THE STORY – The untold origins of artificial intelligence lie not in machines but in power, revealing the fantasies behind the hype that got us here and where we go next.
THE CAST – N/A
THE TEAM – Valerie Veatch (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 110 Minutes
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.” Antonio Gramsci’s 1929 observation, written from the depths of a fascist prison, serves as the evocative opening for Valerie Veatch’s “Ghost in the Machine”. Returning to the Sundance Film Festival, Veatch attempts to navigate the torrential rapids of artificial intelligence with an investigative essay that excavates the philosophical, cultural, and political forces driving the global AI boom. It is a film that seeks to unmask the fantasies behind the hype, revealing that the untold origins of AI lie not in a sudden spark of digital genius, but in the long-standing structures of power that have always sought to quantify and control the human condition.
The documentary begins by interrogating the very nature of the beast, asking what AI actually is and who is building it. In a wryly insightful flashback to a 1973 conference in London, we meet Stanford professor John McCarthy, who admits he coined the term “artificial intelligence” primarily as a ploy to secure funding for a summer study. There’s a lack of coherent definition that persists throughout the film; while modern figures like Sam Altman or Elon Musk have their own beliefs that they stick to with a religious fervor, the film’s interviewees (made up of historians, researchers, scientists and more) dissect the technology as a collection of loosely related tools or systems that simply sort through massive amounts of data. The film suggests that the use of the word “intelligence” alongside “machine” has been dangerously naturalized, masking a project that is less about thinking and more about a specific, historical goal: achieving human-level intelligence as defined by the powerful.
The most profound and compelling aspect of Veatch’s investigation is the connection she establishes between the racist instruments of the 19th century and today’s digital landscape. The film convincingly ties the invention of AI to the legacy of eugenics, showing how the measurement and quantification of the mind emerged from a desire to rank humanity. We move from Francis Galton, the originator of eugenics, who sought to breed a “superior” race, to Charles Spearman’s creation of the “G Factor.” This statistical model for measuring “general intelligence” was explicitly designed to reinforce white superiority and served as the basis for U.S. sterilization laws—laws so influential that Leon Whitney’s “The Case for Sterilization” was reportedly called a “bible” by Adolf Hitler. The film posits that AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) is the direct descendant of this G Factor, a modern attempt to remodel the mind based on a specific, exclusionary genius. This lineage continues into Silicon Valley’s inception; William Shockley, the “godfather” of this hub for tech innovation, was a racist eugenicist who mentored men who would become key figures in Silicon Valley. This techno-patriarchy has evolved into the effective altruism of today, where influential books like “Superintelligence” by Nick Bostrom promote the organic selection of embryos—a chillingly familiar echo of the past.
Despite this sharp, eye-opening observation and analytical depth, “Ghost in the Machine” suffers from structural bloat. Much like the massive data centers it depicts, the documentary frequently overheats, becoming a dense bombardment of scientific information, news footage, and talking heads that is difficult to fully digest. The score is a persistent, distracting presence that often muddies the film’s more eloquent moments rather than enhancing them. There is also an inescapable sense of hypocrisy in the film’s construction. While it serves as a scathing critique of AI, it uses AI-generated filler to bridge gaps in the footage, creating a jarring dissonance that undermines its humanistic focus. The “Not AI” and “AI” labels that sit in the corner of the screen feel less like a tool for clarity and more like a gimmick in a film that already feels like a master’s paper straining under its own weight.
This lack of precision is a shame, because when the film focuses on the human exploitation at the heart of the machine, it is poignant and necessary. Veatch traces the impact of AI to what can now be called digital colonialism: an imperial extraction where companies like Meta and OpenAI exploit workers in Kenya and other poor countries to sort through traumatizing, explicit content for pennies. We see how the environmental cost of this “progress” falls on the marginalized, such as the predominantly Black communities near Elon Musk’s XAi data centers, who are now experiencing spiked rates of asthma. We are reminded of the 2016 failure of Microsoft’s “Tay” chatbot, which took only 16 hours to adopt a neo-Nazi personality by absorbing the hive-mind of Twitter. It is a stark reminder that AI isn’t an objective observer; it is a mirror of our most destructive impulses, operationalized by those who hold the most political and financial power.
However, even as the film paints a terrifically foreboding picture of a tool rapidly destroying both the planet and the truth, it ends on a note of resilient hope. By dissecting the history of AI, many interviewees remind us that because the intake of these systems is human through and through, the agency to reshape their direction remains with us. These technologies are not an inevitable final solution or a fate set in stone; they are systems of power that can be challenged and dismantled. There is an exhilarating kind of freedom in the realization that we are not merely data to be harvested, but the architects of our own meaning. If we are indeed living in a time of monsters, we also possess the profound bond of human connection required to dismantle this techno-dystopia and ensure that whatever is born next is shaped by more than elite hands.
