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

by Joy Buolamwini

The coded gaze does not have to be explicit to do the job of oppression.

Supporting exclusive charities sidesteps addressing the issues that led to the rise of charities in the first place and does not require changing existing power relations or company practices.

Angela Bassett, who was in her late fifties at the time of the photo, was estimated by IBM’s system to be between eighteen and twenty-four years old. (Maybe not all algorithmic bias was that bad.)

Like Sojourner Truth’s critique of white women’s marginalization of the perspectives and experiences of women of color—a critique that strengthens the impact of the women’s rights movement—the critique of artificial intelligence is not a Luddite call to break machines, but a call to break harmful assumptions about machines and thus enable the construction of better tools and, more important, better societies.

“Many people can gain tech skills. Your ability to communicate and tell a story about your technical work is what will separate you from your peers. It’s what makes people see why change is necessary.