Development of a Cautionary Tale Feature Film about Gradual Disempowerment

Petr Salaba

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$100,000raised

$200,000funding goal

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work title: Seductive Machines and Human Agency

Funding for film producer Petr Salaba (fiscally serviced by Epistea, a registred charity) for Development of a Cautionary Tale Feature Film about Gradual Disempowerment

Why

Beyond the risk of a dramatic robot takeover, humanity faces the systemic risk of extinction through gradual disempowerment as we offload more and more agency to AIs across the realms of culture, economy and politics.

This warrants a well researched cautionary tale with the actionable pathways of hope.

What
We want to make a feature length film about this topic for global theatrical distribution. The desired outcome is that the public has a clearer understanding of the systemic risks while also being aware of potential positive roadmaps and promising pathways humanity could take in order to keep its meaningful agency.

The final film may be a hybrid between an AI generated dramatization and real life documentary.

Phase 1 - Film Development (USD 100,000-200,000)
To make a film development package (script prototype, production plan, test video, public communication strategy, articulated theory of change, pitch deck for funding Phase 2)

Intended by the end of Q4 2025

Phase 2 - Estimated budget USD 2M for film production + USD 3M to 5M for campaign and distribution

To produce and distribute the final feature film in mainstream platforms (theatres and then online).

Intended in Q3 2026

Who and how
The producer and film director Petr Salaba has a track record of producing high quality dramatic educational video content, and by leveraging generative AI, the costs can be cca 20x lower compared to traditional production methods. So for 2M with the right ideas, we could produce a spectacle comparable to a traditional 40 mil$ production.

In close collaboration with the team of researchers and writers behind the Gradual Disempowerment paper, we plan to write the script that clearly and plausibly explains the potential perils of near future AI systems and inspires meaningful positive pathways to take:

Collaborators include Raymond Douglas, co-writing the film script, and Jan Kulveit, as an advisor.

Other collaborators are audiovisual media artists and producers for prototyping and consultations.

Intended actions for Phase 1

script drafting and iterations (collaboration with writers)
consultations with “third wave AI safety” experts
audience research (it is likely that in Q3 2026 many AI disempowerment cases will be publicly much more salient than they are today in July 2025)
producing video tests with generative AI technology
drafting public campaign strategy surrounding the film release (marketing and campaigning consultations)
Production strategy for Phase 2 (collaboration with European and US film producers)
Funding strategy for Phase 2

Risks and pitfalls to avoid:

Scope creep - USD 2 mil for production seems like a sweet spot to make something impactful yet creatively agile, let’s not overblow this into development hell while the form and content is becoming outdated. Q3 2026 might be around the time where hybrid human-AI cinematography peaks before AI culture starts taking over. If theatrical feature film turns out too difficult, we might reroute towards an online shorter format or series which could be meaningfully produced even with smaller budget.
Let’s not oversaturate the AI doom memeplex, it is hard to control. The positive roadmaps should be drafted from the onset, not as an afterthought.

Petr Salaba

12 days ago

Progress update

What progress have you made since your last update?

Got a Czech film producer on board (his co-produced film won the Jury Award for Creative Vision and the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival). We have been developing the production and distribution strategy together.
We have a solid draft of the storyline (treatment) and a plausible theory of change concept. It is being made in collaboration with a screenwriter and several consultants.
We have been consulting deeply the project with tech insiders, AGI alignment researchers and film distribution experts. The storyline and ToC have generally gotten approving feedback from the researchers.
We have been doing visual and technical tests.

What are your next steps?

We are finishing the 1st version of the "package" - a pitch deck with film samples (story, visuals, ToC) and a production strategy. To be privately presented at Berlinale in mid-February.
We aim to develop a more juicy version of the package by mid-March to be presented in the Bay Area, privately and also during the Frame Fellowship events (Petr got invited as a visiting fellow).
We are starting talks with potential funders, co-producers, and media institutions for the production stage later this month with the first version pitch.
We keep developing and refining the treatment into a screenplay. Generally, the processes of refining the script seems as the harder part (we also expect to take advantage of gen AI blending the processes of production and post-production for more finer iteration).
We are developing a marketing strategy that utilizes gen AI and social media (behind the scenes, online presence of some characters...).

Is there anything others could help you with?

Theatre, TV broadcasters and VOD streaming platform sales and distribution leads. We are interested in regional institutions in different countries - we see high potential in localized adaptations.
Equity funders for production and distribution.
Creative and scientific consultants, tech and politics insiders.

The topic of the film is very nuanced and complex. We still need to refine the message and ToC of the film and its future campaign.

If you want to learn more, email me to schedule a video call.

Happy to talk and show you some mindblowing AI movie stuff.

Petr Salaba

donated $97,480

Gavin Leech

6 months ago

Filling the minimum myself. Good luck!

donated $20

🐝

6 months ago

I believe Petr will put together a well thought out project and I trust his abilities. I wish I could give more.

donated $97,480

Gavin Leech

7 months ago

Petr and his team are actual filmmakers making some of the only AI art I admire. I can corroborate the key claim above about his augmented work being > an order of magnitude cheaper than traditional film production. The 12 month timeframe until _screenings_ is crazy fast but doable if the script comes together soon. I trust Petr to not make it manipulative (appropriate to the theme) and he's planning to consult the 'Gradual Disempowerment' authors to keep it real.

Major distribution is a whole other question, but he has one lead. Deals and lawyer latency is what's be most likely make the ambitious timeline slip.

Another concern is whether others will have taken up the theme in 12 months' time (see [e.g.](https://www.imdb.com/news/ni65114720/)).

(I'd have funded the project's full minimum but I'm tapped out.)

Conflict of interest: I worked with Petr on the Dwarkesh pod.

donated $2,500

Austin Chen

7 months ago

Making a small initial offer in support of this project! Reasons I'm excited for this:

Petr's past work with Dwarkesh is both a strong credential, and a credible signal that he can produce more films of this nature
I am excited for gen AI reducing the costs of great cinematography work. My guess is that right now, this form factor is underexplored because Hollywood labor unions push against genAI
Separately, I'm excited for alternate visualizations and ways of communicating concepts from the AI safety sphere; "essays" are a common form factor, but the general public consumes much more video content compared to the typical AI safety person

And some reasons I'm not (yet) donating more:

Video content has been popular before on Manifund before, so I'm expecting other donors to also be particularly excited to fund this. I'm also not any kind of expert on video content.
For now, it seems like Dwarkesh's regular recorded video podcasts are more popular than the genAI documentaries. (This is only a small update; I expect the a high rate of improvement on genAI vs regular, as it's a much newer field)
Overall, it does seem like an expensive intervention ($2m), and this proposal is just fundraising for an initial demo

I also wanted to ask Petr about the nonprofit nature of this proposal -- should the feature film end up being widely popular and profitable, how would those profits be allocated between funders and the production team?

Petr Salaba

7 months ago

Thank you @Austin!

Good question about the potential profitability of the feature film. We are indeed expecting the result of the Phase 2 to recover its costs, especially considering our competetive advantage in being early and skilled adopters of generative AI.

To give a clear and concrete answer to this question is part of figuring out the production strategy during the Phase 1.

The idea is to honor the charitable nature of the project, so with the collaborators being fairly paid, the excess box office would be probably given back into the funding ecosystem and/or used for further campaign efforts and aditional media content that wouldn't be profitable on its own (educational, documentary).

This will be fully and clearly defined in the strategy at the end of the Phase 1 before we move to the Phase 2. When we have it, we start fundraising the 2M (production) + 5M (marketing and campaign).