Valerie Veatch’s blistering “Ghost in the Machine” is a radical, necessary Molotov cocktail of a documentary that’s being thrown right into the heart of our nonsense, nightmarish world of overinflated AI hype. Taking on fraught foundational questions of what we consider knowledge and weaving them into a comprehensive exploration of modern techno-fascism, it already feels like an essential text for our present moment.
The film plays more as a witty, withering video essay than a conventional documentary, while still bringing plenty of critical analysis from a wide range of experts. It begins in Seattle in 2016 — a simpler, sunnier time. But as is often the case in the city itself, ominous storm clouds can quickly gather. In this case, those clouds gathered when Microsoft began to explore using an AI chatbot (they named it “Tay”) which could “interact” with people on Twitter.
Within a day, the chatbot turned into a Nazi, gobbling up all the hateful trash on the Internet and vomiting it back up. Microsoft shut the chatbot down, but, as Veatch’s documentary establishes, this opened a Pandora’s Box. “Ghost in the Machine” says it doesn’t have to be this way.
What follows this pointed opening is a whirlwind of an experience that grapples with urgent historical and sociological questions underpinning the technology. Veatch moves rapidly between interconnected topics in a way that is exhilarating, although for some it could be overwhelming. Her film comes out of the gate at confident, breakneck speed and never slows down.
The film argues that there is no time to waste, and it rises to meet the moment. Veatch won’t be intimidated by the “ghost in the machine” and is instead like a one woman Scooby-Doo mystery gang, unmasking the fantasies that surround these ghosts for being what they are: an extension of techno-fascism.
While this could be didactic or tiresome in the wrong hands, “Ghost in the Machine” has a playful edge that keeps you riveted. Veatch is on a crusade, intent on exposing the costly lies we are being told about AI. But her film and its many fascinating and knowledgeable experts make their arguments with such compelling verve and sharp analysis that only the most self-serving of AI evangelists would deny the intellectual rigor.
Where everything else about AI in our present moment seems built on desperate hype, Veatch cuts through all the noise to wake us up from this nightmare. Though she never herself makes an appearance, her fearless film makes her a Michael Moore for our hyper-online world.
The film does stumble a bit in some moments when Veatch leans into using AI herself. While these sequences highlight how ugly and nightmarish the technology can be, they don’t always feel necessary. Using the tools of AI against itself can only go so far.
You’re willing to cut Veatch some slack to explore this, and there’s a strange, dark irony to seeing AI-generated graphics depicting data centers consuming our world. At the same time, it’s hard not to feel as if this could have been made by an actual artist to be more ideologically consistent, given that the film is endorsing a rejection of AI.
This small hang-up aside, “Ghost in the Machine” breaks through all the BS being spun about AI with clear-eyed, compassionate care. It pulls no punches, taking worthwhile swings at Elon Musk and the sinister Silicon Valley that gave rise to men like him. It diagnoses the sickness that is consuming humanity’s soul and doesn’t shy away from the damage this will cause.
However, just as critically, it provides the knowledge needed to open up pathways to pull the world in a better direction.
