By Dennis Hartley

I swear, it seems like you can’t swing a dead Cat-5 around these days without hitting another hand-wringing report about our imminent enslavement by A-I (or, at the very least, a trip to the unemployment line). Not to mention environmental concerns that stem from massive amounts of electricity being sucked from the grid in order to power the huge data centers.

Indeed, those are all legitimate concerns, but thankfully not the main focus of Valerie Veatch’s  documentary, which doesn’t extrapolate on A-I’s application but rather, the makeup of its disposition.

To wit: Is A-I racist?

You may (or may not) be surprised to learn that there is a sizable overlap in the Venn diagram connecting the development of A-I with the history of eugenics theory. Veatch devotes a good chunk of the film to this aspect. It’s a fascinating (if disturbing) history lesson.

It gets worse. The biggest revelation for me was a segment revealing what may be the A-I techbros’ dirtiest little secret: outsourcing and exploiting workers in African nations to do data labeling and content moderation (all at poverty wages). The interviews with workers are eye-opening…and enraging. Welcome to digital colonialism.

While it may not be the definitive overview of the A-I revolution, it will give you pause for thought the next time you cozy up on the couch to debate with Claude about whether it was Han or Greedo who shot first.