*Best of 2026* - Ghost in the Machine - Director Valerie Veatch

Director Valerie Veatch navigates the torrential rapids of artificial intelligence with this mind-expanding investigative essay documentary that excavates the philosophical, cultural and political forces driving the global AI boom. Ghost in the Machine approaches ubiquitous questions like “What is AI?”, “Who is building it?”, and “What will humans become?” by exploring how emerging technologies have historically reshaped identity, culture and global power — while also exposing the current fronts of human exploitation without which AI would not function. Premiering at Sundance, Ghost in the Machine is a burningly urgent self-funded documentary treatise connecting the historic and on-going links between AI and eugenics. It pulls on nearly forty Zoom interviews with historians, scholars, computer scientists, and human rights activists, which are collaged together with archival clips. The film draws a fat sharpie marker line across time to make the lineages clear. The film slaps key conceptual post-it notes on the wall, such as how the term “Artificial Intelligence” was concocted as a marketing term to raise research funds. The concept of intelligence and the field of statistics were constructed to justify white supremacy. And the current promises of super-intelligence are merely pseudoscience drawing on those legacies of hype and racism. Valerie Veatch joins us for a spirited conversation.

About the filmmaker - Hailing from London by way of New York by way of Seattle, Valerie Veatch is an acclaimed independent documentary filmmaker. Veatch is a writer, director, and producer of documentaries "Me @ The Zoo" (HBO), "Love Child" (HBO). Veatch is a graduate of the New School for Social Research with a degree in Culture and Media Studies. Her award-winning work deals with the intersection of technology and society. Her latest film is the documentary Ghost in the Machine, which premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.