Ghost in the Machine: "I think the bravery and boldness to think outside the box, to create outside the box, and to trust that you’ll find your audience...that is what resonates right now."

vHopeful Conversations Podcast · Jul 3, 2026 · 42m

In this vHopeful Conversation, I speak with filmmaker Valerie Veatch about her Sundance 2026 documentary Ghost in the Machine. We dive into the dirty wiring behind today’s AI boom—its roots in eugenics and race science, its extraction‑driven infrastructures, and the white male techno‑fantasies shaping it. Veatch unpacks how a “secret” artist program around OpenAI’s Sora jolted her from curiosity to resistance, why she chose a scrappy, Zoom‑based, self‑funded film over platform‑friendly series formats, and how archival discoveries (from Norbert Wiener to Claude Shannon) reveal an unbroken line…