“I remember seeing Sam testifying to Congress for the first time, way back when,” Garfield said on Monday night at the movie’s world premiere at the New York Film Festival. “I was like, ‘This guy seems fucking great. He’s honest. He’s transparent. He’s talking about regulation, and he has no stake in OpenAI. We need more of these people in control. He’s incredibly charming and charismatic.’ And then you learn more about a person.”
Garfield, who spent “two to three months” listening and watching footage of Altman while preparing to play him, described feeling a moral responsibility to participate in a movie like “Artificial.” When they were filming, Garfield recalls, “there were news stories coming out every day” about the dangers of AI.
“I wish we could give it even more teeth in a way,” Garfield said. “We need to shine the light as bright as possible at the nooks and crannies of people we’re giving all of our autonomy and power to.”
Garfield has portrayed many real people on screen, including Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin in “The Social Network” and composer Jonathan Larson in “Tick, Tick… Boom.” It’s a responsibility the actor doesn’t take lightly.
“I feel a tremendous amount of compassion for what that must feel like, being on the inside of his soul, going like, ‘That’s not me,’” Garfield said of Altman. “I imagine it would feel confronting. I would feel that way. I’m projecting.”
“I can’t answer so beautiful like Andrew. That’s why he’s playing Sam,” Borisov joked. “I was nervous to watch this. It was our first time. [I have] so much feeling now about this. It’s like a child just being born, and you’re waiting for it to start breathing.”
Barinholtz, meanwhile, doesn’t seem too concerned about Musk’s reaction.
Barinholtz found it “interesting” to play Musk at that particular moment in time. “It’s not at the RNC with the chainsaw. This is him in 2014 when a lot of people were like, ‘This guy is amazing. He’s going to save you.’”
“He started warning me about artificial intelligence in 2008. My friends and I were so shocked by his predictions that we actually discussed potentially doing an intervention to get him medicated, or perhaps institutionalized. We thought he lost his mind,” Rich said. “We took him a little bit more seriously when he joined this new nonprofit called OpenAI.”
Rich tried to vocalize his concerns, writing about the dangers in columns for outlets like Time magazine. But the public failed to take notice.
“I quickly realized there’s a limit to what I can do being a non-celebrity and not particularly charismatic or good-looking,” Rich said. “So this is kind of a last-ditch effort to warn mankind. I wrote this movie, andI hope to God that a couple people pay attention.”
Neon ultimately acquired “Artificial” and plans to release the film in theaters on Dec. 25.
