A Review of ‘Coded Bias’

Coded Bias is a 2020 film that explores how bias in, and improper use of, artificial intelligence can have potentially disastrous outcomes. Racism and sexism within the data fed to artificial intelligences and reliance on algorithms are the main topics that are touched upon throughout the film. Something that I found interesting about the film was how hard one of the activists pushed back against the police for fining someone for not wanting to have his facial biometric data recorded. The film is very clearly not a pseudo-activist one-and-done situation, the people involved are very passionate about these issues and have worked vigorously to bring attention to them.

I found the section(s) on police surveillance to be the most interesting within the film. With the situation in Hong Kong where facial recognition software is being readily used to arrest people, protestors are fighting back by destroying and vandalizing CCTV cameras. However, the section in London really highlighted the velocity of this form of surveillance and that more and more places are utilizing it, even without wide-scale protests. Governments are implementing it just because they can.

After watching and subsequently reviewing the film, I have a lot of thoughts and questions of my own. Namely, I wonder what “hidden” progress has been made and how it is currently being used. As mentioned in the movie, a lot of people have this faith in their governments, believing “they could do that, but they wouldn’t.” The main issue with those kinds of beliefs is the fact they don’t acknowledge that governments shouldn’t be able to do these kinds of things at all. Governments resisting the urge to do something they could do is not comforting whatsoever and to find any comfort in that is an incredibly baffling hill to die on.

Source:
https://www.codedbias.com/