Panel discussion on The AI Doc shifts attention from hype to human impact.
At a moment when conversations about artificial intelligence are often dominated by predictions of superintelligence, existential risk, and technological revolution, it is crucial to deliberate on how society chooses to build, deploy, regulate, and relate to AI—and who ultimately benefits from those decisions.
That was the key takeaway from a panel discussion that followed the screening of The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, a 2026 documentary directed by Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell, in Loew Auditorium on May 28.
The film follows Roher, a father-to-be grappling with the perils and promises of AI. It chronicles his attempts to understand the world that his child will inherit by interviewing researchers, critics, and developers working at the leading edge of the technology, including the likes of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis.
The conversations are intercut by personal moments and conversations with family that frame the central question Roher—the Canadian director whose documentary Navalny won an Oscar—asks many of the interviewees: Is this a good or a bad time to have a child?
The responses range from an enthusiastic yes, “now is the best possible time in human history to have a child,” and quiet confidence from Altman to unnerving silences and dire warnings from another interviewee that AI “is the last mistake humans will ever get to make.”
The contrasting viewpoints persist through most of the movie, as it careens between hope and concern, prodding audiences to consider what lies ahead, how the technology could impact our lives, and how to avoid the pitfalls before it’s too late.
The well-attended screening and discussion were hosted by the Neukom Institute for Computational Science in collaboration with the Hopkins Center for the Arts. Daniel Rockmore, professor of math and computer science and director of the Neukom Institute, who had previously seen the movie and believed it would spark meaningful discussion, initiated efforts to organize the event.
Rockmore led the discussion along with panelists Susan Brison, director of the Wright Center for the Study of Computation and Just Communities; Roopika Risam, chair of Film and Media Studies; David Kraemer, chair of the Cognitive Science Program; and Thalia Wheatley, Lincoln Filene Professor in Human Relations.
The best thing we can do for our brains is talk to real human beings, ideally face to face.
In a brief introduction before the screening, Rockmore said that “the infusion of AI into our lives has dramatic implications for the world, and this movie raises a lot of important issues. I hope—in the spirit of Dartmouth and the liberal arts—that the audience watches the movie through the lens of critical thinking.”
Post-screening, the panel summarized their views on the movie in turn, agreeing that while the movie brought diverse voices to the table, the film amplifies the very hype and anxiety that benefit AI companies by driving investment, contracts, and adoption rather than grounding the conversation in present-day realities and harms.
“What about this rapidly growing inequality of wealth around the world that this AI race is exacerbating?” asked Brison.
“There’s a lot of feeling that this is something that has just sort of fallen out of the sky, and we can’t control it or do anything about it,” said Kraemer. It’s important to keep sight of the fact that the construction of the technology is a human endeavor, he said, and understanding risks and proposing regulation that everybody gets behind seems like the logical way forward.
Wheatley pointed out that intelligence cannot be defined merely by the ability to detect patterns but by the ability to tell which patterns are deep and important.
In response to a question from a student asking for actionable steps that graduating students can take as they prepare to enter a job market increasingly shaped by AI, Risam said that she finds it especially troubling that AI prohibits people from building relationships with each other since they feel like they can get answers without having to deal with someone else.
“I hear from students that they use the generative AI models because they don’t want to bother their professor, they don’t want to talk to their friend about their dating troubles,” she said. “Chat is there all the time, willing to listen, and what I really worry about is that a lot of the ways we get jobs is by building relationships with people.”
She urged students to build strong relationships and invite people to converse and connect, a sentiment echoed strongly by Wheatley, a neuroscientist who studies conversation.
“The best thing we can do for our brains is talk to real human beings, ideally face to face,” said Wheatley. “What AI does is that it is 100% affirming,” she said, and “rather than keeping us normative and healthy, it’s spinning us out into idiosyncrasies, and that’s really a bad and scary place to be.”
The panelists suggested that any reasons for optimism hinge largely on human choices, not on AI itself. “We’re doing this stuff,” Brison said. “I mean, AI is not making us do things.”
Harini Barath can be reached at harini.barath@dartmouth.edu
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Does it really provide symptom relief for Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s, and is it safe? And in my mind, the answer certainly for this older group is there’s a lot of risk and a lot of unknowns.
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