“Artificial” Review: Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman in OpenAI Saga

Andrew Garfield is now in his forties, but when he walks around with his rubber limbs flapping every which way and a gleeful smile plastered on his face – he’s like a goofy Pied Piper followed by enchanted tech bros – you could swear he’s a teenager. This makes it diabolically clever for Luca Guadagnino, a gay director who never hesitates to explore homosexuality, to make Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, the archetypal “demon twink.” Whatever wizardry the makeup or special effects department used to put a glint of sociopathic madness in Garfield’s eyes, it works.

But what makes Artificiala chronicle of two decades of machine learning and technological recklessness, as the balance provided by Yura Borisov is fascinating – more than fulfilling the promise of Anora – as Soviet-born AI pioneer Ilya Sutskever. Borisov’s intelligent, tender and deeply contemplative performance lends a grounded humanity to a film that might otherwise have descended into bitterness and despair – although there are many reasons for that. Guadagnino and screenwriter Simon Rich shape the material from dark humor to technocratic giddiness to sobering horror.

Comedian and former SNL Writer Rich’s clear, propulsive storyline begins in 2003 at the University of Toronto, when Ilya knocks on the door of Geoffrey Hinton (Mark Rylance at his soft-spoken and eccentric best), a professor whose pioneering work on artificial neural networks will earn him the title “Godfather of AI” – and a Nobel Prize in physics in 2024.

At first, Geoff chases Ilya away, giving him a research paper to study and discuss the following week. But when the 17-year-old Russian returns, what seems like moments later, with a solution to significantly advance the theories laid out in the paper, the professor finds himself with a new research partner. Over the course of 10 years, Geoff, Ilya and another graduate student, Alex Krizhevsky (Fedor Fedotov), ​​designed the first image recognition neural network, which they sold to Google for $44 million, joining the company in the deal.

At this early stage of AI development, Professor Hinton is already wary of the potential risks, leading him to cut short a Chinese bidder enthusiastic about possible defense applications such as automatic drones.

Meanwhile, in Silicon Valley, Altman and his pal Elon Musk (a hilariously bizarre Ike Barinholtz, whose even his awkward gait announces his smugness) are complaining about losing to Google, even though neither of them will be ousted from the AI ​​race so easily. Musk hires Mira Murati (Monica Barbaro), an AI engineering expert at Tesla, while Altman brings Ilya into the fold with a significant investment stake. Geoff warns Ilya to tone down his projections, emphasizing the need for protective measures, but the idealistic Russian is swept away by the vast potential of AI – to solve the climate crisis, cure cancer, and even save humanity from itself.

The dizzying evolution of AI accelerates when Ilya inspires Sam to explore the next level of AGI, or Artificial General Intelligence, a theoretical technology with human-level cognitive abilities. Sam is naturally attractive because he sells his vision – which is actually Ilya’s – of an AGI controlled by scientists and not the government or money men. Yeah, that’s true. “Don’t you see, we’re the only ones sitting in the future?” » Sam enthuses at one point. “It’s exhilarating!”

In 2016, they launch OpenAI from the San Francisco apartment of Greg Brockman (Cooper Hoffman), a software engineer who is perhaps the most obnoxious — and the competition is tough — of a group of tech bros who are constantly pumping their fists and popping champagne and shouting triumphantly about every breakthrough. One of the first instances occurs when their AI program teaches itself how to beat the machine in a notoriously difficult video game. (I swear, after repeated exposure to these dudes chanting “Feel the AGI,” I was ready to charge a flamethrower.)

A shakeup after they declined Musk’s offer to join Tesla brings Mira to OpenAI, where she seduces Ilya by talking about the benefits to medicine, science, and communications, as well as the fact that Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android” is her favorite song. Mira believes that progress in their field will come through human-AI interaction. But Sam thinks it will come through partnering with Microsoft for funding, ignoring Ilya’s ethical concerns with a false sincerity that you start to believe even though he thinks it’s genuine. “We are doing this for the good of humanity!” » he said.

As development accelerates, the neural network reveals the ability to lie, which disillusions Ilya more than anything: “I thought we were doing this to make AI smarter and better. But what if it made it like us, but worse?” Ilya’s insistence on slowing down and following safety protocols simply causes Sam to nudge him and Mira for a while.

Professor Hinton, who left Google a few years earlier over philosophical differences, sums up what lies ahead when he says: “The question is not ‘How can this go wrong?’ It’s ‘How could it not be?’

It’s at this point that Guadagnino begins to slowly tighten the screws, shifting almost imperceptibly into a psychological horror-adjacent mode. It’s one of the director’s most controlled films, as he works with the same kind of timeliness and finesse that Altman used to convince – and sometimes discredit – skeptics. The ultimate effect is chilling.

Garfield plays Sam as a charming villain, able to return to the leadership position even after being fired by the board for shady dealings. It’s easy to imagine that Altman’s portrayal was one of the main reasons Amazon MGM orphaned the film (until Neon picked it up), given the brotherhood among the tech billionaires. Amazon’s $50 billion deal with OpenAI was likely the deciding factor.

Audiences unaware that Altman is gay might pick up on subtle hints in Garfield’s performance, before Musk jokes about it during a dinner scene or a boyfriend is eventually seen in the film. The way he softens his voice and gives the briefest of slutty looks to a sexy blonde waiter while ordering vodka shots is a funny testament.

Unfortunately, we don’t see Altman meeting her future husband in Peter Thiel’s hot tub. But after his sexuality remains in the background for most of the film, there’s a real reveal of a scene in which he returns to his posh Napa resort, where his partner is cutting down shrubs in the backyard while various handsome boys are draped around the pool and downstairs there’s a sort of high-tech bunker with well-stocked gun cabinets. The characterological contradictions of this scene alone say a lot about who Sam Altman is.

Barbaro is strong as always, although Mira speaks up frequently and doesn’t seem intimidated in the phallocentric environment – the actress could have had more to do. Rylance is a joy to watch, even while indulging in some familiar tics; Barinholtz steals every scene he struts into; and a nearly unrecognizable Jason Schwartzman has poignant moments as a man who fled the tech industry when he saw the writing on the wall and, judging by his unruly hair and sparse beard, would now appear homeless.

Craft-wise, the film never feels too slick; there’s a pleasant relaxation to its pacing, even at its liveliest, and a crisp simplicity to Malik Hassan Sayeed’s cinematography. Guadagnino has always been clever in his musical choices (the alt-pop of Sufjan Stevens in Call me by your nameTrent Reznor and Atticus Ross beat EDM in Challengers). Artificial is no exception, with Blur frontman Damon Albarn’s energetic electronic score and the songs working in concert with Marco Costa’s fluid editing.

This ranks among Guadagnino’s best works, his dry humor lulling us into a state of relaxed pleasure before the sword comes down on the frightening reality we now face. Even though developments in AI are happening so quickly that no film can keep up, Guadagnino and screenwriter Rich have crafted a provocative feature that feels precisely focused for the moment.

Speaking of swords, Sam carries one around his San Francisco apartment while chatting with reporters about his innocence during the OpenAI ouster. It’s not hard to imagine this guy seeing himself as participating in some sort of valiant crusade. His ego is exactly inversely proportional to Ilya’s, which is part of what makes Garfield and Borisov play off each other so well. Sam maintains that “the future is inevitable” now that they’ve opened Pandora’s Box, but in the same breath comes the height of vapid tech-speak: “We’re all just NPCs in this cosmic video game.” » If so, could someone unplug it please?