Peter Bart: Even AI Titans Can’t Predict Future Of Movies About AI Titans

The techie titans who grabbed our attention and our Oscars in The Social Network almost 16 years ago are ready to capture our screens again. Their forays are omniscient as well as ominous.

In upcoming movies like The Social Reckoning and Artificial or in myriad books and TV shows, the Odysseus-like wanderers have re-emerged as nerdy narcissists feuding over the anarchy of AI.

Aaron Sorkin made us laugh at the youthful coders searching for a foothold, but bilious billionaires like the Musks, Altmans, Zuckerbergs and Bezoses are now increasingly intruding upon the way we live and think.

And some forecasts are dark: “Techdom once ate the world but is now eating itself,“ declared The Economist, in a review titled “Boom and Gloom.”

OpenAI itself is slated to spend $600 billion on AI Infrastructure by 2030, yet will generate only $2 billion a month in revenue while “crying for further government funding,” says an editorial in the Wall Street Journal. This week the Journal reports that “AI anger has some tech executives stepping up security and fearing for their lives.”

“Our industry has drastically underestimated how much we’re going to keep people at the center of everything,” says Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive. “We’ve been right on our technological predictions but wrong on their social and economic implications.” Apple filed suit on OpenAI last week for stealing trade secrets.

Artificial, a movie about Altman and his company, was financed last year by Amazon MGM, but that studio dropped distribution plans the moment director Luca Guadagnigo yelled “wrap.” After some nervous screenings, the film was picked up by Neon for release next month. Its star, Andrew Garfield, ironically played the winning, then losing, player in The Social Network.

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Also headed for production are movies based on the two embattled prediction sites, Kalshi and Polymarket. Will they generate a box office betting fever?

Reflecting all this, recent press conferences called by tech leaders offered conflicting forecasts of AI’s future. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg theorized that “there should be more jobs in the future thanks to AI, not fewer.” Two months after his speech, he laid off 8,000 workers.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned that 50% of entry-level jobs would imminently be eliminated, only to make even deeper cuts within a month.

Similar contradictions are emerging about the future of the work week, with Zoom CEO Eric Yuan predicting a three day week, Steve Cohen forecasting four, and Bill Gates predicting two. Elon Musk went further, predicting that work in general will become optional – “it will be akin to sport or a video game.”

TV documentaries and magazines that attempt to pigeonhole tech leaders usually surrender to similar ambiguities. The June 2026 New Yorker ran an exhaustive profile of Ken Griffin, whose worth approaches $50 billion and “whose property portfolio resembles that of a Saudi prince.” With it all, we’re told that Griffin still “presents the vibe of a suburban dad who wears a polo shirt and jeans to meetings and drinks Coke for breakfast along with Häagen-Dazs ice cream.”

Griffin two years ago paid $238 million for a four-story Manhattan penthouse but now ponders shifting his base to Miami for tax and lifestyle reasons.

Interviewers who have tried to pinpoint David Ellison, Paramount’s new czar, report similar ambiguities.  While determined to create some 30 movies a year from his newly created “cloud studio,” Ellison must first overcome antitrust suits from 12 states and foreign territories that could put start dates at risk and stir concern among foreign investors.

If the future seems misty, so does the past. This week, I took a fresh look at the movie The Social Network, which a generation later still seems rude, riveting and hilarious. Given its frantic, hyperkinetic pacing, it’s clear why investors as well as audiences past and present required the abundance of Adderall to stay tuned.