It was important the complex science in ‘Coded Bias’ be distilled but have integrity, says director Shalini Kantayya

Filmmaker Shalini Kantayya says ‘Coded Bias’ highlights data rights as the unfinished business of the civil rights movement

While Shalini Kantayya was working on Coded Bias for two years, she would be asked at social gatherings what her projet du jour was. The filmmaker would often find it hard to explain the complexities of technologies with controversial biases, powered by Artificial Intelligence, so she would simply say ‘I’m working on a film about racist robots’. . Over a video call with MetroPlus from her home in Brooklyn, New York, Kantayya laughs as she recalls these moments. Switching to a more serious and urgent tone she says, “We are living in an era where it is absolutely necessary for the public to understand complex science and how these systems work. Data rights are the unfinished business of the civil rights movement.”