Joy Buolamwini

After trying on a pirate costume, a robot costume, and tripping on a Rapunzel wig, I finally decided on a ringmaster costume to wear to my neighborhood’s Halloween party. I clapped with delight when mom swiped the credit card to pay for the costume. As we walked out holding hands, I cherished this time we spent together. But, that came to an end as we were approached by a police officer.

“Good evening, ma’am,” the officer said to mom. “May I see your identification?”

“Officer, what is this about?” my Mom questioned while handing him her driver’s license.

“Our camera showed a person stealing a watch from Macy’s Department Store on the other side of the mall thirty minutes ago,” he said matter-of-factly.

Mom gasped, “And you are accusing me? I’ve been with my daughter at Party City since we entered the mall."

“Well, according to the facial recognition software that our camera uses,” he pauses to look at her ID, “your name and face are a match. May I please check your bags?”

“This has got to be a mistake!” Mom fumed. “We should ask the employees in Party City and they can verify that we have been there for at least one hour.”

After Mom sorted things out with the police officer and the manager at Party City, we gathered our things and drove home in silence. Why did the police officer accuse Mom of stealing? Why did the security camera match Mom’s face?

Later that evening, I began to research facial recognition software. I came across a computer scientist named Joy Buolamwini and her research discovered that software used to detect faces have bias when the face is of a woman and/or a darker skinned person. But, what is bias? I researched it, and bias means unfair prejudice which causes unfair outcomes. I snapped my fingers with understanding. That’s why the police officer approached my Mom. The facial recognition software had bias because my Mom is a Black woman.

Curiosity kept me researching about Joy Buolamwini and the bias in computer programming. She has dedicated her life to stop this bias towards Black people, specifically Black females. I found out she's a researcher at the MIT Media lab. In one of her classes, Joy made a mirror called the Aspire mirror. It projected a lion on her face if she wanted to feel brave or a quote if she just wanted to feel happy. However, the mirror would not detect her face unless she wore a white mask. She experienced something like this before when she was tasked to make a robot play peek-a-boo. The robot could not detect Joy’s face. Then she tried it on her roommate's lighter skinned face, and it worked! Joy submitted the assignment hoping someone else would fix the problem. But, she later decided to continue her research and discovered that when computer facial recognition software is being built, they use training sets. And these sets were using mostly white male faces. The good news is that if the training sets used more people of color and females the bias would be greatly reduced, and the computer software will detect more faces.

Joy began the Algorithmic Justice League which is a non-profit organization that raises awareness of the discrimination in algorithmic coding. She also was featured in two documentaries, Coded Gaze and Coded Bias, which describe the gender and racial biases in coding for facial recognition technology. Her research even influenced companies like Google and Microsoft to confront these biases in their products.

I was flabbergasted at the amazing accomplishments Joy made in improving the technology in facial recognition software. I felt relieved that I finally understood the error that happened with my Mom earlier today. Now, it was time to share this information with my Mom about how Joy Buolamwini made this world a more fair place.