Coded Bias

Working on a project at the MIT Media Lab, Joy Buolamwini notices that the facial recognition software does not see her face. It responds only when she puts on a white mask. The research that came out of this, known as the Gender Shades study, showed commercial systems misclassifying darker-skinned female faces at rates up to 34.7 percent, against 0.8 percent for lighter-skinned male faces. Shalini Kantayya's documentary starts there and follows Buolamwini through the Algorithmic Justice League she founded and into US legislative hearings. Cathy O'Neil and Meredith Broussard widen the argument past facial recognition into credit scoring and hiring algorithms. The film does more than assert that technology is not neutral; it shows how whose data trained a system determines what that system does. It premiered at Sundance in 2020 and aired on PBS's Independent Lens in March 2021. Who it's for: Anyone interested in algorithmic discrimination, surveillance and tech policy. Who it's not for: Viewers wanting technical depth will not find much. The film moves quickly between topics and makes no room for counterarguments.