AI: Probably Nothing to Worry About 

(dir. Nick Holt)

By: Adam Freed

The moment has arrived that it has become more of an active choice to avoid the use of artificial intelligence than to explore its potential.  A.I. is in the process of silently reshaping every aspect of human life as it has ever been experienced over the course of tens of thousands of years.  Even using a simple word processing program for the purposes of writing a term paper or a movie review has become an active exercise in declining the influence of a synthetic mind.  The history of A.I. technology, as well as its rather ominous future implications are explored in director Nick Holt’s captivating documentary AI: Probably Nothing to Worry About.  

Humanity has engaged in the perpetual pursuit of knowledge for as long as humans have roamed Earth.  Those noble pursuits to make life better, easier and more enjoyable have followed a compounding level of advancement in which it feels like society has at long last reached the moment that science fiction storytellers like Fritz Lang and Stanley Kubrick foresaw over the past century.  In Kubrick’s iconic 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) artificial mind HAL 9000 offers initially the most encouraging vision of what technology may become, but ultimately issues a bright red warning about the fickle nature of artificial intelligence and its inevitable view of humanity’s obsolescence.  Within the framework of  AI: Probably Nothing to Worry About, the already frightening implications of the technology are explored using a whirlwind of interviews and news footage, featuring the marquee names of the industry including Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Demis Hassabis.  All three of these men offer somewhat optimistic views of the future implications of artificial intelligence, but it is Musk who shows the greatest skepticism, despite his moving forward with his ownership of xAI, a platform with greater potential than all others combined.

While Nick Holt frames his A.I. doc quite traditionally, it is with the introduction of British scientist Dr. Geoffrey Hinton that AI: Probably Nothing to Worry About transitions into its most horrifying implications.  Dr. Hinton very famously resigned from Google, even after being paid $44 million dollars for his insights, because his fears of A.I.’s capabilities were not being met with a respectable level of concern.  Hinton, the son of an entomologist, has always taken a particular interest in the evolutionary forms of life, but sees the technological advancements of society as a clear sign of its own undoing.  Although Holt’s documentary gets a little bloated around its midpoint, AI: Probably Nothing to Worry About offers a fascinating and frightening exploration of a technology still in its infancy, that will, at best augment, and at worst end, life for generations already walking Earth today.

Target Score 8.5/10 - AI: Probably Nothing to Worry About is at first a captivating, yet safe look backward at the race to create artificial intelligence, and then spirals into sci-fi horror as it frames the possibilities of a dark and uncertain future as A.I. reconsiders the necessity of its creators. 

A.I. Probably Nothing to Worry About was reviewed as part of Movie Archer's coverage of the 2026 Tribeca Film Festival.