In celebration of International Women’s Day 2024, we’re delighted to announce that Jesus College alumna Dr Joy Buolamwini (2013, MSc African Studies) has published her first book, ‘Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines’.
The book details how Joy uncovered what she calls ‘the coded gaze’ – the evidence of encoded discrimination and exclusion in tech products—and how she galvanized the movement to prevent AI harms by founding the Algorithmic Justice League.
Former Jesus graduate student Dr Joy Buolamwini, and the cover of her new book ‘Unmasking AI’.
Joy, a former Rhodes Scholar, is an AI researcher whose work at MIT on facial recognition technologies transformed the field of AI auditing, and led to the creation of a documentary on the subject, titled ‘Coded Bias’. The documentary received wide praise, including an Emmy nomination.
Unmasking AI goes beyond the headlines about existential risks produced by big tech. Applying an intersectional lens to both the tech industry and the research sector, Joy shows how racism, sexism, colourism, and ableism can overlap and render broad swaths of humanity “excoded”, and therefore vulnerable, in a world rapidly adopting AI tools. She writes, “The rising frontier for civil rights will require algorithmic justice. AI should be for the people and by the people, not just the privileged few.”
Joy is no stranger to authorship. Her writing and work have been featured in publications including TIME Magazine, the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, and Rolling Stone. She is also an artist, and as the ‘Poet of Code’, creates art to illuminate the societal impact of AI. In additional to being a Rhodes Scholar, she is a Fulbright Fellow, and recipient of the Technological Innovation Award from the Martin Luther King Jr Center. She earned her PhD from MIT, and has been awarded an honorary degree from Knox College.
Joy reflects, “When I accidentally discovered the “coded gaze” during my time as a graduate student, I could have never imagined where the journey would take me. From speaking with President Biden on the dangers of AI to going toe-to-toe with Amazon on AI biases, and now to publishing Unmasking AI.”
‘Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines’ (Random House Publishing, 2023) is available to purchase online from Blackwell’s here.