Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines

by Joy Buolamwini

it was Mitch’s turn to speak up. “Work on what excites you!” He wanted me to enjoy the process and pursue the ideas that really moved me. Mitch was alluding to a learning approach he’d outlined in his book Lifelong Kindergarten, where creative learning is supported by four p’s: projects, passion, peers, and play. “Play” was what he was invoking in this moment, the idea of keeping an open and curious spirit, allowing for happy accidents and unanticipated pathways to emerge. This goes hand in hand with the idea of hard fun, a term conceptualized by the mathematician and AI pioneer Seymour Papert. Hard fun is what’s happening when we willingly take on difficult subjects, or work through mundane tasks, because we’re working on projects that impassion and excite us. Hard fun is what my high school classmates and I were experiencing playing with Mitch’s LEGO Mindstorm kits during lunch period, and what we experienced in Jill Connell’s classroom at Cordova High, when we were wading into the technically challenging, yet alluring, world of computer science. Or in my science fabrication class where, ignoring the siren song of a beautiful New England autumn, I’d spend entire days beneath the fluorescent lights of a lab space building my Aspire Mirror. As Mitch suggests, a spirit of play and a commitment to hard fun—especially in computer science and engineering, which some perceive as dry and extremely challenging—can lead to big breakthroughs.