We are pleased to partner with Harvard Book Store to record this free event, in their store at 1256 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge as part of our ongoing series AI: Servant or Master?
Scientist, engineer and artist, Dr. Joy Buolamwini will discuss her book UNMASKING AI: My Mission to Protect What is Human in a World of Machines. In it, she uncovers what she calls “the coded gaze”, evidence of encoded racial and gender bias, discrimination and exclusion in tech products. On the basis of her research, Buolamwini founded the Algorithmic Justice League. (AJL) to show how racism, sexism, colorism, and ableism can overlap and render broad swaths of humanity “excoded” and vulnerable in a world rapidly adopting AI tools. Encouraging everyone to join this fight, Buolamwini 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.”
Speakers
Joy Buolamwini
Joy Buolamwini, born in Canada to Ghanaian parents, now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After tinkering with robotics in high school she developed mobile apps in Zambia as a Fulbright fellow. Buolamwini then followed her lifelong passion for computer science, engineering, and art to MIT in 2015, where she did groundbreaking research as a graduate student. In addition to being a renowned speaker, she is founder of the A.J.L. Her writing has been featured in TIME, The NYT, Harvard Business Review, and The Atlantic. As the Poet of Code, she creates art to illuminate the impact of artificial intelligence on society and advises world leaders on preventing AI harm. She is the recipient of notable awards, including a Rhodes Scholarship, the Morals & Machines Prize, and the Technological Innovation Award from the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. Her research on facial recognition technologies is featured in the Emmy-nominated documentary, Coded Bias.
Amanda Palmer
Amanda Palmer is a best-selling author, songwriter and community leader. She has taught at both Wesleyan and Bard Universities, written for The Guardian and The New Statesman and is a long-time affiliate of the Berkman Klein Institute for Internet and Society at Harvard University. In 2013 she presented “The Art of Asking” at the annual TED conference, which has been viewed over 20 million times worldwide. Palmer expanded her philosophy into the New York Times best-selling memoir The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help. She lives and works in Lexington, Massachusetts.
Evan Greer
Evan Greer (she/they) is a trans activist, writer, and musician based in Boston. She’s the director of digital rights group Fight for the Future and writes regularly about the intersection of tech policy and human rights for the Washington Post, Time, NBC News, Wired, and CNN. She helped organize Fight for the Future, the largest online protests in human history that defeated SOPA/PIPA, have led a number of high profile campaigns targeting the use of facial recognition and other AI surveillance in music venues. Greer has written extensively about the failure of copyright maximalism to benefit independent and marginalized artists.