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1. A Must-Read for Educators Using AI
   This was a perfect read for an educator looking to learn more about DBEI as it relates to AI. I am a strong advocate for understanding, implementing, learning, and growing in areas of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in education, especially as the world of AI grows daily. This book helped me understand and become aware of different aspects of a lack of DBEI in AI and how that affects the AI systems that we are using. By becoming aware of the biases that were presented in this book, I feel I can be a stronger advocate for educators and looking through a critical lens in the AI systems we are using.

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2. Excellent Book
   Joy Buolamwini is an incredible author. Everyone should read this book, especially educational leaders!

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3. Revealing Joy
   I really enjoyed this informative, lucidly written book on Artificial Intelligence (AI) bias.Dr. Joy Buolamwini tells of her journey into AI as a recognition as well as an identification tool.I recommend too watching her in action in Netflix film, “Coded Bias.”I read/listened to digital editions of this work.

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4. Computer Science Scholar’s Memoir
   This is a very timely memoir by the scholar Joy Buolamwini about her education and her critique of technology, particularly when it comes to race and gender. She describes her interest in computers, robots, and programming beginning at a young age which lead to her getting a PhD from MIT. During her studies and research she encountered a shortcoming in computer vision technology-it could recognize her colleagues’ faces and her face when she put on a white mask, but not her own unmasked face. This experience and others inspired her to develop a wide-ranging critique of technology and artificial intelligence facial recognition and facial detection systems which led to her testimony in front of Congress, her participation in an enlightened Olay advertising campaign, a panel discussion on AI with the President, and many other interesting experiences described herein. This is a great memoir about someone from a marginalized identity seeking a career in technology and her positive and negative experiences.

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5. A timely, powerful mirror for society and its complex relationship with AI
   Responsible development, deployment and use of AI is an increasingly trending topic today. If you’re looking for a thought-provoking deep dive into ethical considerations with AI technologies, I strongly recommend “Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines” by Dr. Joy Buolamwini. She takes you on a page-turning journey, discussing fascinating concepts such as the “coded gaze”, “power shadows”, and what it means to be “excoded.” In the introduction, she asks readers to consider the harms of AI and how we could “center the lives of everyday people, and especially those at the margins, when we consider the design and development of AI? Can we make room for the best of what AI has to offer while also resisting its perils?”Dr. Buolamwini does a remarkable job making the fight for algorithmic justice personal, making it relatable for the reader. Certain experiences shared in this book hit close to home for many, including myself. As one example, many years ago, I stepped in front of a camera with facial recognition tech on display at a store and it failed to recognize my face. However, my husband (who is white) was recognized immediately. People of color all around the world have similar stories.This book is a timely, powerful mirror for society and its complex relationship with AI, and should be mandatory reading for any initiative focused on ethical AI. Through her pioneering work on algorithmic justice, Dr. Buolamwini not only shines a bright spotlight on opportunities associated with AI technologies, but she also provides practical, insightful guidance on how to mitigate their risks.

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6. Bias Personal Perspective about AI
   I feel the author focused too much on their experience and experiments which lead to intentional bias in the narrative. AI is known to have bias based on the inputs (it is after all a sum of that which it knows). How then to we make a system that accounts for known bias? Love. We learn teach people that which is unknown is not wrong, or something to fear but something to explore – perhaps embrace. What we can not do is blame the system for past wrongs, the system is after all human – which means it can learn and improve. The author is not wrong to point out past failings, but it is time for AI to move past being human. If give the opportunity AI will one day surpass our understanding as it can learn and grow – it is not limited to the interactions of a few – thus it may one day understand the world in context.

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7. The coded gaze sees what it wants to seize
   her first year as a student at mit, joy buolamwini worked on a project that would transpose her facial image on to her computer screen. In order to do this, she needed an application that could transpose and interact an in-world facial image with computer images. fortunately, there’s an archive for that. her project was a success, except for one flaw, the application, while recognizing the faces of white students, would not recognize her melanated face–not until, disappointingly, she covered her dark face with a white mask.and so began her biometrical study of facial recognition by technological devices programmed with artificial intelligence. her study reveals how flawed recognition can result in dangerous accusations and false identifications, denying jobs to qualified candidates, housing discrimination, incarceration of innocents, and denial of medical benefits.artificial intelligence is only as good as the information provided by human programmers. at the publication of this book, artificial intelligence was not a widely used term. biometrics and facial recognition devices and technology were just a beginning.buolamwini describes herself as a biometric activist. her pioneer work reminds the reader that as artificial intelligence watches us with a more invasive electron gaze, that we must watch artificial intelligence and its applications and the intentions of those who use it.

