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

by Joy Buolamwini

the assumptions I’d made in Cordova did not quite hold up in Kombolcha. At the time, the Google Android tablets I was programming did not have Amharic keyboards, yet most of the people who were being surveyed and the health workers needed to use Amharic. Our project team developed a custom Amharic keyboard for the Android tablets that had to be loaded onto every new device. Defaults are not neutral. Years later I met some Android team members and asked why keyboards were not available in Amharic then. The answer was business economics. To Google, Ethiopia was not a priority market. In the age of AI, who will decide what our priorities are? What assumptions about using AI for good are being made by people far removed from the day-to-day realities of those they aim to help? My desire to show compassion through computation had to be measured by my ignorance of what would truly be of help. I had taken a parachute approach, jumping into a location I knew little about. Though I like to think that I made a meaningful difference by improving the Carter Center’s data collection efforts, my experience in Ethiopia revealed the limits of good intentions and the need for local context.