Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines by Joy Buolamwini

The Aspire Mirror Project

• 💡 Joy Buolamwini developed the Aspire mirror, a project designed to apply digital filters to a person's reflection, similar to a video filter.
• 🚀 Her initial goal was to make the digital filter follow her face as she moved, enhancing the illusion of the interactive mirror.

Technical Challenges and Software Libraries

• 🛠️ To achieve face tracking, Buolamwini needed to integrate a webcam and face tracking software into her system.
• 🧩 Like many coders, she utilized pre-existing software libraries (open-source code) as building blocks rather than creating everything from scratch.

Uncovering Face Detection Bias

• ⚠️ Despite looking directly into the camera, the face tracking system failed to detect her dark-skinned face, which was a significant and unsettling discovery.
• 🎨 The software successfully detected a simple drawn face on her hand, consisting of two lines for eyes, an L for a nose, and a U for a smile.
• 🎭 Crucially, when she wore a white costume mask, the software immediately detected her "mask face," indicating a clear bias in its detection capabilities.
• 🔍 This experience revealed that the software was "excoded" for certain facial features or skin tones, failing to recognize her natural appearance.