# Seat at the Table: new short film on AI (and help me with the next one?)

> Source: <https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dPDcLsKHmMAn4hxjj/seat-at-the-table-new-short-film-on-ai-and-help-me-with-the>
> Published: 2026-06-16 18:36:00+00:00

My new short fiction film 'Seat at the Table' is now out on Youtube!

Premise:

*When Eva visits her Dad’s AI company, she meets Liam, the company’s flagship AI system, who she imagines as a polite, precociously-smart kid. But with the company’s co-founder claiming Liam 7 is too dangerous to release, Eva starts to wonder if her Dad can really control what he’s created.*

Would love to hear your thoughts on the film. It’s targeted at people who know fairly little about AI, to get them quickly up to speed on where we’re at right now and what this technology actually is. The main points I was trying to get across were:

If there are people you wish understood these things better, I’d love for you to show this film to them and, if possible, report back on their response. It’s always hard to gauge what effect a film is having, especially on people with low AI context, and I’ve found the anecdotal reports about my last film [Writing Doom](https://youtu.be/xfMQ7hzyFW4?si=_cBMoYLU8a9bk6Ty) to be extremely helpful.

I’m currently developing the next project (though may change my plan if this one flops). The key things I now want to get across are:

This new angle is a reaction to AI stories (including mine) tending to be doomy to the point of demotivating. The go-to way to be not-doomy is to show positive visions of the future, get people excited about how good things could be. This does almost nothing for me, for some reason, so instead I'm gonna have a go at making *prevention *sexy.

The idea itself I don’t want to talk about too much (it’s still a delicate little flame right now) but I’d love to hear:

Thanks!

Early drafts focused more heavily on the risks / negative stuff, and I got into a real tangle with the writing. I realised that I got into this stuff because it was interesting, not (just) because it was important. Imbuing the film with a sense of wonder was essential for getting out of the hole I’d written myself into, and I think it's a way better film because of it.