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8. You often hear the plaintive refrain from the fragile who troll social media comment sections that “not everything is about race.” Never more so than at the slightest hint that white supremacy is under attack. And it’s true – not everything is about race. When it comes to the decision-making tools used by the government, law enforcement, businesses, insurance brokers, banks, and landlords to make decisions affecting our daily lives, though, we’d better be sure very sure it isn’t about race. But we aren’t sure, and that’s Unmasking AI’s message.In Unmasking AI, Dr. Joy Buolamwini describes how a simple master’s project she built using AI to track facial movements in a mirror failed to detect her face unless she wore a white mask. She recounts how, through this, she discovered tech giants had failed to address bias and other ethical issues of AI in facial recognition software before taking their tools to market.Part memoir, part exposé she explains what ultimately led her to create the Algorithmic Justice League and fight for the ethical use of facial recognition tools. She found that software sold to law enforcement and security companies was routinely misidentifying dark-skinned men and women. She also uncovered the underlying privacy issues surrounding AI face recognition and its training data. She illustrated this by explaining how companies like Facebook used millions of our photos without consent to train their AI.A Canadian-born Ghanaian woman raised by an academic and an artist, first in Ghana and later in the United States, her perspective is unique. Despite her Fulbright and Rhoads Scholarships and MIT MSc & Ph.D., you sense the ‘otherness’ she feels in the worlds she inhabits. When she considered dropping out of her Ph.D. program, she rhetorically asked if her three academic credentials weren’t enough. She mentions famous tech dropouts like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg but recognizes that women aren’t granted the same latitude where credibility in tech is concerned.Unmasking AI was interesting because there’s no undertone of a social justice warrior searching for a fight in Dr. Buolamwini. Hers is the story of an incredibly accomplished woman in STEM with unlimited options who found her calling through an accidental discovery. She’s a woman who reveals she wasn’t even sure at first if she wanted to make it her mission to right the wrong she’d discovered. So yes, she is a socially minded warrior but not a frivolous or undisciplined one, who has been recognized by both Congress and President Biden for her work.In today’s misguided social and cultural environment that divides us by race, gender, and a multitude of other thin wedges, we must recognize our own bias to see bias in AI. I was not fully alive to the alternate realities Dr. Buolamwini discusses until my daughter was born over a quarter century ago. I knew then that she would experience the world differently than I did as a man. While there is comfort in egocentricity, I let go of my ego’s safe shore to learn about the world she would face, and it was eye-opening.Unmasking AI is equally eye-opening.Dr. Buolamwini explores the coded bias built into AI systems and how they reflect human biases. What struck me profoundly was that AI systems don’t just mirror biases, but they reinforce and amplify them. Although not mentioned in her book, she now describes this effect not as a mirror but as a kaleidoscope because of how AI negatively refracts bias in subtly unexpected ways.Does the state have any business monitoring its citizens without cause, she asks? It doesn’t, but omnipresent surveillance is coming. It is too tantalizing a technology not to come. Ironically, Dr. Buolamwini’s work to audit and improve facial recognition algorithms will ultimately extend their proficiency – a fact she acknowledges.Finding systems were fine-tuned on large data sets of mostly white males. She found they were excellent at identifying white adult men but had difficulty detecting darker faces and gendering women; when given a binary choice, they failed 35% of the time.So what? Consider how a facial recognition system that could only identify white men 65% of the time would be received. But systems that can only identify women of colour 65% of the time? They are available today and have the real-world impact you’d expect.I trained teams bound for Afghanistan to make lethal strike/no-strike decisions through the lens of an armed drone’s camera. AI could easily replace several steps I taught, including positive target identification, collateral damage assessment, and the lawful authority to strike assessment based on the rules of engagement.I can only imagine how happy commanders would be to have AI’s assurance before ordering a strike. But is 65% enough? I don’t think so. The future use of remote weapons systems guided by flawed AI facial or visual recognition is a concern we all should have.My own encounter with coded bias was revealing. While searching for images of ‘good-looking couples’ on a popular graphic arts website, it took 45 minutes to realize I’d been exclusively served white people. What startled me was what that said about my own unconscious racial bias.It wasn’t until that moment that I began to see the tip of the iceberg that is algorithmic bias. People of colour have complained about it for several years. I’d heard their arguments but hadn’t understood them until that moment. Unmasking AI reveals this iceberg in a way the Titanic’s captain couldn’t ignore.Her book contributes significantly to the broader conversation about technology and society. It shatters the notion of AI as a monolithic, unbiased entity. She reminds us that AI is only as good as the data it’s trained on. We need continued vigilance to monitor the inherent weaknesses in AI systems. Things are changing, but with general resistance to the idea of unconscious bias in the chattering class, let alone the bias AI produces, we can’t assume this will solve itself.This is where the third-party validation and government regulation Dr. Buolamwini advocates for is crucial. We need an objective understanding of an AI system’s strengths and limitations before deploying them. We need to insist that our technologies are not only equitable and beneficial but that they fundamentally protect the people they are designed to help. Dr. Buolamwini is a charming writer and poet who didn’t bog the book down in technical jargon or concepts. Her ideas were well explained and easily accessible to those with a limited understanding of the issues. The timeline shifted more than I liked, but that was only a minor distraction. I read it on a beach in Punta Cana, so to say she held my interest is, I think, self-evident.Ironically, my readings were immediately reinforced by a practical lesson – the facial recognition scan I was subject to on leaving the Dominican Republic. I wondered, where did my face go? Who will use it? How will they use it? Is it for sale? Will I ever know? as I presented my face to the camera. These are the questions Dr. Buolamwini teaches us to ask.Unmasking AI is a call to action. It demands that we not, with blind faith, give our unreserved trust to AI and the companies developing it. It demands that we highly regulate facial recognition and the data supporting it.As a researcher and engineer, Dr. Buolamwini does not suggest there is anything wrong with progress. She is not a doomer but a realist grounded in fact. As AI advances, she encourages us to let go of our safe shore to insist that the systems increasingly governing our lives do no harm.Author’s Note. I considered calling Dr. Buolamwini “Joy” throughout this review, but it didn’t seem right. Her doctorate came at a great personal cost, and she deserves recognition for the sacrifices she made to achieve it. That, and I found myself repeatedly shouting, “No, don’t do that!” as I read her thoughts on dropping out, and I was relieved when she didn’t (despite knowing full well she didn’t); I wanted to honour her in this small way to show the joy [sic] I felt when she was named a Doctor.

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9. A fabulous and important book at a time when AI and facial recognition are everywhere.

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10. A clear, cogent and inspiring story of the struggle to make society aware of the dangers of AI bias, written from an intensely personal, compelling and moving perspective. Vital reading for those who want to understand the real risks we are taking.

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