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Coded Bias

Shalini Kantayya, USA, UK, China 2020, 85’
subtitles: Polish and English
City Hall Hopper/Welles

„The Guardian”, which recently published the first text written entirely by artificial intelligence, asked, Are you scared yet? In the digital world, there are, however, things much more disturbing than AI’s graphomaniacal manifesto. Why are facial recognition systems unable to recognize Black people? Did Amazon’s automated recruitment system automatically reject applications submitted by women? Why does artificial intelligence operate on the basis of racial and gender prejudices? Who really wants to get a hold of our biometric data? Despite appearances, these aren’t the subjects of Black Mirror episodes. This is how a large part of the digital world works. AI systems “learn” by observing network users and adopting their views and vision of reality. Shalini Kantayya, together with some of the top Internet and digital culture researchers, sheds light on a world in which our fates—our purchases, political choices, and whether we get a job we’ve applied for—are determined more and more often by a digitalized form of Big Brother. The question is, Do we still have a chance to fight this?

Jakub Demiańczuk

Shalini Kantayya

Shalini Kantayya is an American director, screenwriter, and editor. She began her career as a short-film writer; she took part in On the Lot, a reality TV show for young directors co-produced by Steven Spielberg (she finished in the top 10). Leonardo DiCaprio executive-produced her feature-length debut, Catching the Sun, and she also worked with Ron Howard on Breakthrough, which was shot for National Geographic. Her latest film, Coded Bias, made its world premiere at the Sundance Festival.

Filmography

2005 Bombay Longing (short)

2007 A Drop of Life (short)

2015 Catching the Sun (doc.)

2020 Zakodowane uprzedzenie / Coded Bias (doc.)

Cast & Crew

director Shalini Kantayya
screenplay Shalini Kantayya
cinematography Steve Acevedo
editing Alexandra Gilwit, Shalini Kantayya, Zachary Ludescher
music Katya Mihailova
producer Shalini Kantayya
production 7th Empire Media
sales Cinetic
language English, Chinese
coloration colour
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