A number of films centered on big names in technology and artificial intelligence will be released this weekend as public interest in the industry grows.
Sony Pictures’ “Social Reckoning” is expected to gross about $7 million domestically this weekend. The film, which he wrote, is a sequel to Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network, which won three Academy Awards in 2010. While Sorkin’s first “Social” film focused on Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s founding of the company, “Social Reckoning” follows a 2021 leak by Facebook whistleblower Francis Haugen that exposed the tech giant’s internal documents.
“It brought back really warm memories,” Haugen recently told CNBC about the film. “And we felt it captured the spirit of the time.”
This weekend’s box office will also see a limited release of Alex Gibney’s nearly four-hour Elon Musk documentary, “Musk.” Early screenings of the film garnered critical acclaim, but Musk himself criticized the film for lacking any integrity.
You Can See Everything, a documentary by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim about disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, will be released by A24 Films on October 16th.
Christmas brings “Artificial” from Neon to theaters. The scripted film depicts OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and his brief dismissal of the position in 2023.
“It looks like a terrible movie, but I appreciate and really support people’s creativity,” Altman recently told CNBC. “I understand why people have insecurities, and I don’t mind if they need to project that insecurity onto someone else or make fun of me for some relief.”
Netflix is also participating. The latest installment of the company’s “Instadocs” series premiered on Monday and focuses on the “Hugging Face” incident, in which a swarm of OpenAI agents escaped from a test environment and autonomously hacked into the company’s infrastructure.
These films come at a critical time, as the public becomes increasingly concerned about the dangers of AI and wary of the data centers that power the technology. A recent Quinnipiac poll showed that 73% of Americans are concerned about the threat of AI to human survival, and a Pew Research Center poll showed that 54% think data centers are bad for the environment.
The question is whether these films will push that public perception even further to the brink.
David Kirby, director of science, technology and society at the University of California Polytechnic, said public attention to these films only adds fuel to the fire.
“Movies are an incredibly powerful medium,” he says. “Stories are incredibly powerful. We’ve known that for centuries.”
“I think the people at the top are worried about this in part because they don’t want to look bad. They don’t want people to suspect that they know what they’re doing or that they’re not the ones who are going to save humanity,” he added.
Hollywood has a history of releasing movies that researchers and observers have linked to shifts in public opinion. The 2004 blockbuster “The Day After Tomorrow” was credited with drawing attention to climate change, and the 2013 documentary “Blackfish” was credited with changing perceptions about SeaWorld and the capture of marine mammals.
Kirby credited movies like 1998’s “Deep Impact” and “Armageddon” for forcing governments to spend more money and attention on the subject of asteroids hitting Earth.
“Is the science right? It’s not. It’s controversial, but in terms of raising awareness…that’s what you want,” Kirby said. “You need to get noticed. People need to start paying attention to you. Movies, that’s the perfect way.”
