AI’s Hidden Footprint, From Quartz Mines to Kenyan Click-Workers, Bared in Taiwan Creative Content Fest Doc ‘The Technological Sublime’

Talk of artificial intelligence tends to float somewhere up in the cloud. “The Technological Sublime,” a documentary from director Jannes Callens that heads to the Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF) in Taipei, brings it back down to earth. The film follows the physical supply chain that keeps AI running, starting at quartz mines in the […] Jannes Callens’ documentary ‘The Technological Sublime’ tracks the mines, chip plants and click-workers behind AI, at TCCF. Talk of artificial intelligence tends to float somewhere up in the cloud. “The Technological Sublime,” a documentary from director Jannes Callens that heads to the Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF) in Taipei, brings it back down to earth.

The film follows the physical supply chain that keeps AI running, starting at quartz mines in the Appalachians and moving on to Taiwan’s chip plants, Chile’s lithium fields, the cables that run under the sea and the click-workers of Kenya. Along the way, it sets out to show what the technology costs people and the planet. “I have a fascination with subjects that are hard to visualize,” Callens says. “People tend to talk about AI as if it were something very abstract and invisible, but after doing some research it became clear to me