Algorithmic Justice League
In plain wordsJoy Buolamwini's organization, known for showing that face-analysis software made far more mistakes with darker-skinned women, which campaigns to hold the makers of biased AI systems accountable.
A nonprofit that documents harms from AI systems, especially algorithmic biasalgorithmic bias, n.: Unfairness in software that judges or serves people: it consistently produces worse results for some groups, such as women, older people or ethnic minorities, often because it learned from skewed or incomplete records. by race and gender, and campaigns for accountability, pairing empirical studies with art and storytelling to reach the public. Its founder's Gender ShadesGender Shades, prop. n.: A 2018 study showing that commercial face-analysis software guessed the gender of darker-skinned women far less accurately than that of lighter-skinned men. study (2018) showed that commercial facial-analysis systems from IBM, Microsoft and Face++ misclassified the gender of darker-skinned women far more often than that of lighter-skinned men, and a 2019 follow-up found similar disparities in Amazon's Rekognition; the work contributed to several companies pausing or ending sales of facial recognitionfacial recognition, n.: Technology that identifies or checks who someone is by comparing a picture of their face with stored photos, used by phones, passport gates and police databases. to police in 2020. The documentary Coded Bias (2020) brought its work to a wide audience, and it has campaigned against face recognition in airport security and for ways for people harmed by AI to report harms and seek redress.
Origin
Founded in 2016 by Joy BuolamwiniJoy Buolamwini, prop. n.: A Canadian-American computer scientist and activist whose research showed that face-analysis software works far worse on darker-skinned women, and who founded the Algorithmic Justice League., then a graduate researcher at the MIT Media Lab, after a face-detection system she was using failed to register her face until she put on a white mask.
Related
- Joy BuolamwiniJoy Buolamwini, prop. n.: A Canadian-American computer scientist and activist whose research showed that face-analysis software works far worse on darker-skinned women, and who founded the Algorithmic Justice League.
- Gender ShadesGender Shades, prop. n.: A 2018 study showing that commercial face-analysis software guessed the gender of darker-skinned women far less accurately than that of lighter-skinned men.
- algorithmic biasalgorithmic bias, n.: Unfairness in software that judges or serves people: it consistently produces worse results for some groups, such as women, older people or ethnic minorities, often because it learned from skewed or incomplete records.
- facial recognitionfacial recognition, n.: Technology that identifies or checks who someone is by comparing a picture of their face with stored photos, used by phones, passport gates and police databases.
- AI auditAI audit, n.: An independent check of an AI system, or of the company using it, against agreed standards — for example, testing whether a hiring tool treats women and men fairly.
- Distributed AI Research InstituteDistributed AI Research Institute, prop. n.: Timnit Gebru set up this institute in 2021, a year after her departure from Google, to research the damage AI can do, especially to marginalized communities, without relying on big-tech money.