Bias in Artificial Intelligence

One of the more startling and instructive documentaries of the recent past is 2020's Coded Bias, which explores a thorny dilemma: in modern society, artificial-intelligence systems increasingly govern and surveil people's lives--algorithms now routinely make decisions about health care, housing, insurance, education, employment, banking, and policing--yet racial and gender biases are deeply embedded in many of these AI systems (for more background, read "Artificial Intelligence and Ethics," January-February 2019, page 44). The film, which premiered at Sundance and is now streaming on Netflix, begins with MIT Media Lab researcher and MIT doctoral candidate Joy Buolamwini recounting an experience from her first semester there in 2015: working on an art project that used AI facial-recognition software, she was confused at first when the computer didn't seem to register her face. During a striking moment early in the documentary, Buolamwini, who is African American, demonstrates the problem: holding a white mask over her own face, she turns toward her computer, which trills and lights up in response; when she lowers the mask, the computer sits eerily silent. The documentary presents a damning portrait of AI's flaws and the efforts under way to improve them, weaving together research and interviews of those who study the field, including several with Harvard connections: Berkman Klein faculty associate Zeynep Tufekci, former Nieman visiting fellow Amy Webb, data scientist Cathy O'Neil, Ph.D. '99, author of Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy (2016). Buolamwini herself is a former Adams House tutor (and performed her spoken-word poem, "AI, Ain't I A Woman?" at a Harvard conference in 2019).