preserve his legacy through StoryFile and yet found himself fighting AI-generated deep fake content and hoaxes.
“The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist” focuses on the anxiety first-time father Daniel Roher experienced in face of the advancing AI technology. Roher, who co-directed with Charlie Tyrell, uses animation and talking heads to explore this problem with his wife, director Caroline Lindy, as the voice of reason. We will get to see their first child, and a host of important people:
  • Sam Altman: CEO of OpenAI
  • Daniela Amodei: President and Co-Founder  of Anthropic
  • Emily M. Bender: Linguistics Professor at the University of Washington
  • Yoshua Bengio: Turing Award Co-Winner
  • Liv Boeree: Game Theory Expert
  • Ajeya Cotra: AI Risk Advisor
  • Peter Diamandis: Founder and Chair of XPRIZE and Singularity University
  • Random Fernando: Co-Founder of the Center for Humane Technology
  • Karen Hao: AI Reporter
  • David Evan Harris: Chancellor’s Public Scholar at UC Berkeley
  • Sanmi Koyejo: Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Stanford
  • Peter Lee; President of Microsoft Research
  • Deborah Raji: Researcher at UC Berkeley
  • Ramesh Srinivasan: Professor of Information Studies at UCLA
  • Rocky Yu: CEO of AGI House

Overall, while this documentary is mildly entertaining, it is also self-indulgent and very self-aware. Don’t expect anything too controversial. We’ll hear both sides: the good and the bad. But there are things we don’t hear. We won’t hear from people who have suffered because of AI, including actors and artists.  I know the problem with William Shatner is too recent to be included, however, the question of the movie extras or background actors being used and reused is an issue that could have been addressed.

There’s no one from Caltech or MIT. While mention is made of both China and Taiwan, we don’t hear experts from there either. Considering the acceptance of technology in Japan and South Korea, and the more collective approach in their societies,  I wanted to hear experts from those areas as well.

One of the questions that has long been asked by science fiction writers but isn’t asked in this film is can computer programs teach ethical behavior? Can computers be programmed to have empathy and perceive the rewards of kindness and friendship.  To a large extent Star Wars is the story of C3Po and the Droids are built and act in a manner that the audience should feel sympathy for them. They are lovable. In “Star Trek: The Next Generation” one major storyline is the dilemma of Data. Is he a sentient being and should he have the same individual rights as biological members of the Federation or is he merely property of the Starfleet. In Star Wars, some Droids definitely have both empathy and ethics. My husband pointed out, the question of programing in ethics was not addressed in this documentary.

Still the animation is amusing. I learned more about Roher and may be inspired to draw more. I learned about different aspects of AI so the documentary did give me something to think about. It might hit you differently if you have children, but the documentary does conclude that we should still have them despite negative predictions for the future. But we do need to consider how AI will affect our jobs and our personal images in the future.
The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist” had its world premiered at the Sundance Film Festival (27 January 2026) and received a theatrical release by Focus Features on 27n March 2026.

2026 ‧ Documentary ‧ 1h 44m

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