Ghost in the Machine - Absolute must-watch deep dive into so-called AI

Writing for the Sundance Institute website, Erik Adams calls Valerie Veatch’s Ghost in the Machine "the scariest movie playing at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival". He’s not wrong. It’s not only scary, it’s also rage-inducing.

Veatch traces the red line that links the current "AI " tools and the exploitative and polluting tech giants behind them to the eugenists of the 19th and early 20th century - a rag tag bunch of mediocre men who took it upon themselves to quantify human intelligence - highlighting how machine learning and the technological developments that have helped it flourish emerged from racist and supremacist models for the exploitation of people and resources. Pieced together in a way that brings to mind Adam Curtis’ long-form docs, the film throws a lot of information and talking heads our way but allows us visualise the way all these threads are interconnected: the racist mathematicians and theorists, the birth and growth of Silicon Valley, today’s tech bros and their unicorn AI models, and - credit to Veatch for shedding light on one facet that’s too often ignored - the very human (exploitative) labour in countries like Kenya that actually provides the backbone of what we think of as artificial intelligence.

One of the most salient points made by this doc is that there is nothing intelligent about machine learning. AI is nothing more than a buzz word coined by scientist John McCarthy in the mid-20th century to make his research more attractive to potential funders. To this day, artificial intelligence remains an entirely theoretical concept used to upsell pattern recognition programmes for feckless millionaires to pour more money into. The bubble is sure to burst but not before the water-guzzling data centres are built, thousands more workers in the poorest countries are exploited and the rest of us lose some of our critical faculties.

Much of the doc makes us feel quite hopeless. Maybe it should be complemented by a look at what’s happening in the East. With the geopolitical shift to Asia come variables and potential breaks to this madness. But Veatch does end on a call to action. Our destiny isn’t written in stone, our future is not predetermined and is still for us to shape. She encourages us to push for regulation, to avoid automation when we can, and to invest in community cohesion and human connection.

The film is out in the UK June 2026.