Being fully efficient, always doing what you're told, always doing what you're programmed to do, is not always the most human thing. Sometimes, it's saying "No, I'm not going to do this, right?". And if you automate everything, so it always does what it's supposed to do, sometimes..that can lead to very inhuman things -- Zeynep Tufekci (Coded Bias, 2020) During this global pandemic, on an afternoon of me binging on two extremely informative documentaries consecutively, I tried to grasp a primary comprehension on the topic of AI. Several hours later, this is what I took from a multitude of articles and researches. Alan Turing, an English computer scientist, first officially introduced the concept of AI in 1950, when he published a seminal paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence".

Before it was even released, Coded Bias was positioned to become essential viewing for anyone interested in the AI ethics debate. The documentary, which was released on Netflix this week, is the kind of film that can and should be shown in countless high school classrooms, where students themselves are subjected to various AI systems in the post-pandemic age of Zoom. It's a refreshingly digestible introduction to the myriad ways algorithmic bias has infiltrated every aspect of our lives--from racist facial recognition and predictive policing systems to scoring software that decides who gets access to housing, loans, public assistance, and more.

An upcoming PBS documentary dives deep into the controversy surrounding bias in artificial intelligence (AI). Coded Bias explores MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini's shocking discovery that facial recognition does not see women and dark-skinned faces accurately. The 90-minute film covers her push for U.S. government legislation against bias in algorithms that are becoming increasingly prevalent in modern-day society. Directed by award-winning filmmaker Shalini Kantayya, Coded Bias will premiere on PBS and PBS video app on March 22. Kantayya tells the story of dynamic women leading the fight for the ethical use of AI. She profiles data scientists, mathematicians, ethicists, and everyday citizens from around the world who have been impacted by these disruptive technologies and are fighting to shed light on the impact of unconscious bias in artificial intelligence.

The protests across the U.S. and around the globe in the wake of the murder of George Floyd have raised awareness about structural inequalities. Though the specific focus has been on police brutality, scholars, activists, and artists are sounding the alarm on how systemic racism has been amplified in other areas like the tech industry, through communication and surveillance technology. In Coded Bias, a documentary by Shalini Kantayya, the director follows MIT Media Lab researcher and Algorithmic Justice League founder Joy Buolamwini as she discovers one of the fundamental problems with facial recognition. While working on a facial recognition art project, Buolamwini realizes that the computer vision software was having trouble tracking her face, but it worked fine when she put on a white mask. It was just the latest evidence of the type of bias that's baked into facial recognition and A.I. systems These technologies often connect back to the dark historical practices of racialized surveillance, eugenics, or physiognomy.

Algorithms make decisions for humans every day. Some decide who gets the COVID-19 vaccine first, while others determine what candidate gets a job or which person gets undue police scrutiny. But these same systems have not been vetted for bias or discrimination -- nor do they have standards for accuracy. A discovery made by MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini revealed that facial recognition technology does not see dark-skinned faces accurately. That finding inspired Coded Bias, a 90-minute documentary created by director/producer Shalini Kantayya.

Energized by a nearly all-female lineup of researchers and activists, the film condemns the ways racism and classism underpin big data’s design and applications.

Facial recognition systems from large tech companies often incorrectly classify black women as male -- including the likes of Michelle Obama, Serena Williams and Sojourner Truth. That's according to Joy Buolamwini, whose research caught wide attention in 2018 with "AI, Ain't I a Woman?" a spoken-word piece based on her findings at MIT Media Lab. The video, along with the accompanying research paper written with Timnit Gebru of Microsoft Research, prompted many tech companies to reassess their facial recognition data sets and algorithms for darker and more female-looking faces. "Coded Bias," a documentary directed by Shalini Kantayya which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in late January, interweaves Buolamwini's journey of creating the Algorithmic Justice League, an advocacy organization, with other examples of facial recognition software being rolled out around the world -- on the streets of London, in housing projects in Brooklyn and broadly across China. Jennifer 8. Lee, a journalist and documentary producer, caught up with Joy Buolamwini and Shalini Kantayya in Park City, Utah after the premiere of Coded Bias.