Two documentaries premiering at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival directly confront the discourse surrounding artificial intelligence. Valerie Veatch's 'Ghost in the Machine' traces the racist, eugenicist origins of AI research, linking it to a history of American techno-fascism, while Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell's 'The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist' offers a more measured, personal exploration of public anxieties about the technology.
These films matter as a significant cultural response from the art and film world to a year of pervasive AI integration into daily life. By premiering at a major festival, they elevate the critique beyond tech circles, providing historical context and empowering viewers with language to challenge uncritical techno-optimism. Their contrasting approaches offer a thorough survey of contemporary fears and attitudes, framing AI not as an inevitable future but as a development with a troubling ideological past that demands scrutiny.