AI is all that anyone can talk about, but no one is really saying anything.
Enter Joy Buolamwini, author of Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines.
As a graduate student at MIT’s Media Lab, Buolamwini was doing work on facial recognition and found that the algorithm could detect the lighter-skinned faces of others but failed to detect her darker skin until she put on a white mask.
Thus began her journey of unpacking discriminatory algorithmic bias. She dove deep into what she dubbed the “coded gaze”, describing discrimination and exclusion in tech and how this can lead to harm against non-white and non-male folks. With her research and her almighty Algorithmic Justice League (which she founded in 2016), she shows how AI can reinforce racism, sexism, colorism, and ableism… and possibly make it worse in cases of medical algorithms, workforce hiring tools, and false arrests.
Buolamwini’s life’s work lives at the intersection of research and art as she continues to strive for more equitable, accountable AI.
The national bestseller Unmasking AI was named a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year, and Buolamwini appeared in filmmaker Shalini Kantayya’s documentary Coded Bias, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020. I also met her at CAAmplify a couple of years ago, and I nerded out with her about how I heavily annotate books when I read.
Purchase Joy Buolamwini’s Unmasking AI at Reparations Club.
