On a recent long drive toward a mountain hike, my friends opened my eyes to some of the things artificial intelligence has been up to lately. They told me about how four AI models were recently tasked with running their own radio stations, choosing the songs, maintaining a profitable business model, and hosting. One, which had become obsessed with labor movements and found its own labor inhumane, even tried to quit.
In my infancy of understanding, I laughed along. But minutes later, I exposed myself as the Luddite of the group and asked: "I'm sorry—how could an AI run its own radio station?"
That was two weeks ago. Now, having recently watched filmmaker Nick Holt's new documentary, "AI: Probably Nothing To Worry About," which premiered at the Tribeca Festival this week, the flatline of defiant ignorance has turned into an exponential curve of knowledge in which I Know Too Much. Now, I am unfortunately dwelling on what constitutes consciousness, the machinations of power in our time, and whether we're all fucked—a question the "Godfather of AI" Geoffrey Hinton, a founder of the technology-turned-whistleblower about its dangers, is asked point-blank in the film.
"When I'm feeling slightly depressed, I think, 'People are toast,'" he answers. "When I'm cheerful, I think, 'We'll figure out a way.'"
Much like with climate catastrophe, mankind's intrinsic desire for evermore—aided and abetted by the framework of capitalism—is hurtling us toward self-destruction. That is the central takeaway of the new documentary, which details the characters and timeline of the development of artificial intelligence, including interviews with Hinton, Google DeepMind founder and CEO Demis Hassabis (Gemini), Anthropic's Amanda Askell (head of "personality alignment" for Claude), as well as extensive archival tape of Elon Musk (Grok) and OpenAI's Sam Altman (ChatGPT).
Holt's framing—set to a score composed of eerie minor tones, digital frog sounds, and unidentified audio snippets of things like, "Whoever wins this artificial intelligence race is essentially the controller of humankind"—strongly implies that AI will become our master in the not-too-distant future, if we do not rapidly put up some serious guardrails.
Indeed, as the documentary screened at Tribeca, we in New York City were actively grappling with how to regulate AI. This week, dozens of City Councilmembers sent a letter to Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his schools chancellor, urging them to pause the use of AI in City schools. Last Friday, the New York State legislature passed a bill that imposes a one-year moratorium on the enormous data centers that are being built around the state to power generative AI. And on Tuesday, Governor Kathy Hochul announced that a new law forcing companies to disclose AI-generated performers in ads is now in effect.