Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Unknown: Killer Robots’ on Netflix, a Chilling Documentary Exploration of the Military’s Use of Artificial Intelligence

It might be funny if ChatGPT wrote this review of Unknown: Killer Robots (now on Netflix), but then again, it might not be funny at all. Artificial intelligence is the molten-hot topic of the moment, and this documentary – part of the four-part Unknown Netflix series covering a variety of things we, if the title is to be believed, apparently don’t know much about (see also: Unknown: The Lost Pyramid) – will only add gas to the fire, since it addresses the military applications of AI, and the rapidly developing international AI arms race. So that’s fun: the U.S. and China and Russia, all competing to come up with the fastest, most efficient ways to intimidate and/or destroy their enemies. Please note the present tense, since this isn’t speculative, and is already happening, which is terrifying, and therefore makes this a highly informative documentary.

UNKNOWN: KILLER ROBOTS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The thesis statement here is thus: AI has the potential to make our world better and more peaceful, but as one commentator puts it, “there are so many risks along the way.” Read: The greatest technological innovator is always and inevitably the military. What does that say about us as humans? A lot. Take that an ironic step further, and you have a commentator posing the question, “Will we cede the decision to take a life to computer software?” And the answer to that is a firm “most likely.” The can of worms has been opened, and they’re squirming like mad. 

We meet Brandon Tseng, a former Navy SEAL who now works developing AI for military use. He served in Afghanistan, and knows firsthand how dangerous it is for military personnel to engage in close-quarters combat inside a building. We see him and his team testing a drone programmed to assess tightly enclosed areas prior to entry, thus lessening the risk to human life – and the implication is, AI will do this faster and more efficiently than a human operating the drone remotely. In the film, Tseng is a primary proponent for the use of AI in the military. He understands the realities of combat, as well as the unsettling nature of arms races – if the U.S. doesn’t innovate in AI, then another global superpower like Russia or China will. 

We also meet Emilia Javorsky of the Future of Life Institute, a think tank consisting of scientists devoted to diminishing existential risks facing humanity. We aren’t surprised to learn that AI is one of those existential risks, because we’ve seen The Terminator and The Matrix and Blade Runner – cue the movie clips – and cling to the hope that they’ll forever remain merely speculative fiction. Javorsky and other like-minded folks raise a lot of questions about whether AI is capable of interpreting the complexities of the real world – say, parsing the differences between military and civilian targets – and point out the “dual use” nature of AI. “Fire is dual use,” points out MIT professor Max Tegmark, adding with a smirk, “Human intelligence is also dual use.”

The documentary gets into some of the nitty gritty of AI, showing us how a robot dog can “learn” to adapt to various terrain; we see it stumble over bricks and slip on an oiled surface, but eventually it changes its tack and navigates the course without toppling over. The intention is to use the robot to reach places too dangerous for humans; then we see images of similar robot dogs armed with machine guns. We meet a couple of pharmaceutical developers who use AI to tweak molecules and develop highly specific drugs to fight a variety of diseases; as an experiment, they reversed the AI procedure and – whoops – found that it produced chemical formulas for 40,000 deadly toxins, quite literally overnight. We meet technologists creating an AI pilot to fly F-16 fighter jets – and you won’t be surprised to see the AI defeat a seasoned Air Force on simulation after simulation after simulation, because the AI has no sense of self-preservation. So be thankful we as a species do have a sense of self-preservation that’ll kick in before AI tech gets out of hand, right? Right? Hello?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Feel free to further explore the speculative dystopias of our possible AI futures by pairing Unknown: Killer Robots with Ex Machina, Her or, um, Chappie. Also, the inimitable and wise Werner Herzog covered similar territory in the documentary Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World.

Performance Worth Watching: You can’t deny the emotion behind Tseng’s motives – he watched untold colleagues get injured or killed in the line of duty, and wants to mitigate those risks for other soldiers. And then we have Javorsky, who’s stumping hard for cautious and ethical use of the technology. Someone get these two in the same room, stat.  

Memorable Dialogue: “We’ve spent the last 70 years building the most sophisticated military on the planet, and now we’re facing the decision as to whether we want to cede control over that infrastructure to an algorithm, to software.” – Javorsky

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Unknown: Killer Robots maintains a level-headed tone despite two things: One, that sensational title, which doesn’t accurately reflect what’s inside the package. And two, the fact that it tells us how one computer “brain,” whirring away on an aging, run-of-the-mill Mac, took a few paltry hours to come up with 40,000 ways to very efficiently murder a human. Yawn, all in a day’s work, goes the algorithm. Yikes, what now, goes every person watching this documentary. And that’s where the “unknown” part comes in – but only sort of “unknown,” because by the end of the film, it seems inevitable that Javorsky’s concerns about the AI arms race are likely to come true: The quest for a more powerful military sure seems likely to outpace the safe, ethical implementation of AI. 

To their credit, director Jesse Sweet doesn’t engage in the type of wild, fearmongering speculation that might accompany this conversation. He presents a compelling new-era application of the age-old wisdom about technology as a force for both good and evil. He hones in on a focused topic, finds commentators with reasonable voices and presents a concise 68 minutes of relatively in-depth journalism. It’s not the most thrilling presentation of the material – lots of talking heads, some over-the-shoulder observation, archival clips – but the topic is fascinating enough on its own. A documentary need not entertain us in order to raise our concern.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Big ideas make for fascinating documentaries, and Unknown: Killer Robots is definitely that.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.