Sam Altman Finally Opens Up in New AI Documentary — But Does He Really Say Anything New?

For months, filmmaker Adam Bhala Lough tried to land an interview with Sam Altman, the enigmatic CEO of OpenAI. His attempts to secure a sit-down for a feature-length exploration of AI’s promise and peril were met with silence. Frustrated but undeterred, Lough pivoted: he commissioned an AI chatbot trained to mimic Altman’s speech patterns and likeness, creating a digital deepfake avatar to stand in for the man himself.

But in a twist of fate, the real Sam Altman did agree to be interviewed — not for Lough’s project, but for an entirely different documentary: The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, which hits theaters March 27.

Directed by Daniel Roher, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind the 2022 documentary Navalny, the film also features interviews with Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, and Demis Hassabis, cofounder and CEO of Google DeepMind. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and X’s Elon Musk were also approached — but neither made an appearance.

It’s an impressive roster of tech royalty, yet the central issue becomes clear early on: once the cameras start rolling, these AI luminaries say little that hasn’t already been said in boardrooms, congressional hearings, or viral Twitter threads.

When Roher presses Altman on why humanity should trust him to steer AI’s rapid acceleration — given its existential stakes — Altman’s response is blunt: “You shouldn’t.”

And just like that, the line of questioning ends. No follow-up. No deeper exploration. No accountability.

Framed by Roher’s personal anxieties about becoming a father, The AI Doc opens with a sense of mounting dread. Roher, alongside his wife and filmmaker Caroline Lindy, is expecting their first child — a son — and he’s haunted by questions about the world this boy will inherit. Will AI destroy the educational foundations that shape self-sufficient adults? Will it accelerate beyond our control before his son even reaches high school?

Tristan Harris, cofounder of the Center for Humane Technology, delivers one of the film’s most chilling moments: “I know people who work on AI risk who don’t expect their children to make it to high school.” It’s a grim forecast that sets the tone for much of the documentary’s first act.

Yet, despite the doom-laden atmosphere, Roher and codirector Charlie Tyrell manage to craft an accessible, visually inventive crash course in AI. Eschewing the jargon-laden language that often clouds tech discourse, they break down concepts in plain terms. The film is punctuated with Roher’s own colorful drawings and paintings, while whimsical stop-motion sequences — courtesy of producer Daniel Kwan, Oscar-winning codirector of Everything Everywhere All at Once — inject a dose of creative hope into the existential gloom.

The latter half of the film shifts gears, showcasing Silicon Valley’s techno-optimists who promise a future where AI conquers disease, reverses climate change, and redefines human potential. But these sweeping claims are left largely unchallenged. There’s little interrogation of how or why current large language models might evolve into the mythical “artificial general intelligence” (AGI) that could outthink humans. Venture capitalist Reid Hoffman, for example, acknowledges that benefits will come with harms — but what those harms might be is left vague.

Even when AI leaders compare their technology’s implications to the advent of nuclear weapons, they lean on a familiar playbook: presenting their products as singularly consequential — and subtly suggesting that only they can be trusted to advance them responsibly.

The AI Doc is a visually engaging, emotionally resonant primer on the AI debate, but it ultimately leaves viewers with more questions than answers. In a field where the stakes couldn’t be higher, that may be the most honest takeaway of all.

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