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Objective Algorithms Are a Myth
Shalini Kantayya on her new documentary, ‘Coded Bias,’ and the importance of breaking open the black box of algorithm design
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
Along with Buolamwini, Kantayya interviews authors, researchers, and activists like Cathy O’Neil, Meredith Broussard, Safiya Noble, and Silkie Carlo, unraveling the problems of current technology like facial recognition or crime prediction…
