User Reviews

Tonje Hessen Schei clearly has an agenda with this film. It is not a neutral dissertation of AI, its potential and dangers. We are in the middle of a revolution in terms of AI, though true AI seems rather far away still. (Current ML, "deep learning" algorithms and synthetic neural networks are actually very primitive compared to the human intelligences that created them). Hessen Schei said in an introduction to the screening I attended that she thinks there is too little attention paid to and conversation about AI in terms of how it will change society, democracy and the way we live. Even though I use ML and "AI" in my work and know the tech fairly well, I still found the framing and the questions asked in the film to be engadging. Some of the talking heads come off as rather naive, despite all their apparent brilliance. I found it amusing that some of these highly intelligent people (probably inadvertently) support some level of pre-destination, i.e. that AI is inevitable. Also, it raises questions dating back at least Oppenheimer about the culpability of scientists. To quote Jeff Goldblums character in Jurassic Park "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." which more or less summarizes the theme of iHuman and why we should stop and think.

I would have liked to hear inside opinions from the big players like Google and Amazon, but ominously they refused to be interviewed.

I think the documentary was expertly made with both incredible audio design (think Sci-fi in general, Blade Runner I+II in particular) and visuals. Talking head fatigue is mostly avoided. Like I said initially, the film clearly has an agenda and the director is using every trick in her impressive arsenal to influence us, the audience. Some of the shots are amazingly beautiful as well. The shot of Juergen Schmidhuber looking out upon creation from his vantage point on top of the Alps is both amusing and has serious historical connotations.

PS! About the Schmidhuber scene, a previous reviewer wrote: "it's just another example of how millenials like this doc maker play with history :-)". Actually it is not. Firstly, Hessen Schei is most definetely Genaration X (born 1971 according to Google). Secondly, this is something that has nothing to do with generations but rather much more with having a sense of wit and visual humour. There have been plenty of similarly thematically loaded images in docs by Boomers, Xers (my gen) and Millenials.

A documentary that should be watched. AI etc should be debated more and ethical issues addressed

I will only add to many of these good reviews. I really miss an interview of Elon Musk. A man highly sceptical about AI. The special effects in between interviews got way too much attention. Cool and well made, but totally not interesting. I got way more enlightened regarding AI and it's consequences. Since there are so many companies developing and doing research on AI, all a little man like me can do to affect this development is... nothing! I am now more nervous about AI, consequences and ethics here than tampering with genes on sapiens.

Personally I've seen nothing new on AI although some given insights by people connected to the industry were quite interesting... The presentation of a Swiss as a 'father of AI' on a mountain hill was pretty amusing as it's just another example how millenials like this doc maker play with history :) AI was found as a discipline in the 50s of the last century and thoughts about raised way earlier.. The part on robotics was also limited to the work of the Swiss 'AI father' and a sight on the Sophia 'humanoid' with just some shots on the better examples available in Japan as well as more interesting visions about implementation of those devices in that country. For some the use of graphics to boost the perception that something fearsome is about to happen might have been helpful :) I wonder what viewers at the IDFA screening picked up when they left the theater as many of them grabbed their phones and most likely used AI driven tools to let their digital friends know what they just have seen...

Entertaining and engaging documentary. Comes at this topic more from the angle of what could be, and is, the negative impact of data harvesting and analysis etc. The way it is edited ironically suggests a certain bias, as the extremes of AI and algorithms are shown as Brexit, Trump, Bolsanaro etc. But it provides no smoking gun and ignores the fact that the big tech companies and employees who create these algorithms tilt more to the left. So while 3rd parties manipulating the model to incite "right wing" movements is certainly there for debate, it does little to touch on the broader topic of the bias of the algorithm designers themselves. I liked and enjoyed watching it, and recommend it, but it does itself illustrate the difficulty of avoiding bias.

Saw this documentary at Kosmorama firm festival in 2020.

Its a smack in the face to the many who refuse to look into what the future has to bring. The documentary brings out the various directions where AI might take us in the future to come. It tells where the latest great breakthroughs of the 2010s came from, how its become the source of many technology empires and speaks of how private and governmental groups is entering a political, economical and military arms race for the future. How certain big companies strive control the big military and governmental contracts and toss their morals aside.

It tells of the amazing future it might bring, the terror of autonomous weapons, how AI can bring further polarization of our societies.. to the bleakest darkest most terrifying dystopian futures and possible end of humanity.

For those who study the subject there is little new, the interviews with the pioneers in AI development, a view into their mindsets was worth it by itself.

For the novice, its an great a great introduction to what is going on in the higher tiers of Technology industries as it does not need any technical understanding to get the message.

The future is at the doorstep, we need to be prepared for what is to come.

Saw this documentary at IDFA 2019, the documentary festival in Amsterdam. This movie did not bring much news for me. This is not to be construed as a complaint. Rather the contrary, as I'll explain later. Much of this was already a topic of growing concern in IT-related journals. Also, lectures held at congresses and seminars presented ample eye-openers in this field, once I became aware of it and began following relevant specialists in the field. In other words, I was not taken by surprise when watching the very many relevant issues passing by. However, that is me, and it is more relevant to make the general public aware, and policy makers in particular.

I know it is not easy to find the right packaging for IT-related contents. I especially know how difficult it is to find the right visuals to support the message on screen. Of course, we now (again) saw the obligatory amount of screen gibberish (mainly program source text), network cabling, flashing lights on appliances, the insides of a server farm, and other boring images seemingly unevitable in this context. Talking heads cannot be avoided either. Nevertheless, I know of no better alternative to present the alarming message. The filmmakers used sort of an all-knowing narrator who guided us throught subsequent stories. I'm not sure that is the best solution, but it may work very well with an uninformed viewer who will intuitively build some trust in this man because of his reputation.

