Who is Joy Buolamwini?
Joy Buolamwini is a computer scientist, writer and artist, and founder and president of the Algorithmic Justice League. Her work combines research into artificial intelligence systems, public communication and advocacy for more equitable and accountable technology. [1]
She was born in Canada to a family of African origin and grew up internationally, including in Ghana, Spain and the United States. Georgia Tech documents her school years in Memphis and early interest in building applications with social value. [6]
Education and early projects
She graduated in computer science from Georgia Tech in 2012. She completed an Oxford MSc in Education, specialising in learning and technology, in 2014, and a master’s in Media Arts and Sciences at MIT in 2017. [7]
During a Fulbright fellowship in Lusaka, Zambia, she developed a computing education initiative. She subsequently created Code4Rights so young people could collaborate with local organisations and develop technology useful to their communities. [8]
In her 2016 essay InCoding, she argued that programmers embed decisions and perspectives in systems. She presented projects such as Code4Rights and SlayPlay, which explored music through movement, as ways to involve diverse participants in creating technology. [25]
She earned her MIT doctorate in 2022, supervised by Ethan Zuckerman. Her thesis, Facing the Coded Gaze with Evocative Audits and Algorithmic Audits, examined how technical tests and narrative methods can make harms visible when a table of results alone cannot convey them. [9]
From an interactive mirror to researching bias
In Aspire Mirror she tried to overlay images on her face. The software detected lighter-skinned classmates more readily, and she used a white mask to complete the project. She described a similar problem in UpBeat Walls, an installation translating facial movements into digital painting. [11]
Her talk How I’m Fighting Bias in Algorithms, delivered at TEDxBeaconStreet in November 2016, brought this experience to a wider audience. She introduced coded gaze to explain how automated systems can incorporate exclusions present in data and their creators’ decisions. [10]
She founded the Algorithmic Justice League in autumn 2016. [7]
Gender Shades and evaluation by subgroup
In 2018 she published Gender Shades with Timnit Gebru. They evaluated three commercial classifiers, observing error rates up to 34.7% for darker-skinned women, compared with a maximum of 0.8% for lighter-skinned men. The comparison revealed disparities that a single overall accuracy figure could conceal. [3]
The task involved assigning binary gender labels to photographs, rather than identifying a person. Buolamwini distinguished detection, classification, verification and identification, noting that these commercial labels did not adequately represent gender’s complexity or transgender identities. [12]
From measuring errors to examining audits
With Inioluwa Deborah Raji she published Actionable Auditing in 2019. They compared subsequent results from audited companies, documented disclosure of findings and tested additional providers. The study examined how external auditing and public disclosure could encourage changes in commercial products. [13]
Saving Face, published in 2020, addressed an additional problem: well-intentioned audits can also harm the people they seek to protect. As a coauthor, Buolamwini contributed to examining sensitive biometric data, evaluation choices and ethical tensions in investigating technologies whose uses may be questionable. [14]
Who Audits the Auditors?, published at FAccT 2022, examined the auditing ecosystem through a field scan, survey and interviews. The team proposed clear standards, independence, involvement of affected people and disclosure of essential findings. The contribution concerns audit quality as well as algorithm performance. [15]
Public testimony and biometric rights
She testified before the US Congress on 22 May 2019 at a facial-recognition hearing. She presented her research and advocated a moratorium on police use. Her testimony brought academic findings into the debate about civil liberties and oversight of identification technologies. [16]
In her March 2024 testimony to the Commission on Civil Rights, she emphasised consent, transparency and independent oversight. She argued that not using a system remains an option when deployment infringes rights, and that measuring accuracy cannot replace examining its uses and consequences. [17]
AJL and Georgetown’s Center on Privacy & Technology promoted Safe Face Pledge, a voluntary commitment to limit harmful facial-analysis uses. The initiative is now marked inactive; its significance is historical within efforts to secure commitments from suppliers and purchasers. [18]
Poetry, art and Coded Bias
Her piece AI, Ain’t I a Woman? combines poetry and images to show commercial systems failing to analyse well-known women’s faces correctly. MIT documents its inclusion in exhibitions at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and the Barbican, alongside other works about the coded gaze. [2]
Coded Bias, directed by Shalini Kantayya, premiered at Sundance in 2020. It follows Buolamwini and other researchers and activists, connecting technical tests with experiences of surveillance and automated decisions. Buolamwini appears as a subject and researcher, rather than the director. [19]
PBS broadcast the film on Independent Lens on 22 March 2021. Its credits attribute the lyrics of AI, Ain’t I a Woman?, used in the theme song, to Buolamwini. Her participation thus combines research, public interpretation and artistic creation. [20]
Unmasking AI and public education
Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines, published in 2023, combines memoir and explanations of algorithmic bias. The book traces her education, research and activism, placing human experiences at the centre of technological debate. [5]
In an excerpt published by MIT Sloan, she explains how data can reflect historical inequality and power structures. [4]
AJL provides reading and Coded Bias screening guides alongside its Drag vs AI workshop. Participants alter their facial presentation to explore the limitations of systems that attempt to infer human characteristics from images, making technical questions accessible through direct participation. [22]
Research into airport facial recognition
In the 2025 report Comply to Fly?, Buolamwini, Sushma Raman and Andrea Dean gathered travellers’ experiences through Freedom Flyers, launched in 2023. They examined information, consent and treatment when refusing facial scans at US airport checkpoints. This is participatory testimonial evidence, not a statistically representative sample of all travellers. [21]
Awards and recognition
In 2017 she won a Search for Hidden Figures grand prize, supporting women in science and technology. [8]
MIT Technology Review included her among its 2018 Innovators Under 35 in the visionaries category, recognising research into facial-analysis bias and work to promote technological accountability. [24]
In 2024 she received the NAACP–Archewell Foundation Digital Civil Rights Award. It recognised her advocacy for digital rights and equitable, accountable AI, connecting research, transparency and public participation. [23]
