CODED BIAS – SCREENING AND Q&A

Shalini Kantayya

March 8 2021

Virtual Screening of Coded Bias, followed by Q&A with the film’s director Shalini Kantayya

NEoN was excited to present its first event to launch the start of 2021's programme - Under the theme ‘Wired Women’ NEoN has invited female and nonbinary artists from across the world to investigate how we can bridge the digital gender divide in today’s world, how to better connect our communities and highlight the contribution of female and non-binary artists and technologists in shaping our digital and technology-driven lives.

For International Women’s Day NEoN has presented Coded Bias, which exposes how algorithms encode and propagate bias and how women are fighting to create a world with more ethical and inclusive technology.

Schedule for March 8, 2021
•Watch the film from 3 pm – 4.30 pm GMT
•Break 15 mins
•Q&A with Filmmaker Shalini Kantayy at 4:45 pm GMT

Coded Bias

Coded Bias explores the fallout of MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini´s startling discovery that facial recognition does not see dark-skinned faces and women accurately and her journey to push for the first-ever legislation in the U.S. to govern against bias in the algorithms that impact us all.

Modern society sits at the intersection of two crucial questions: What does it mean when artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly governs our liberties? And what are the consequences for the people AI is biased against? When MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini discovers the most facial-recognition software does not accurately identify darker-skinned faces and the faces of women, she delves into an investigation of widespread bias in algorithms. As it turns out, artificial intelligence is not neutral, and women are leading the charge to ensure our civil rights are protected.

SHALINI KANTAYYA - “What was terrifying to me while making @CodedBias was that A.I. not vetted for accuracy or bias are already being deployed at a massive scale to make important decisions about who gets hired, who gets health care, who gets into college or how long a prison sentence someone serves. That shook me out of my seat.”

About the Filmmaker

Filmmaker Shalini Kantayya's Coded Bias premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. She directed the National Geographic television series Breakthrough, Executive Produced by Ron Howard, broadcast globally in June 2017. Catching the Sun, her debut premiered at the LA Film Festival and was named a NY Times Critick´s Pick. Catching the Sun released globally on Netflix on Earth Day 2016 with Executive Producer Leonardo Di Caprio, and was nominated for the Environmental Media Association Award of the Best Documentary. Kantayya is a TED Fellow, a William J. Fullbright Scholar, and an Associate of the UC Berkley Graduate School of Journalism.

Articles for the event were published online on the NEoN website and can be found here and here