Artificial, the drama about the early years of OpenAI, has screened at the London Film Festival, and its writer Simon Rich has answered Sam Altman's complaint about it. Altman said last month that the trailer made the picture look like an awful movie. Rich told City AM the film is "extremely accurate".
“it's just as powerful and just as dangerous as the scientists claim that it is”
Simon Rich, writer of Artificial, to the Australian Associated Press · illawarramercury.com.au ↗
He says the production went further than most Hollywood projects on legal checking. Tweets shown on screen are word for word and carry their real timestamps, and he used no composite characters. The aim, he says, was a portrayal that holds up to scrutiny from the people it depicts. He does admit that some scenes had to be dramatised, and he accepts that truth is subjective, but rejects the idea that the film exaggerates or sensationalises events.
Wire-service picture used with the AAP report on Rich's comments at the London festival
Image: Illawarra Mercury (AAP)
Andrew Garfield plays Altman, Yura Borisov plays Ilya Sutskever and Mark Rylance plays Geoffrey Hinton. Rich says a childhood friend who works as an OpenAI scientist spent years warning him about the technology, and that prompted him to make the film. He describes it as a warning, since AI is neither a fad nor harmless.
The film changed hands along the way: Amazon MGM dropped it after its large OpenAI partnership, and Neon took it on. It reaches Australian cinemas on 21 January and UK cinemas at the end of that month, so audiences can judge the accuracy claim for themselves.
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