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Looking at: "Coded Bias"

 

 A film by Shalini Kantayya.

Join our free two-week screening of the trailblazing film Coded Bias that sheds light on the threats artificial intelligence poses to civil rights and democracy

 Considering how Google abruptly fired Dr. Timnit Gebru, one of the leaders in the Ethical AI field, this is very timely. Also, very cool, she's in this documentary as well!

As of this writing, you still have a few days to watch "Coded Bias" for free over here


I don't know if it's truly similar, but using a generated password to access the movie through cinesend...this must be how members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would feel if they watched all the movies and didn't vote based upon Hollywood alliances, film unseen.

This is also a bonus review of the cinesend interface; It's plain. Video is there. The file name is in the lower right hand corner. Video quality and speed options, typical playback buttons. No caption options.

AIs are trained by the data humans give it - Those faces are often lighter, whiter, and male.

Joy Buolamwini, The young woman at MIT we're introduced to at first, did research on why her face - Darker, female - was often not recognized, even when she changed the AI software. To my surprise, IBM did better recognizing her than Microsoft or Face ++

Since there are no regulations on facial recognition in most countries, governments can use it how they want, with no thought to our personal liberties. Basically, profit > people. The modus operandi for America.

Case in point: This apartment complex installed biometrics instead of keycards in a primarily black neighborhood. Luckily, tenants are fighting back.

People build AI, and have no idea how it works?

 

Remind me why it's so difficult for me and others to get a foot in the door of this industry if all we're doing is pressing buttons and hoping for the outcome that puts the most money in our pockets.

Wrong skin color, wrong gender, outspoken, people are chosen for relatability over competency and ability to learn,wrong location...let's keep going.

Yep, they mention Facebook's Election Experiments and Amazon selling Ring footage to police departments. Also, the financial system was - surprise! - set up to profit off of people's extreme misfortune. Taking advantage of the poor.

I don't want to write about this movie line by line, because you should watch it for yourself. It opened my eyes to the insidious ways AI has snuck into our lives to make it harder to succeed. 

One more thing - They do talk about how we're all being scored in social ways. You look at the social credit system of China and go "That's horrendous," - but look at networking. 

You're expected to have a 'presence' on LinkedIn, or you're seen as untrustworthy. 

You have to do some weird insincere networking that emphasizes buzzwords ("value add", "relationship building") over honesty ("I want to work, can you help me?")

(This article says everything I want to about that platform.)

It rewards a very specific type of personality with more opportunities, connections - and people just...allow it. Not everybody fits that. Not all of us want to be best friends just to work somewhere we enjoy.

On a film standpoint, there are so many ways to make documentaries, I find them hard to judge. The information is broken down in bites, jumping between 3 people. The information comes through, and that's good enough for me.

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