Algorithms Are No Excuse
Coded Bias Documentary Thoughts & Review
What should be a surprise to no one is that there is widespread bias in artificial intelligence. The biggest giveaway here is the fact that artificial intelligence was defined decades ago by a homogenous group of white men. When Joy Buolamwini, an MIT Media Lab researcher, discovered that facial recognition technologies have racial and gender biases, she decided to investigate this ethical problem further and formed the Algorithmic Justice League. There is no such thing as neutral AI, and because of this Buolamwini decides to publish her studies (slamming big tech companies like Amazon) and push the U.S. government to create the first-ever legislation to counter bias in technology. Coded Bias, a documentary that was produced and published in 2020, follows the journey Joy Buolamwini and other computer scientists, lawyers, and educators are taking to make this problem recognized by all — especially political leaders.
Before watching the documentary, I did not realize how big tech companies like Amazon had created facial recognition technology that didn’t accurately detect the faces of people of color. While I knew that companies had created facial recognition technology, I did not know that these algorithms had essentially gone unchecked when it came to the software program’s accuracy. The opening scene of Coded Bias was a great eye-opener to this problem. One of Buolamwini’s creations for a class she was taking was what would become to be known as the Aspire Mirror. The Aspire Mirror uses facial recognition technology to show yourself in the mirror with inspirational filters — in the documentary, Buolamwini chose Serena Williams. The horrible realization was that the software could only map her face when she had on a white mask. This is a critical problem for people in the BIPOC community, but it is also important to recognize the overall problem that occurs when all of us (no matter our race) enable this kind of unchecked technology.
This documentary also made me realize once more that big tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft (among others) are run by white men. One thing that I found particularly compelling about this documentary was that the people involved in it were overwhelmingly people who identified as women. Women like Joy Buolamwini are the ones that have spoken up about these problems. I am grateful to young women in STEAM for raising awareness and educating more people about this problem. Coded Bias was a powerful reminder to continue to practice critical thinking skills when it comes to technology; especially when it comes to technology like Artificial Intelligence which is supposed to think for itself. I will be curious to see what AI looks like in the near future, and I hope that organizations and movements like Algorithmic Justice League continue to fight for change that is just and ethically conscious. We don’t want to end up in a Minority Report or Terminator situation, do we?
