Valerie Veatch premiered this at Sundance in January and it has since been picked up by Independent Lens. It examines artificial intelligence through the longer history of human technological advancement, and it is not a friendly film toward the current moment. One critic described it as a Molotov cocktail thrown into the middle of our overinflated AI hype, which gives you a sense of the register. I am invested across this sector and I still think the strongest skeptical case deserves a real hearing. This is that case, made well.
John Greer and Lei Huang have been building a documentary on accelerationism and the people pushing hardest toward artificial superintelligence, and the trailer alone tells you the register they are working in. Watch it back to back with Ghost in the Machine and you get the two poles of the current argument in their strongest form, which is a more useful education than reading another hundred posts from either camp. The interviews behind it include some of the most committed accelerationists working today.
The Oldest Person in the World
Sam Green spent more than a decade following successive holders of the title of oldest living person, which means the film keeps losing its subject and finding a new one. What starts as a documentary about extreme longevity turns into something closer to a meditation on time, luck, and what it actually feels like to outlast everyone. It premiered at Sundance in January and reviews have been strong. For a category I spend real money and attention on, this was a useful corrective. Living longest is not the same thing as living well.
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