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https://venturebeat.com/2020/08/23/the-term-ethical-ai-is-finally-starting-to-mean-something/
This analysis of the Gender Shades paper seems to miss how it has been employed to shift policy + industry practices contribute to legislative wins against harmful tech, & expose the lie of technical superiority of AI powered systems and their makers.1/n
This analysis of the Gender Shades paper seems to miss how it has been employed to shift policy + industry practices contribute to legislative wins against harmful tech, & expose the lie of technical superiority of AI powered systems and their makers.1/n
Gender Shades and the following Actionable Auditing paper were positioned in a manner that opened up space for computer scientists and AI researchers to actively oppose the police use of facial recognition technology. https://medium.com/@bu64dcjrytwitb8/on-recent-research-auditing-commercial-facial-analysis-technology-19148bda1832 2/n
GS and AA papers authored by young black women challenged norms of evaluation in computer vision, ML, & biometric tech by exemplifying why intersectionality cannot be ignored. The take away is not "optimize oppressive systems" but to rethink the technologies evaluated 3/n
The Gender Shades project was not just a series of academic papers. The follow on NYT oped called for specific action in 2018- a federal moratorium on police use of facial recognition and led to invitations to brief elected officials on AI harms. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/opinion/facial-analysis-technology-bias.html 4/n
This was followed by testimonies I gave at the federal, state, and local levels which have contributed to ongoing efforts to resist surveillance technology. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/06/24/metro/boston-city-council-unanimously-votes-ban-use-face-surveillance-technology-by-city-government/ 5/n
If third wave "AI ethics" is characterized by addressing power in both words and actions, @AJLUnited -using not just research but also poetry and storytelling- is certainly not an organization focused on mere data representation as a cheap substitute for systemic change. 6/n
The Gender Shades paper also paved the way for AI, Ain't I A Woman? to move from performance metrics to performance arts to again challenge the notion of the technical sophistication of AI products from leading tech companies. 7/n
In Actionable Auditing, @rajiinio and I wrote about moving from notions of algorithmic fairness to the urgent need for algorithmic justice which I reiterated in my @Stanford Keynote Fall 2019: "The Coded Gaze and the Dangers of Supremely White Data."
I am hopeful future pieces will approach Genders Shades with a contextual awareness about how it has been employed well beyond the ML fairness space. I am glad I have an opportunity to write a book where I can add more color to the work. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/joy-buolamwini-inks-deal-random-house-book-justice-decoded-1299210
