The rapid rise of generative AI has sparked excitement, but behind the hype lies a disturbing history. Director Valerie Veatch’s new documentary, Ghost in the Machine, exposes how the foundations of AI are deeply intertwined with the discredited pseudoscience of eugenics – a history that explains why these systems consistently produce racist, sexist, and bigoted outputs.
The Problem Isn’t Just “Garbage In, Garbage Out”
Many dismiss AI bias as a simple matter of flawed training data (“garbage in, garbage out”). However, Ghost in the Machine argues that the problem runs far deeper. The very concept of “artificial intelligence” was born from a deliberate effort to secure funding for research, obscuring its origins in Victorian-era race science. The documentary traces a direct line from the work of Francis Galton, a pioneer of eugenics and cousin of Charles Darwin, to modern machine learning algorithms.
Galton’s obsession with quantifying human traits – including the attractiveness of different races – laid the groundwork for statistical tools used in AI today. Karl Pearson, his protégé, further normalized the idea that intelligence could be measured and that human brains functioned like machines. This thinking was crucial in selling the public on the fantastical notion of AI, and it continues to shape how these systems operate.
The Unacknowledged Bias
Veatch recounts her own experience with OpenAI’s Sora, where the model consistently whitewashed images of a Black female artist, preserving her fashion but erasing her racial features in depictions of “white spaces.” When she reported this issue to OpenAI, she was dismissed with a shrug: “This is very cringe to be bringing up; there’s nothing we can do to change it.”
This indifference isn’t accidental. The documentary reveals how AI firms actively downplay the systemic biases baked into their technology. The historical context helps explain why these companies seem so uninterested in addressing present-day issues, as the very foundations of AI are rooted in discriminatory ideologies.
The Illusion of Neutrality
The documentary dismantles the myth of AI neutrality, demonstrating how the industry’s historical ties to eugenics influence its current outputs. Veatch emphasizes that any attempt to sanitize this history – such as interviewing tech CEOs for a “balanced” perspective – would only serve as propaganda.
“Am I going to hug Sam Altman on camera? Is that a truthful film about this technology? That’s propaganda.”
Ghost in the Machine makes a compelling case that every aspect of the AI space has been profoundly influenced by its connections to fields of science built to support discriminatory worldviews. The film will stream via Kinema from March 26th to March 28th before airing on PBS this fall.
The uncomfortable truth is that generative AI isn’t simply a neutral tool; it’s a product of a history steeped in racism and pseudoscience. Ignoring this fact will only perpetuate the harmful biases that these systems already amplify.
