Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Steven Spielberg’s “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” foretold our solitude

Spielberg's divisive 2001 film looks far more prescient 25 years on, tackling the ChatGPT era with alarming urgency

Published June 28, 2026 9:00AM (EDT)

Despite his work existing on a massive blockbuster scale, Steven Spielberg has always had a knack for appealing to the individual. He’s a student of life as much as he is filmmaking, a humanist who forges connections with spectacular sights of the things that frighten and fascinate us the most. It’s part of what makes him such a gifted storyteller: Spielberg is unafraid to reach through the haze that clouds our fears, grab the thing that terrifies us by the neck — be it dinosaurs, aliens, sharks, wars or politicians — and pull it into clear view.

Perhaps that’s why, when Spielberg’s “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” was released 25 years ago this month, it wasn’t exactly the runaway summer hit audiences had come to anticipate from the director. The story appeared bizarre in a way that even Spielberg couldn’t make relatable, which is saying something, considering he was the man who reminded us that rich people would consider a dinosaur theme park a viable enterprise. Set in the 22nd century, when a portion of the human race has been wiped out by climate change, “A.I.” follows a young, humanlike robot boy named David (Haley Joel Osment), the first of his kind programmed to love. David is given to Henry and Monica Swinton (Sam Robards and Frances O’Connor), whose son, Martin, rests in suspended animation after falling ill. He is a test of sorts. Monica may spend time with David and choose whether she’d like to activate his imprinting feature, triggering a familial love that looks and feels as real as her biological son’s — at least to David.

People treat AI chatbots like primitive versions of David in Spielberg’s film, projecting humanity onto technology in ways that pull them further from their fellow humans and closer to their screens, dulling their ability to feel on their own terms.

After languishing in development hell under Stanley Kubrick for two decades, the notoriously intense auteur deferred the project to Spielberg, believing he would be the right fit to tell such a complex yet tender story. “A.I.” is a saga both poetic and brutal, as beautiful as it is deeply unsettling. And though the film was far from Spielberg’s........

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