Joy Buolamwini named one of ‘The Most Creative People in Business’

This August, Fast Company selected MIT researcher Joy Buolamwini as one its nominees for 'The Most Creative People in Business' 2020. ‘Coded Bias’, a documentary film based on her work reveals groundbreaking research proving that facial recognition algorithms have the power to disseminate racial bias at scale. In June 2020, IBM, Amazon, and Microsoft said they would pause the sale of facial recognition to police. In a pivotal moment for racial equality, and a decisive moment for how big tech will yield power, Coded Bias is a trailblazing film for public understanding and engagement with the algorithms that impact us all. ‘Coded Bias’ premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 2020, was screened at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2020 and is scheduled for limited release in November 2020.

About Coded Bias

When MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini discovers that most facial-recognition software misidentifies women and darker-skinned faces, as a woman of color working in a field dominated by white males, she is compelled to investigate further. What she discovers drives her to push the US government to create legislation to counter the far-reaching dangers of bias in a technology that is steadily encroaching on our lives. Centering the voices of women leading the charge to ensure our civil rights are protected, Coded Bias asks two key questions: what is the impact of Artificial Intelligence’s increasing role in governing our liberties? And what are the consequences for people stuck in the crosshairs due to their race, color, and gender?

“Because of the power of these tools, left unregulated there is no recourse for abuse… we need laws.” - Joy Buolamwini, Coded Bias

About Joy Buolamwini

Joy Buolamwini is a poet of code who uses art and research to illuminate the social implications of artificial intelligence. She founded the Algorithmic Justice League to create a world with more ethical and inclusive technology. Her TED Featured Talk on algorithmic bias has over 1 million views. Her MIT thesis methodology uncovered large racial and gender bias in AI services from companies like Microsoft, IBM, and Amazon. In late 2018 in partnership with the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology, Joy launched the Safe Face Pledge, the first agreement of its kind that prohibits the lethal application of facial analysis and recognition technology.

As a creative science communicator, she has written op-eds on the impact of artificial intelligence for publications like TIME Magazine and New York Times. In her quest to tell stories that make daughters of diasporas dream and sons of privilege pause, her spoken word visual audit "AI, Ain't I A Woman?" which shows AI failures on the faces of iconic women like Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, and Serena Williams as well as the Coded Gaze short have been part of exhibitions ranging from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston to the Barbican Centre, UK.

A Rhodes Scholar and Fulbright Fellow, Joy has been named to notable lists including Bloomberg 50, Tech Review 35 under 35, BBC 100 Women, Forbes Top 50 Women in Tech (youngest), and Forbes 30 under 30. She holds two masters degrees from Oxford University and MIT; and a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology. A former pole vaulter, she still holds sentimental Olympic aspirations. Fortune Magazine named her to their 2019 list of world's greatest leaders describing her as "the conscience of the A.I. Revolution."

Learn more at www.poetofcode.com

About Shalini Kantayya

Filmmaker Shalini Kantayya’s feature documentary, Coded Bias, premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. She directed the season finale episode for the National Geographic television series Breakthrough, a series profiling trailblazing scientists transforming the future, Executive Produced by Ron Howard, broadcast globally in June 2017. Her debut feature film Catching the Sun, about the race for a clean energy future, premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival and was named a New York Times Critics’ Pick. Catching the Sun released globally on Netflix on Earth Day 2016 with Executive Producer Leonardo DiCaprio, and was nominated for the Environmental Media Association Award for Best Documentary. Kantayya is a TED Fellow, a William J. Fulbright Scholar, and a finalist for the ABC Disney DGA Directing Program. She is an Associate of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

Live Q&A at the Human Rights Watch Festival 2020

This is a live Q&A, for the HRW Film Festival's Coded Bias) with filmmaker Shalini Kantayya, researcher, UCLA professor & author Safiya Noble, Tech Fellow at AI Now Institute Deborah Raji, Joy Buolamwini, Founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, and Policy Director at NYCLU Lee Rowland - moderated by Deborah Brown, Senior Researcher & Digital Rights Advocate, Human Rights Watch. Recorded on 12th June 2020.

https://www.facebook.com/HumanRightsWatch/videos/739250666844809/