Screenwriter-director Valerie Veatch’s documentary, “Ghost in the Machine,” rightly flags the dangers of unchecked AI. But it misdiagnoses most of what’s driving the direction and pace of AI advancement.
The film’s patron, The Ford Foundation’s JustFilms, funds social justice storytelling; this is a far cry from truth-telling that documentaries should aspire to. Many soundbites here resemble a progressive rant. Against whom? The usual suspects: capitalism, white supremacy, the patriarchy.
Unsurprisingly, Veatch opens her film with a quote from Antonio Gramsci that reads, “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.” Gramsci was, of course, a socialist ideologue who inspired his admirers worldwide to take a wrecking ball to five institutions: religion, family, education, media, and law.
Trolling
Veatch and her interviewees conflate correlation with causation. Big Tech brims with wealthy white men. So, the film insists that AI companies are run by sexist, racist, wealth-creation monsters.
This undermines the film that frequently borders on freshman-style trolling. Veatch singles out AI advocates with Voice of the Legion, a TV trope which uses a demon-voice sound-design treatment to make Big Tech entrepreneurs sound demonic.
As alumnae of New York’s liberal The New School, Veatch and executive producer Neerja Narayanan, exude the critical race theory (CRT) worldview of The New School’s present-day mentors, and the socialist-communist ideals of its founders who included John Dewey and Charles Beard.
If, as the film suggests, a preponderance of white men in Big Tech means AI should be rejected, then doesn’t consistency require examining other transformative technologies bequeathed by white men? After all, modern market economies and historical innovations have driven progress that benefits all segments of society, regardless of origin. For instance, consider milestones such as infant-feed formula, the washing machine, the sewing machine, menstrual hygiene products, the pap smear, the HPV vaccine, and obstetric chloroform. Taken to its logical extreme, does condemning the demographic makeup of modern creators mean rejecting every made-man legacy of capitalism?
It’s fine to see the AI rush as an amoral, transhumanist grab for more money, fame, and power, but Veatch lingers on eugenics. No sensible audience would question the origins of eugenics or its evil. But the film makes too much of a leap, insisting that Big Tech’s leaders are drinking from the same supremacist well that the Nazis did.
The film insists that intelligence can’t, and shouldn’t, be measured. Why? Because rankings smack of racism. Significantly, sociologist Jessie Daniels here claims it’s impossible to understand race and racism without understanding technology, and vice versa. Is this claim justified?
Differences
The documentary treats any suggestion of human differences as taboo, insisting that measuring intelligence or outcomes is inherently racist. But acknowledging biological and behavioral realities is not bigotry.
Just as parents recognize that their children have different strengths without loving them any less, recognizing general differences in human aptitudes is simply a matter of observation, not discrimination.
That hereditarianism (ridiculed as eugenics, race science, or scientific racism) isn’t popular doesn’t make it untrue. That racial or genetic differences include intellectual differences doesn’t make those who believe so racist. Sadly, interlocutors here denounce hereditarian scholar Linda Gottfredson as racist, and reputed scholars who share many of her conclusions aren’t racist either.
Women on average prefer careers in teaching, nursing, publishing, or fashion. Men on average prefer construction, mining, and engineering, or policing, firefighting, and the military. That isn’t misogyny. No one keeps women out—not for a long time now, anyway.
Few complain when athletics tracks or swimming pools in sports arenas are packed with only a few races, but far too many complain when tech labs are packed with only a few other races; that’s pulling racism rabbits out of every hat.
Not Racism
Socio-cultural environmental factors matter, but genetics as a starting point can’t be wished away by political correctness.
Calling out incidents of racism in Big Tech is one thing, but characterizing Big Tech as racist is a bridge too far.
Beyond their habitual language of resistance, Veatch and many of her progressive interlocutors offer little by way of insight. But as more insightful analysts warn, effective altruism, not just Big Tech’s doublespeak around AI, is a lie. For AI, it is performative empathy. It’s actually materialistic transhumanism disguised as spiritual humanism.
Algorithmic bias is, ultimately, human bias baked into machines. Implicitly and helpfully, Veatch’s film asks that AI be regulated, even if the film explicitly and unhelpfully demands that AI be rejected.
Part 1 explains how this documentary, rightly, warns of the very real threats from AI.
You can watch “Ghost in the Machine” on Kanopy and Prime Video.
‘Ghost in the Machine’
Documentary
Director: Valerie Veatch
Running Time: 1 hour, 50 minutes
Release Date: Sept. 14, 2026
Rated: 3 stars out of 5
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