![‘Ghost In The Machine’ Review: This Isn't Your Everyday AI Documentary [Sundance]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/24171936/Ghost-In-The-Machine-Sundance.jpg "‘Ghost In The Machine’ Review: This Isn't Your Everyday AI Documentary [Sundance]")
Throw a rock in the direction of the onslaught of documentaries released within the past several years, and you’re likely to strike any number of in-depth exposés on the rise of AI, its current cultural dominance and frequent, albeit dire, future outlook in this regard. It’s undeniably fascinating how two letters, once associated with the most grim works of science fiction, have become as synonymous with technology as an app on your phone, with such AI-fueled assistants as ChatGPT now seemingly as widely used as Google. Yet, do we ever stop to think about the words these letters represent? What about what came before, even decades prior, to lay the foundation for today? What about the politics of it all? Ready to learn?
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If the answer is yes, you’re in luck, as that’s what’s about to happen as “Ghost In The Machine,” a documentary courtesy of director Valerie Veatch unfolds, but not without a clip of Commander-in-chief Donald Trump welcoming the likes of Elon Musk, Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son and Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI, into the Oval Office to announce the launch of a significant, nuclear-powered data center project. It’s easy to focus on the present, but just as quickly it shifts back in time to show how innovators such as Alan Turing laid the groundwork for modern AI. AI, as many know it today, is a catchall term encompassing modern tech touchstones such as image manipulation, video creation, and chatbots, among countless others, with the list seemingly growing by the minute. Speaking of, Microsoft’s pioneering chatbot, Tay, received some time in the spotlight, primarily for its colossal failure upon launch ten years ago, when it quickly began posting tremendously offensive tweets. Was it simply too soon for AI?
Possibly. With the film divided into eight chapters, you’ll hear the word “eugenics” frequently, a term referring to discredited practices aimed at improving the genetic traits of a specific subset of humanity. AI remains the focus throughout, but it’s AGI, or Artificial General Intelligence, that creeps up more frequently than expected; this future version of AI, still largely unproven, figures heavily into the thoughts of numerous interviewees, all of whom take note of the racism and marginalizing of those on the lower end of IQ testing present in the bedrock of what would lead to modern AI. Superintelligence, altruism, techno-fascism; there’s plenty to be said of the inherent issues packed within what many now casually dismiss as nothing more than another fad.
Are we close to the singularity? That moment when AI outpaces the collective intelligence of mankind? Archival footage of Altman, promoting his early venture Loopt while sporting no less than two polo shirts in his pre-OpenAI era, will eventually lead to Altman throughout numerous interviews musing on this very idea, soon leading to the unquestionable fact of how masculinity has, for far too long, commandeered the tech industry with well-placed clips of Altman, Musk and Mark Zuckerberg again shown rubbing elbows with the President. The history of Silicon Valley was rooted in male dominance, and that techno-fascism, taking up a fair amount of the perfectly-named eighth chapter, “Slopaganda,” can’t go without a shot of Musk’s now-infamous campaign salute. Did you know he would eventually integrate his own chatbot into the threads of X? It, too, was fascist.
If this wasn’t enough to bring down the mood, how about the processing power involved in AI usage? The residents of African slums, recruited into data analysis for what could scarcely be considered a living wage? The carbon emissions escaping those data centers, and the vast amounts of water required to keep the servers cool? It would be easy to say AI is bad, but as seen here, that’s genuinely just an oversimplification. There’s a tremendous amount of information flowing throughout “Ghost In The Machine,” and it seems like too much to ingest. Veatch maintains the pace with skilled editing and an unsettling score. Everyone profiled passionately stands behind their articulate words, a large reason why, as the credits roll, this film works, just in a way one might not expect. Whether the messages land on first viewing or second, they will, and they should.
If nothing else, there’s one key takeaway. This film wasn’t made by AI. [B]
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