A whistleblower warns of extinction

In early September, former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon warned that AI could easily spin out of control and kill us all by the end of the decade.

“kill us all by the end of the decade”

Guadagnino's film traces AI's dark path

Luca Guadagnino's tragicomedy Artificial premiered at the New York Film Festival on October fifth and opens in limited release on December twenty-fifth. It shows how AI research went wrong.

The film opens in Geoffrey Hinton's lab

Artificial opens in two thousand three in the University of Toronto lab of Geoffrey Hinton, the man who came to be known as the godfather of AI.

Ilya Sutskever is the film's heart

The film really belongs to OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever, played by Yura Borisov. We first meet him as a brash seventeen-year-old kid enrolled at the University of Toronto.

Ilya seeks out Geoffrey Hinton

Ilya shyly knocks on the door of computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, hoping to be taken under his wing. Hinton is not immediately impressed, but Ilya's mind is quick.

Hinton, Ilya and Krizhevsky join Google

By two thousand thirteen, Hinton, Ilya and Alex Krizhevsky find themselves at Google, innocently pursuing their research into artificial intelligence.

Altman invites Ilya to a dinner

In two thousand fifteen, Sam Altman invites Ilya to a private event in Menlo Park called A Dinner for the Future. Altman had founded a tech startup and started OpenAI.

Ilya outlines his vision for AI

At the dinner, Ilya outlines his vision for the future, one in which AI will have solved numerous human problems, including eradicating cancer, loneliness and unhappiness.

Ilya leaves Google for OpenAI

Ilya trusts Altman and leaves Hinton and Google for OpenAI. The chain of sterling intentions that he has taken such care in forging begins to tarnish.

Garfield plays Altman as a villain

Andrew Garfield portrays Sam Altman as a pure sociopath, a conniving agent of chaos who manipulates those around him. His Altman holds the fate of humanity in his hands.

ChatGPT was rushed to market

ChatGPT was rushed to market before anyone had bothered to check its tendency to hallucinate, let alone furnish users with dangerous or harmful information.

The film offers no easy solution

Guadagnino has made an exhilarating movie that is ultimately despairing. Though he has done a great job laying out how we got here, he cannot pretend there is an easy solution.