As 'The Social Reckoning' Drops, Is Another Tech Reckoning Already Brewing With AI?

The events behind The Social Reckoning happened only five years ago. To the film’s stars, the conversation around Big Tech is already changing.

Aaron Sorkin’s follow-up to The Social Network, which hits theaters soon, follows former Facebook engineer Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison). She teams up with Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) to expose the company’s internal research on its platforms’ harms. Horwitz’s reporting became “The Facebook Files” in 2021.

The tech landscape has shifted a lot since then. AI is now driving debates about jobs, creativity and who controls the tools reshaping media and entertainment. When AfroTech Culture asked the cast whether that new reckoning was on their minds, White didn’t hold back.

“All this stuff is moving fast, it’s super scary,” he said in an interview. “I have to believe that people are always gonna want to be invested in all art forms, that they wanna see real people. That’s my hope.”

His bigger concern isn’t his own career. “There’s dozens of things I’m more frightened about in terms of AI and these big tech companies rather than me not being able to do a movie,” White added.

Haugen doesn’t fit the typical whistleblower mold. She didn’t set out to burn Facebook down. Madison said that was what drew her to the role.

“She does really believe in the company she’s working for, and I think that’s what makes that decision so hard for her to finally reach out to someone,” Madison said. “She’s been trying to make her voice heard and trying to make positive change, but when no one listens, she decides to take a stand.”

That tension is familiar in tech today, as workers inside AI companies raise concerns about the products they still want to see succeed.

Horwitz came to the story from a politics background, not tech. White said that outsider view helps viewers follow Haugen through dense material about how the platform worked.

“Frances is holding his hand through or sometimes dragging him through this information,” White said. “He’s asking a lot of the questions that I think audience members might ask.”

He admitted that suited him. “I was relieved that I could remain sort of as ignorant as I am for some of it and learn along with the audience,” he said.

The Social Reckoning also stars Wunmi Mosaku, Betty Gilpin, Billy Magnussen, Bill Burr and Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg. It opens in theaters Oct. 9.