 professor of journalism at the University of Rhode Island where I'm also a documentary filmmaker. My recent film series called Can We Talk takes a look at the problem of low representation of underrepresented people of color and STEM. And so I'm really thrilled to be able to hear insights from the humanities and the arts on how to discuss this issue and explore different ways of understanding the scientific world and scientific problems. I will be joined today with Shalini Kattaya and I'm Sharon McGrane and Yo-Yo Ma. So we will begin with Shalini Kattaya. She is a film director, producer, and creative director from Seventh Empire Media. Her film Code Advias. Code Advias, if you haven't seen this film, please, please watch this film. It is such an important contribution to the topic of AI, but specifically around algorithmic oppression, as we call it. So I use this film in my classroom and I'm so really happy that there is this particular contribution on this topic. Also, the film premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim and was broadcast nationally on PBS. And such a fantastic and important contribution also was awarded the CIMA Award for Best Director. It has been nominated for Critics' Choice Cinema Eye Honors and NAACP Image Award. Shalini's debut film Catching the Sun, also a beautiful film, premiered at the LA Film Festival and was named a New York Critics pick. She directed the season finale of the National Geographic television series Breakthrough, which was executive produced by Ron Howard and broadcast globally in 2017. She's also directed for NOVA and YouTube Originals. Shalini is a TED Fellow of William J. Fulbright Scholar and an Associate of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. So welcome, welcome Shalini. Thank you so much for having me. It's such an honor to be here. I want to thank the National Science Foundation and Kendall for that incredible contribution. And it's such an honor to be here in dialogue with the amazing Yo-Yo Ma. And so thanks so much for having me. I am delighted to talk just a little bit about my journey and the importance of sort of inclusion in STEM. I sort of came to this as an artist misfit. I came, I was born into a family of scientists who are immigrants to the United States and sort of science was thought of as sort of a very practical field. And so when I told my mother, I wanted to be a filmmaker. She said, movies, movies, how will you eat? And it was thought that, you know, the arts was something very sort of frivolous. And for a long time, I felt a lot of guilt coming from an immigrant family being raised by a single mom and taking up this very impractical passion, which was filmmaking. And I think because I, you know, wasn't raised with a good deal of privilege. And I think when you don't have entitlement, you have the opposite, you're always asking permission to do things. And I felt that I had to yield my abilities as a filmmaker. I was always sort of aware of the tremendous privilege of being a filmmaker. And I felt that I had to do something important with my work. And I think coming from a community that is underrepresented in film, I was always aware as a filmmaker that I didn't have the privilege of just representing me, that I was actually bringing a lot of other communities into the room. And I felt that as a tremendous responsibility. That being said, you know, just growing up around science, I love science and I love technology. I read Wired religiously. I believe in technology's power to transform the world. I'm sort of obsessed with the stuff. And very much interested in how technology, disruptive technology intersects equality between people, you know, whether it makes the world more fair or less fair, and for whom. And I think three years ago, I didn't even know what an algorithm was. Everything that I had known about artificial intelligence had sort of come through the imagination of Stanley Kubrick or Steven Spielberg. I'm definitely someone who's watched Blade Runner way too many times. And I stumbled down the rabbit hole when I read a book called Weapons of Math Destruction by Kathy O'Neill. And subsequently began to realize the ways in which artificial intelligence and algorithms, machine learning are increasingly becoming almost a gatekeeper of opportunity, deciding really important things like who gets hired, who gets healthcare, how long a prison sentence someone may serve. And at the same time as I was learning about the ways in which we as human beings are outsourcing our decision making to machines in ways that really change lives and shape human destinies, I came across a TED talk that Joy Bell and Weenie gave and was sort of shook out of my seat that these same technologies that we are putting our blind faith in have not been vetted for racial bias or for gender bias or even more broadly that they won't hurt people, that they won't discriminate, that they won't cause harm. And that's when I really began to understand that everything that I love as a free person living in a democracy, be it access to fair and accurate information or fair elections or civil rights is rapidly being transformed by artificial intelligence. And quite what so many of the scholars articulate in coded bias is what I began to realize that we could really set back 50 years of civil rights advances in the name of trusting these algorithms to be fair and to be just and to be neutral when in many cases that's just not a fact. And that sort of set me on the journey to make this film. And what I want to say is that as an artist without degrees, advanced degrees in mathematics or data science, I was terrified. And I had every bit of imposter syndrome. And I thought that I was, I feared that I would use terminology improperly and everyone would laugh at me. And that would be the end of that. And just the opposite happened. Every major technology company has screened coded bias. Since the making of the film, IBM and Microsoft have both changed their policy around selling racially biased facial recognition to law enforcement. Facebook has basically deleted a billion face prints. And so what I began to understand is that with an issue like algorithmic justice or climate change or the pandemic that we're living in, that there's a real crisis of science communication. And that science can't just be something that is for PhDs, but that we the people actually need science communication that translates to us so that we can make informed decisions. And as an artist, what I realized was my gift was the human heart. Roger Ebert says that films are empathy machines and they make you feel for someone, you know, a world away from you. And it's my belief as a filmmaker that it's through that radical empathy, through feeling something for someone that you don't know that that is the spark of social change that we act not because we do not know, but we act because we do not feel. And to me, that is the marriage of art and science that is so powerful. And so I learned that that my sort of gift was not just being able to understand and trying to sit with some of the most brilliant people I've ever met in my life, advanced degrees and PhDs from Harvard and MIT and the like, and being able to try to communicate that to the public, but also to connect that science communication to the so what, to the people down the street who have skin in the game, and whose lives are impacted by this science. And so what I began to realize is that all the things that made me feel insecure and like I didn't deserve a place at the table was exactly why I needed to be sitting at the table. And in the making of the film, I saw three black women, all of whom were graduate students at the time find racial bias in commercially available technology that was already being sold to the FBI, already being sold to law enforcement, that somehow Microsoft, IBM, and Amazon missed. And if that is not a rally cry for inclusion, I don't know what is. And one of the things that I've grown in compassion for in the making of coded bias is our own limitation and our own human bias. And that that is an inherent inherent condition. And that means diversity and inclusion isn't just something that looks good for the pictures. But it's actually absolutely essential in developing innovative technologies and solving problems in the 21st century. So I'll just leave it there. Thank you so much. And I'm so happy that you've introduced the conversation on science communication because I believe that the next speaker is also opening doors around science communication as well.