'Do You Trust This Computer?': Film Review

Chris Paine's first documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car?, worried that a technological advance was so game-changing -- in a good way -- that powerful corporations might never allow it to enter the world. In Do You Trust This Computer?, he looks the other direction: at developments in artificial intelligence, seen as terrifying even by some involved in creating them, that may be out in the world before we even realize we want to stop them. Though it shows some strain in containing the topic's inherent sprawl, the doc is more thoughtful than some of its predecessors, and benefits from interviews with newsmakers like Elon Musk and, even better, Westworld co-creator Jonathan Nolan. Things start unpromisingly, when a long, overheated string of sound bites leads into a clip of James Cameron's Termin-- what do you mean you've seen this documentary before? Quickly, though, the doc moves from Skynet and HAL 9000 to Nolan, who worries that sci-fi has "cried wolf enough times" that, with AI now a real-world threat, the public may not be able to take it seriously.