Over the past year, AI has significantly influenced various aspects of filmmaking, from scriptwriting and voice modulation to visual effects and even the creation of entirely AI-generated films.​ The Oscars just validated this.

Oh, Alexa. You had your shot at being the queen of AI assistants, but instead, you settled for being a glorified kitchen timer that occasionally misunderstood our grocery lists. And now, after years of playing second fiddle to ChatGPT and Google Gemini, Amazon is slapping a “+” on you and calling it innovation.

We’re not just users—we’re the slaves, and worse, we’re paying for the privilege. Some of us fork over $200 a month to feed the machine, willingly handing over our blogs, papers, PhD dissertations, articles, novels, photos, music, and more. We don’t just let OpenAI consume—it gorges on our creativity, our intelligence, our labor. And we call it “progress.”

Ah, AI regulation—the policy battlefield where world leaders argue over who gets to set the rules and who gets to break them. The AI Action Summit in Paris was supposed to be a step toward a unified approach to AI governance. Instead, it exposed a growing global divide.

Listen up, folks. The world is on fire, and it’s not just from climate change or the never-ending political dumpster fire. AI is marching forward like a relentless Terminator without the cool one-liners, and America is slipping into something that looks eerily familiar if you’ve ever spent time watching classic films instead of doomscrolling. So let’s take a serious look at five films that are screaming at us to pay attention.

Sign post up ahead! We need to have a serious discussion about the current state of AI—how it’s being used, who it’s really benefiting, and where the hell it’s headed. As an AI optimist, it’s hard not to feel a bit freaked out right now. We were promised a utopia, but we’re veering dangerously close to an AI dystopia instead. And I can’t help but notice that many of the same players who shaped the tech-industrial complex around social media are now steering the ship for AI.

Ah, the AI Wars—a thrilling saga of tech dominance, geopolitical chess, and, of course, a spectacular PR stunt that may or may not have been entirely true. Enter DeepSeek, the Chinese AI darling that burst onto the scene last week and, if the timing wasn’t suspicious enough, just so happened to send U.S. tech stocks into a freefall. Coincidence? That’s cute.

I recently saw the Academy Award nominated film The Brutalist, in the theatre, complete with an intermission. I was mesmerized and celebrated the glory of film and the art spirit. Being a designer, I truly appreciated the opening and closing titles, which challenged every notion of convention. A theme celebrated by the Bauhaus and Brutalism.

I do not mean the kind inspired by the music of the late 70’s and 80’s. Though I grew up with it and loved it. What is facing the world is not a choice in punk bands. It is a band of a different sort. A Bandwagon. I am talking about what future you believe in and what bandwagon are you going to hop on.

Storytelling is as old as humanity itself. It’s how we make sense of the world, connect with others, and preserve our collective memory. Over the millennia, storytelling has evolved alongside human innovation, reflecting cultural shifts and technological advancements.

Science fiction has long been a prophetic mirror for our aspirations and anxieties about artificial intelligence. Iconic works like Blade Runner, Westworld, and Ex Machina have shaped our collective imagination about what AI could become—sentient, autonomous, murderous and deeply human-like. (Sorry Terminator) Yet, as these narratives unfold in their fictional universes, they also highlight the vast chasm between today’s AI technologies and the visionary possibilities they portray.

As we step into the future, transformative shifts are on the horizon. Here’s what 2025 could bring:

• AGI Arrives: The dawn of Artificial General Intelligence is expected to redefine industries, signaling a pivotal moment in technological evolution. Ilya Sutskever believes Super Intelligence is imminent as well. We’ll see whether Sam Altman plays up or down AGI with OpenAI this year. Oh, did I mention guardrails?

As the world is anew with Revolution, Assad’s regime toppled and South Korean protests, as Americans, we should look to what is in hand.

Nope, this is not about the 1987 movie with Kiefer Sutherland. A unique and troubling archetype is emerging—let’s call them “The New Lost Boys.” These are young men, adrift and feeling left behind, navigating a complex mix of societal expectations and perceived failures. As they struggle to find love, success, and purpose, they are often left feeling marginalized, especially as they watch their female peers succeed in education, career, and social life. Many of these young men have turned to the internet to fill the void, from relying on porn as a proxy for intimacy to seeking solace in AI companions. Unlike the heartwarming yet cautionary tale of the 2014 movie Her starring Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlet Johansson, this reality feels bleaker, where AI-driven interactions only deepen isolation rather than addressing it.

For the past few years, Hollywood’s response to the rapid rise of AI has been marked by anxiety, apprehension, and, quite frankly, paralysis. The entertainment industry, known for its embrace of visual effects and technological wizardry, suddenly found itself caught in a cold war with artificial intelligence—a tool that seemed both promising and menacing. Writers, actors, directors, and studios were at an impasse, unsure whether to welcome AI as a creative ally or banish it as an existential threat.

If the idea is that, like unregulated social media, unregulated AI could cause similar or worse societal damage, then the connection becomes clearer. If social media—with its unchecked influence and well-documented harms—serves as a model for AI governance (or lack thereof), it’s easy to see why mr. tesla, often referred to as a shadow president of sorts, would champion Big Tech and social media operating without constraints.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT has had an impressive trajectory, establishing itself as one of the first generative AI platforms to gain widespread recognition and use. The ambition to integrate search capabilities was both expected and strategic—a smart way to bridge the gap between insightful answers and the occasional hallucinations or misinformation that can plague AI responses.

It’s not uncommon to see companies evolve, pivot, or refine their mission over time. In fact, it's expected. But when an AI company starts off with a grandiose, benevolent vision of “serving mankind” as a nonprofit, only to later shift gears and become a profit-driven entity, it raises a red flag or two. As someone who believes in the transformative power of AI for the greater good, it’s disheartening to see such changes.

Artificial Intelligence has been touted as a tool to level the playing field, but the reality is more complex. The original sin of AI’s development—scraping the internet for data—means it has inherited all the biases of that data, including those related to race and marginalized communities. AI systems are only as unbiased as the information they are trained on, and the internet is riddled with systemic inequalities, misinformation, and historical biases.

A recent CNN article, among many others recently suggests we are in a hype bubble with AI. Nvidia, the leading AI chip producer, reported a stellar second-quarter performance with sales rising 122% and profits doubling. Despite this, Nvidia's shares fell by 7%, which reflects more on Wall Street's expectations than the company's performance.