Joy Buolamwini
Founder and President of the Algorithmic Justice League; author of Unmasking AI and a newsletter
Joy Buolamwini is the founder and President of the Algorithmic Justice League, an organization that combines art and research to show the social implications and harms of artificial intelligence. As a researcher at the MIT Media Lab, Joy Buolamwini initiated Gender Shades, a study of commercial gender classification systems, and co-authored the 2018 paper with Timnit Gebru that introduced a facial analysis benchmark balanced by gender and skin type. Joy Buolamwini is the author of the book Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What is Human in a World of Machines and writes a newsletter on Substack.1245673
Research
While a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab, Joy Buolamwini found that facial analysis software struggled to detect Buolamwini's face, and went on to study gender and skin-type disparities in commercially sold facial analysis products. The Gender Shades project ran at the Media Lab from January 2017 to August 2020.15
The 2018 Gender Shades paper with Timnit Gebru evaluated three commercial gender classification systems and introduced a facial analysis benchmark balanced by gender and skin type, after the project found that existing benchmark datasets over-represented lighter-skinned men.65
Algorithmic Justice League
Buolamwini founded the Algorithmic Justice League, which uses art and research to show the social implications and harms of AI and to push for more equitable and accountable systems. Buolamwini's research is featured in the documentary Coded Bias, and Buolamwini also makes art about AI's effects on society under the name Poet of Code.128
Teaching and writing
Buolamwini's book Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What is Human in a World of Machines, published by Random House, blends memoir with an account of research into the harms and biases of AI. Buolamwini's writing has also appeared in publications such as Time, The New York Times, Harvard Business Review and The Atlantic, and Buolamwini publishes a newsletter on Substack.873
Work
Dr. Joy - Newsletter (external site: poetofcode.substack.com)Show, channel, or publication
Publishes the newsletter, presented on Substack as Dr. Joy - Newsletter by Dr. Joy Buolamwini and linked from the Poet of Code site.32
Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification (external site: proceedings.mlr.press)Published research
First author, with Timnit Gebru, of the 2018 FAT* paper that evaluated three commercial gender classification systems and introduced a facial analysis dataset balanced by gender and skin type.65
Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What is Human in a World of Machines (external site: unmasking.ai)
Author of the book, which combines memoir with an account of research into the harms and biases of AI systems and the founding of the Algorithmic Justice League.72
Career timeline
Other documented roles
Roles the sources document but that are not confirmed as current.
- Past member (researcher on the Gender Shades project), MIT Media Lab45
Related people
More sourced profiles at the same organization, in the same field, or from the same school.
- Alex RivesAlso at MIT
- João CarreiraComputer vision
- Aeree ChoAlso from Georgia Tech
- Alexander AminiAlso at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Richard ZhangComputer vision
- Amnon ShashuaAlso from MIT
- Bill DallyAlso at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Adina WilliamsEvaluation and benchmarks
- Andrew NgAlso from MIT
- David HarwathAlso at MIT CSAIL
- Aditya RameshComputer vision
- Angela FanAlso from Harvard
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