Valerie Veatch’s documentary traces the origins of artificial intelligence and makes for a worthwhile watch. Featuring interviews with many of the heavy-hitter critical AI researchers, such as Dr. Abeba Birhane, Dr. Alex Hanna, and Dr. Emily Bender, the film traces the early histories that make the AI accelerationist, fascist, and planet-burning present possible.
Most interesting is how it clearly spells out and synthesises how AI’s history is firmly rooted in eugenics and race science through prominent eugenicists such as statistician Karl Pearson and entrepreneur William Shockley. Indeed, it clearly articulates how the ideas around measuring ‘intelligence’ and reaching ‘general’ intelligence have developed from eugenics and, crucially, how these racist and fascist notions reverberate through how AI is developed, marketed and deployed in the present.
You can watch the trailer here:
If you prefer text over video, Hanna and Bender’s The AI con in its first two chapters accessibly and sharply lays out a similar argument about the present AI moment through tracing its eugenics past.
See: “Ghost in the Machine” Is a Documentary — but It’s Also an Urgent Technological Horror Story at Sundance.