Coded Bias: An Eye Opening Documentary about Artificial Intelligence
Coded Bias is a documentary about artificial intelligence (AI) and its bias. The film demonstrates the reality of AI and how little control its creators have over it. It shows racial and gender bias due to predominantly learning from white male faces. Some companies that try to utilize AI for hiring are having it backfire in their faces as it hires more male employees. At the start of the film, a black woman demonstrates that the AI doesn’t recognize her face, but recognizes a white, plastic mask she puts on, which can be seen as the cover photo of the documentary.
I didn’t know that AI was scanning people’s faces in England to try to locate criminals. I heard about the facial recognition software in China, but I didn’t know it has spread. This is dangerous technology, as it was revealed that the creators of AI algorithms don’t even know how their software works and thinks. It can accuse the wrong people for looking similar to a criminal and they could be arrested or cited for something they didn’t do.
I think it’s incredibly interesting and terrifying that AI is being used for this purpose. I grew up playing a game series called Watch Dogs, which centers around a company who has full control of the personal data of the population and they use AI to monitor the city and predict who is more likely to commit a crime. If the risk is higher, they’ll arrest someone before they even commit the crime. Throughout the series, it only gets worse. What is happening in real life feels dangerously close to these fictional dystopian games. I want to do more research about the current conditions, since the film was released in 2020 and it’s been about four years.