SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2026 REVIEW! Writer/director Valerie Veatch explores the origins, impacts, and future of artificial intelligence in Ghost in the Machine. The documentary is structured in chapters that each focus on one aspect of A.I. Veatch begins by interviewing computer and social scientists who connect the roots of A.I. with eugenics. This was an idea suggesting that intelligence is biological, some people are inherently superior, and that humans can be bred for IQ. The Third Reich embraced this concept, adopting U.S. eugenics laws of the time, and sterilizing almost 400,000 people they considered inferior. Physicist William Shockley in 1970 described what he called “dysgenics,” which was the idea that humanity was becoming genetically weaker through inferior breeding. This led to the adoption of scientific racism.
While the film asserts that AI is a marketing term that is poorly defined, there are many approaches to machine learning that have been researched and attempted. AI has become synonymous with Large Language Models like ChatGPT. The LLM doesn’t generate new thoughts, but rather takes in a vast amount of information and generates answers based on that set of training data. Interviewees include science fiction authors Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. The narrator calls their predictions fantasies, which have formed the basis of the current philosophies of Silicon Valley. This gave rise to the belief in genius “superior” men who should be allowed to steer the way technology is applied to culture.
A still from Ghost in the Machine by Valerie Veatch, an official selection of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.
“…explores the origins, impacts, and future of artificial intelligence…”
Veatch shows how, even now, the direction of A.I. is still driven by eugenics, racism, and misogyny. Tech leaders like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel have embraced Nick Bostrom’s ideas from his book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, in which he makes no attempt to mask his bias. The basis of artificial intelligence is built on the notion that some men are intellectually superior, and that the superior man should be the model for machine intelligence moving toward artificial minds more capable than humans. Those pushing back on this concept are considered to have what Elon Musk calls the “woke mind virus.”
Ghost in the Machine is a dense documentary, replete with interviews and thoughtful discussion of A.I. and its impact on culture. Veatch brings together a vast number of experts to paint a picture of where we stand with AI and what happens going forward. For those not well versed in the rapidly changing evolution of AI, the information will be surprising and dismaying. Are we ready to voluntarily hand the world over to rich men who have risen to the top of the technology industry? How can we prevent this tech-bro hero worship from resulting in techno-fascism?
In an interview with Filmmaker magazine, Veatch discussed the coming crisis: “What we see in Ghost in the Machine is that the dichotomy of ‘A.I. doomers vs. A.I. boomers’are two sides of the same coin that accept—laughably—that there is such a thing as Superintelligence or there is an inevitability to AI systems replacing humans. When we unpack this concept, it immediately disintegrates into a history of pseudoscience and fantasy.”
Either A.I. is all vapor and hype, or the world will soon be driven by machine “intelligence” focused on generating profits for its creators, reinforcing the existing patriarchy through a new techno-capitalism. These men are “trying to build God” in their own image, to benefit themselves. Ghost in the Machine is a crucial documentary in which Veatch sounds the alarm.
Ghost in the Machine screened at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.
"…crucial..."