I asked my companion, not working in IT, rather one of the power-user type, about the eye-opening effects for her. She confirmed that this movie worked indeed and could very well serve its purpose to show interested people the many dangers ahead. Of course, those who are not interested at all, cannot be convinced with either talkshow, movie, book or article, so are beyond hope on all counts.

All in all, I suspect that this movie can do a good job of educating people on these very relevant topics, pertinent for everyone and certainly not confined to the world of IT. We cannot leave the decisions to the technicians who work there. We should particularly distrust their management, only interested in short-term profit, and damn the consequences. Politicians do not know yet how important it is for them to step in very soon, rather than wait until the problems become too big to unravel in hindsight. A few high-profile incidents in recent years (Facebook and Cambridge Analytics, among others), may be considered later as a blessing in disguise, by showing the average man/woman how these matters affect their lives. It remained under the hood for too long a time.

All in all the movie was ok, but there were a few things that could have been avoided. On the good side, it was interesting to see some smart people like Michal Kosinski, Jurgen Shmidhuber or Ilya Sutskever talk about the future of AI. I also have to give credit to some of the scenes, structure and visual effects of the documentary. But that's as far as the positive feedback on my side goes. As of 2020, most of the things I heard, however, were a bit outdated. To make matters worse, I couldn't help but feel that the author resorted to fear to create yet another dystopian vision of the future. The viewer is most of the time threatened with ominous music and spooky animations that are meant to evoke fear. It's too bad because it could have been a decent documentary.

Not all the time, but sometimes we Norwegians can become over moralizing. For example in a TV debate recently about the now famous corona virus, a health administrative painted such a grim scenario, that the debate leader had to apologize for her afterwards because the TV channel got overthrown by thousands of phones calls complaining for the apocalyptic scenario that was presented. It is not easy to be puritan and it is even more difficult to be led by one. iHuman has many qualities indeed, but in the long run it just falls short because humans are driven not only by intelligence. Intelligence is just one of the many attributes that we have. Perhaps in the future some company will develop AP Artificial Psychology, or AC Artificial Consciousness, or AR Artificial Religion, etc. for whatever purpose they may have, if any. Undoubtedly for Tonje Hessen Schei, here is a lot of stuff for even more films! My point is that what this film fails to see is that at the end it is humans that have the absolute power. Both as creators of the so called "Artificial Intelligence" and of all the robots, drones, machines, weapons, software that is supposed to lead us into termination or subjugation (in this point the film is quite unclear). And also in the end is up to each person to create her or his own future according to his own personal intelligence, psychology, consciousness or religion, among other attributes of the human mind. The negative message of the film underestimates human beings. The film takes for granted that humans are completely able to be manipulated by anything that is presented in front of them. While in reality, when I am with Facebook or other media, I am completely aware that is full of not very reliable sources, which is completely normal, like when you are having a conversation with a friend, you cannot rely on everything he or she says because it is not an academic lecture, it is a very informal way of communicating, it is relaxing and supposed to be part of the entertainment that the media can offer. We can perhaps blame the faults of this film to "exacerbating academism", what I mean is that when you are talking to a friend, you don't have a dictionary or the Encyclopedia Britannica or yet easier Wikipedia beside you to check that everything your friend says is completely accurate! That could be awkward and worse, it could end the friendship! Speaking about manipulation, this film uses itself a quite manipulative, attractive and suggestively interface that if we are not attentive and awake will lead some people to believe that AI is dangerous!

Disappointed but not surprised that it was the usual nyt type scare propaganda narrative, the kind with zero self awareness and built upon a mountain of unspoken presumptions. Blaming polarization on social media, assuming that everyone would be ok with the neoliberal globalist agenda otherwise, that the cracks in the narrative haven't led to what we see now. As if the massive infrastructure of media and institutional programming had no part in division or the reaction against it.

What little content actually dealing with AI are the usual vague platitudes and speculations backed by a collage of server farm and random clip visuals, "science is cool" music video noise with very little substance. If you read through the script there wouldn't be much there.

There's the usual snippet of the "algorithmic fairness" talking head in denial as their A.I.'s inconveniently notice that diversity IS inequality. The excuse of claiming that policing would only be self reinforcing just isn't true. Just because some vocal vegans are secret meat eaters doesn't mean it is just as common the other way around, you can only reinforce what is really there.

The lack of insight is summed up by the absurdity of the cathedral holding every lever of influential power in society from education to the algorithms that run social media and the internet turning around and claiming that some facebook ads that were so influential no one can even cite an example were the cause of mass social strife. So the usual talking points of bit players like cambridge analytica and palantir are brought up when it's clear all these people have swallowed whole the story of Emmanuel Trumpenstein. There is no insight when the blind spot of all those involved is so clear.

Slow movie with a lot of presumably competent people offering their predictions of the future life with AI. Nicely done and with a lot of ambience. But its all been told before, and there's nothing new or revealing. Becomes repetitive and kind of boring.

The documentary was good at the start but got watered out pretty quick. It was too repetitive and to focused on one side of AI (the bad side). The film also wanted to scare you as much as possible with music, sounds and animations. I got to see it in cinema through school on february 13th while the premiere is on march 13th. I just started to laugh and grin during the film because of how much they wanted to scare the viewer.