Another day, another warning about AI; the documentary Chasing Utopia delivers a concentrated stream of concerns in its 83-minute runtime. Directed by Alex Holmes and Lina Zilinskaite, the film starts with familiar criticisms, such as mass unemployment and power concentration in tech barons, but escalates to discussions about creating computers from human brain cells. The sheer volume of information can be overwhelming.
At the centre is Mo Gawdat, former chief business officer at Google X, now a touring cautionary voice. He once oversaw advanced projects at Google, but his biggest moonshot lies ahead: introducing a moral dimension into the tech race. Gawdat speaks of parental pride watching Google's AI-driven robotic arms learn, and believes humanity's capacity for benevolence is the training resource needed to prevent catastrophe.
The parental angle is personal for Gawdat, who quit Google after his son's tragic death from a botched appendix operation. He addresses AI's current shortcomings: enabling digital narcissism through social media and porn, facilitating mass surveillance and automated warfare, and evolving exponentially. Geoffrey Hinton also chips in with warnings. The tech bros, notably not interviewed, seem unbothered.
Gawdat is frustratingly less specific about what enlightened AI would look like. His proposal to infuse neural network training data with human positivity and altruism seems naive, but a top Bhutanese lama agrees that containing AI and making it serve humanity contains oppressive tendencies. It's hard to take seriously, but blockbuster times need blockbuster thinking.
