Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines by Joy Buolamwini.
Joy is a computer scientist and digital activist based at the MIT Media Lab. She founded the Algorithmic Justice League. She is a Rhodes Scholar, a Fulbright fellow, a Stamps Scholar, an Astronaut Scholar, and an Anita Borg Institute scholar. Joy holds a Masters and PhD in Media Arts & Sciences from MIT.
Unmasking AI is Joy’s memoir regarding her graduate work at Harvard. Joy is introducing her project regarding facial recognition. She realized her own face could not be identified unless she actually placed a white Halloween mask in-front of her face as a camera captured and attempted to identify her.
However, her work contributes to demonstrating the in accuracy of AI. Joy research is indeed like Dorthy in The Wizard of Oz, pulling back the curtain on the inaccuracies of AI facial recognition systems. And to some extent, also exposing the growing wealth of companies profiting from these already deployed.
Yet when informing her thesis committee that bias in AI has the potential to harm women and minorities, the perception includes many do not want to acknowledge these errors. Joy even receives feedback which questions the level of harm faulty facial recognition, and if is actually ‘significant’ enough to warrant this research.