As part of Oakland Tech Week 2026, MediaJustice hosted a featured screening of the documentary “Ghost in the Machine”, by Valerie Veatch. We set the stage with a panel discussion featuring Dr. Thema Monroe-White, Associate Professor of Artificial Intelligence and innovation policy at George Mason University, Dr. Alex Hanna, Sociologist and Research Director at the Distributed AI Research Institute, and Sam Biddle, a Senior Technology reporter at The Intercept. Together, they pushed us to evaluate the motivations behind the latest AI harms and what it looks like for Oakland to have autonomy over its own tech future.
