I launched the Netflix documentary Unknown: Killer Robots fully expecting it to be a manipulation. And I would clearly be too well-armored to fall for their editing tricks.

Jokes on me though. If the goal of the doc was to inform as well as warn (aka alarm) about AI warfare then it did its job. Was it alarmist? Yeah, but it was also very well made and genuinely pretty informative. The dramatic music and editing were surely manipulative and frightening… and since it did both things well, it’s successful at what it sets out to do.

It wavers between being informative about the state of AI and scary with its what-if scenarios about the future battlefield. And whether or not the totally absosmurfly trustworthy US military has a lock on the technology… and whether or not other state actors (like China and Russia) have an advantage.

So, you know, no worries at all!

It’s a short doc that does its job. It is alarming but I felt within a fair framework of interesting and forthright discussion of the topic. Worth watching, especially since it’s only 70 minutes or so.

Score: 85