Coded Bias Film Screening

Washington College partnered with the Presidential Fellows Program and the Office of Intercultural Affairs to bring “Coded Bias” to students through the Miller Library. The film is a documentary following the events of Joy Buolamwini, an MIT Media LAb researcher, as she seeks to expose the bias left behind in artificial intelligence (A.I.) and advanced facial recognition technology. The screening was available via a link sent by the Miller Library and could be watched by anyone with an internet connection. The documentary begins when Buolamwini explains her discovery that facial recognition was unable to locate and register her face until she placed a white mask in front of her. The rest of the documentary covers various faults in facial recognition technology and the movement to remove the biases and exploitations in the system that make decisions or malfunction based on a person’s skin color or gender. 

The faces of London are scanned throughout the day and all faces that match a list of criminals are stopped. Buolamwini explains that these systems are not perfect, and several times innocent civilians that the A.I. matches to criminals are pulled aside and questioned or searched and forced to show I.D. Resume sorting programs begin targeting and excluding women applicants, esteemed teachers are fired based solely on newly implemented A.I. for evaluations, and lives are uprooted by a reliance on technology Boulamwini has observed to be unreliable. Boulamwini takes her case to congress in an attempt to better regulate these unjust evaluations and terminations.