Coded Bias: The Film Everybody Needs to Watch

Coded Bias, directed by Shalini Kantayya, is a documentary in the way Artificial Intelligence trails human data with the assistance of algorithms incorporated in sophisticated Machine Learning Models.

Although many of the algorithms used today were created in the 80s, we have digitalised our lives, and data, in a massive amount never so accessible in the history of humankind. Adding to that, the increase in processing power by computers and wireless exchange of information by the 5G technology means AI is probably the most powerful technology ever designed. It already has the capacity to individualised strategies to nudge behaviours desired by a third party. It is only visible to the targeted person, leaves no traces and almost unregulated with few exceptions like the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). It is the wildest dream of an authoritarian regime.

The documentary, handsomely captured by the director of photography Steve Acevedo, follows the path of a charismatic MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini in her discovery that facial recognition fails to register faces with darker skin colour. It unravels with a set of findings of scary consequences and punishable…