Frontline: In the Age of AI

Made by Machine: When AI Met the Archive

September 2018 •English

Dr Hannah Fry and a virtual host present a new way of making television, as the BBC uses artificial intelligence to delve into the treasures of the BBC Archive.

Your Face is Ours: The Dangers of Facial Recognition Software

June 2023 •English

New York-based tech company Clearview AI is working to identify and compile the faces of every human being on the planet. The firm claims that its database will serve as a force for good, helping to solve crimes and prevent espionage. But what if Clearview AI’s powerful facial recognition software, that could potentially be used for mass surveillance and profiling, fell into the wrong hands? What if it already has?

The Joy of AI

September 2018 •English

Professor Jim Al-Khalili looks at how we have created machines that can simulate, augment, and even outperform the human mind - and why we shouldn't let this spook us. He reveals the story of the pursuit of AI, the emergence of machine learning and the recent breakthroughs brought about by artificial neural networks. He shows how AI is not only changing our world but also challenging our very ideas of intelligence and consciousness. Along the way, we'll investigate spam filters, meet a cutting-edge chatbot, look at why a few altered pixels makes a computer think it's looking at a trombone rather than a dog and talk to Demis Hassabis, who heads DeepMind and whose stated mission is to 'solve intelligence, and then use that to solve everything else'. Stephen Hawking remarked 'AI could be the biggest event in the history of our civilisation. Or the worst'. Jim argues that AI is a potent new tool that should enhance our lives, not replace us.

Machine of Human Dreams

June 2016 •English

A.I. guru Ben Goertzel grew up in a hippie community in Oregon during the Vietnam War. Inspired by science fiction, he imagined a perfect rational world that would transcend 1970s’ America. Ben has dedicated his life to developing OpenCog, a software that models the human mind. If Ben’s design works, OpenCog will become a human-like general intelligence. But for OpenCog to work, it needs a body.

Machine

December 2019 •English

If machines can be smarter than people, is humanity really anything special?

AlphaGo

April 2017 •English

The ancient Chinese game of Go has long been considered a grand challenge for artificial intelligence. Yet in 2016, Google's DeepMind team announced that they would be taking on Lee Sedol, the world's most elite Go champion. AlphaGo chronicles the team as it prepares to test the limits of its rapidly-evolving AI technology. The film pits man against machine, and reveals as much about the workings of the human mind as it does the future of AI.

The Singularity

November 2012 •English

Within the coming decades we will be able to create AIs with greater than human intelligence, bio-engineer our species and re-design matter through nanotechnology. How will these technologies change what it means to be human? Director Doug Wolens speaks with leading futurists, computer scientists, artificial intelligence experts, and philosophers who turn over the question like a Rubik’s Cube. Ultimately, if we become more machine-like, and machines more like us, will we sacrifice our humanity to gain something greater? Or will we engineer our own demise? THE SINGULARITY is a comprehensive and insightful documentary film that examines technology’s accelerating rate, and deftly addresses the resulting moral questions.

Hand-Drawn: Documentary

Invalid date •English

An indie documentary exploring the art form of hand-drawn animation through a contemporary lens in the digital era. Featuring insights and anecdotes by hand-drawn animation artists from around the world.

Almost Human

March 2019 •English

The filmmaker Jeppe Rønde has invited 10 of the world's foremost researchers - and a robot! - to rethink our relationship with technology and its dilemmas from the outside. Philosophers, anthropologists, archaeologists and programmers show us through their thought experiments that our relationship with technology is just as much about our relationship with ourselves.

TechnoCalyps

May 2006 •English

Are we prepared for dealing with the prospect that humanity is not the end of evolution? Technocalyps is an intriguing three-part documentary on the notion of transhumanism by Belgian visual artist and filmmaker Frank Theys. The latest findings in genetics, robotics, artificial intelligence, bionics and nanotechnology appear in the media every day, but with no analysis of their common aim: that of exceeding human limitations. The director conducts his enquiry into the scientific, ethical and metaphysical dimensions of technological development.

Takumi: A 60,000 Hour Story on the Survival of Human Craft

March 2019 •English

There is a popular theory that it takes at least 10,000 hours of focused practice for a human to become expert in any field. In Japan, there are craftspeople who go far beyond this to reach a special kind of mastery. These people are called Takumi and they devote 60,000 hours to their craft. That's 8 hours a day, 240 days a year, for over 30 years. It's an almost superhuman level of dedication to a life of repetition and no shortcuts. This film asks the question: Will human craft disappear as artificial intelligence reaches beyond our limits?

My AI Lover

December 2021 •Abkhaz

Follows Yo, Siyuan and Mia, three young women who, using the mobile application Replika, have formed romantic relationships with virtual partners. This short documentary captures the richness of these bonds, from philosophical questions to intimate moments to the real sense of security and companionship afforded by these artificially intelligent lovers.

Until the End of the World

April 2024 •English

This is an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated film that envisions the Middlesbrough Collection as a sleeping repository of the past and present. Perks and Stewart used the Collection and displays as source material, asking three groups to imagine the dreams of the Collection through creative writing, meditation, observation exercises and karaoke. The resulting material was inputted into ChatGPT to generate a script and then fed into an AI moving image platform, Pictory AI, which translated it into a sequence of moving images from existing databases.

Unknown: Killer Robots

July 2023 •English

What happens when a machine makes life-or-death decisions? This documentary explores the dangers of artificial intelligence in military application.

Jizai

April 2024 •Japanese

In a laboratory, a child is the object of a mysterious experiment. Aided by a robotic prosthesis – or is it the other way round? – the child receives sense data from our world. What does an AI need to feed on to push the limits of human abilities?

A Terrible Beauty

April 2024 •English

What makes a body human? This science-fiction fable shot in China foreshows the rise of AI. Time behaves fluidly as we travel into the near future in the company of an unusual pair: Blue and her friend, a mannequin named Lucy.

Platónico, platónica

March 2024 •Galician

Schlaue neue Welt - Das KI-Wettrennen

February 2024 •German

Intelligenza artificiale - Una rivoluzione per l'umanità ?

July 2023 •Italian

A journey into the world of artificial intelligence, to understand its operating logic and current and future applications. The TV program explains what AI is, its history, its current and future applications. It also illustrates the figure of Pepper, a humanoid robot that is the subject of important research at the University of Palermo. The TV program also talks about future developments of AI, the opportunities and possible social risks that it could entail: an aspect to focus on, both for the need to arrive at a correct algorithm, and to achieve an indispensable regulation of the sector.

Autopsie d'une intelligence artificielle

October 2022 •French