It feels like AI has come out of nowhere and kind of taken over, right? It’s everywhere we look, from Google suggesting AI answers (sometimes with laughably ridiculous results) to virtual assistants helping us with online shopping.
But for people inside the tech world like Dr Joy Buolamwini, this explosion of AI into our everyday lives has been a long time coming. Back in 2015, when Apple first released the Apple Watch, and Instagram was only just taking off as a popular platform, Dr Joy was in her dorm room at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), already grappling with some of the problems that AI can present. “I didn’t realise how long it’s been!” she laughs as we chat over Zoom. “The field that I loved didn’t love me back.”
While working on a project for her Masters degree, Dr Joy found that facial-recognition technology couldn’t see her dark-skinned face. Determined to make progress, she grabbed a white Halloween mask from her desk and put it on. Incredibly, the software now recognised her.
This was the moment that changed everything for Dr Joy. Here was an accomplished woman in STEM who had to wear a Halloween mask so that facial recognition technology could see her. “Coding in whiteface was the last thing I expected to do when I came to MIT,” she writes in her book Unmasking AI: My Mission To Protect What Is Human In A World of Machines. “But ≠ for better or for worse – I had encountered what I now call ‘the coded gaze’.”
Sure, AI isn’t all about race and gender. But when it comes to the life-changing decisions that AI is used for – like being profiled by police or trying to get a job – we need to make sure these artificial intelligence tools aren’t biased. And what Dr Joy discovered is that they are. In fact, artificial intelligence doesn’t just mirror biases; it reinforces and amplifies them.
“I often think about the use of AI when it comes to the criminal justice system,” Dr Joy tells GLAMOUR. “In the UK, the Metropolitan Police did audits that showed disparities in terms of who were being flagged as suspects.”
