Racist, Sexist AI Could Be A Bigger Problem Than Lost Jobs

Joy Buolamwini was conducting research at MIT on how computers recognized people's faces, when she started experiencing something weird. Whenever she sat before a system's front-facing camera, it wouldn't recognize her face, even after working for her lighter-skinned friends. But when she put on a simple white mask, the face-tracking animation suddenly lit up the screen. Suspecting a more widespread problem, she carried out a study on the AI-powered facial recognition systems of Microsoft, IBM and Face, a Chinese startup that has raised more than $500 million from investors. Buolamwini showed the systems 1,000 faces, and told them to identify each as male or female.