What Does That Say About the Production Processes That Go Along With It?

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In the making of this film, i've thought a lot about what it means to be human. And i think that we're living in an age where it's almost like a world with no seat belts and no car seat for your baby. I don't think we've really examined the fact that democracies are picking up the tools of authoritarian states with no democratic rules in place to protect people from its impacts. We're optimizing for growth and distribution faster than we're optimizing for for safety. That just seems like a recipe or for disaster.

The film Coded Bias follows MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini through her investigation of algorithmic discrimination, after she accidentally discovers that facial recognition technologies do not detect darker-skinned faces. Joy is joined on screen by experts in the field, researchers, activists, and involuntary victims of algorithmic injustice. Coded Bias was released on Netflix April 5, 2021, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last year, and has been called “‘An Inconvenient Truth’ for Big Tech algorithms” by Fast Company magazine. We talk to director Shalini Kantayya about the impetus for the film and how to tackle the threats these challenges pose to civil rights while working towards more humane technology for all.