In Artificial, Luca Guadagnino Reveals the Messy Humans Behind the AI Age: Review

There’s a recurring motif throughout Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial: None of its characters know how to pick up after themselves. Quite literally, we see how the men behind the formation of OpenAI (and, subsequently, ChatGPT) carelessly discard their used smoothie cups. Frequently, cleaning staff can be seen wiping down surfaces or washing windows in the background of a shot. The camera sees them — their employers do not. If you don’t already understand the concept of AGI, Artificial does break down the basics, emphasizing the way that large language models are both hallucinating incorrect responses to questions while also learning on their own how to evolve and improve. One key sequence involves the OpenAI employees celebrating (in glorious slow-motion, beverages spraying in the air) one of their early achievements: an AI model that can beat a human while playing a video game, without being instructed on how to win. It’s a victory for the technology — but a victory for humanity? Maybe not, at least in these hands. The point is not subtle, but Artificial is not steeped in subtlety. Like projects including The Social Network and Blackberry, Simon Rich’s script hits all the usual bulle...