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

by Joy Buolamwini

Even though cameras may appear neutral, history reveals another story. The film used in analog cameras was exposed using a special chemical composition to bring out desired colors. To calibrate the cameras to make sure those desired colors were well represented, a standard was created. This standard became known as the Shirley card, which was originally an image of a white woman used to establish the ideal composition and exposure settings. The consequence of calibrating film cameras using a light-skinned woman was that the techniques developed did not work as well for people with darker skin. In fact, it wasn’t until furniture and chocolate companies complained that the rich browns of their products were not being well represented that Kodak introduced a new product that better captured a range of browns and dark sepia tones. Separating the appearance of milk chocolate from dark chocolate in advertising had a windfall effect for chocolate-hued individuals. Still, the subsequent digital cameras inherited configurations optimized for light skin, a decision that would translate into a larger set of photos and videos being produced by cameras optimized for only one part of humanity: those with light skin. So when we enter the realm of computer vision, which comes to rely on large datasets, we are dealing with a legacy of cameras and captured images that inherit exclusion. For an image or video, that exclusion can mean that the features of someone with darker skin are less vis...