Sam Altman may be a relatively new character to most of the public, but in tech circles his story begins much earlier than when he opened Pandora’s Box and launched OpenAI to the world. In an industry that values speed and ingenuity, Altman seemed to fit in with the tech scions he had partnered with or competed with in the past. As audiences have learned from biopics like The social network Or Steve Jobsthese stories are often much more complicated than those of a single man who becomes the face of a company. The film by Luca Guadagnino Artificial seeks to correct the facts about one of tech’s new stars and examine how the cult of personality that follows figures like Altman leads to both innovation and unintended consequences.
The heart of Artificial belongs to Ilya Sutskever (Yura Borisov), a young genius with a solemn face, in a field full of very intelligent and fast-talking people. His imagination focuses on computers capable of thinking for themselves, and under the watchful eye of his teacher and later boss at Google, Geoffrey Hinton (Mark Rylance), his ambition is kept in check mainly out of fear that the power Ilya dreams of must first be considered safe. Feeling underappreciated at Google, he is courted by enthusiastic hiker and hypeman Sam Altman (Andrew Garfield) and skeptic Elon Musk (Ike Barinholtz) to work on a new startup that would become OpenAI. Altman soon pushes the company, originally built on a set of ethical ideals, to grow at the expense of his intentions, leaving Ilya in the uncomfortable position of standing up to his strongest supporter and risking the company’s future.
Despite the title of Artificialthe science behind the technology plays the secondary role behind the human drama. Simon Rich’s screenplay follows Ilya’s delicate journey through this space, first as an outsider whose theories and work seem a hundred years distant, then as a man so painfully serious that he cannot lie, even when the future of his company is at stake. Guadagnino builds on these tensions with his actors’ performances, reaching for Garfield’s hand as Sam embraces Borisov’s misfit Ilya, welcoming him into the lap. Although Damon Albarn’s brooding Nick Cave-lite score sounds more like a dirge, it highlights the sense of foreboding that runs throughout the film, as if all the characters are sitting atop a bomb that could explode at any moment.
Visually, Artificial is stylish and at times experimental, playing with subjects moving at different speeds or editing with sharp cuts to add even more electricity to the rapidly escalating chain of events, much like Guadagnino’s rapid edits. Challengers or its adaptation of Weird. There is a running visual motif of the California sun streaming brightly into the frame, forcing some characters, primarily Sam, to squint or shield their eyes. It’s as if Guadagnino and cinematographer Malik Hassan Sayeed are trying to shine a light on the behind-the-scenes deals and emotional cajoling it took to manipulate people in the tech world.
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