Joy Buolamwini
Joy Buolamwini is a computer scientist, author and founder and president of the Algorithmic Justice League. She studied at Georgia Tech, Oxford and MIT. At MIT, a project that struggled to detect her dark-skinned face led her to investigate commercial facial analysis. She and Timnit Gebru published Gender Shades in 2018, showing uneven performance in gender classification across groups. Later work with Inioluwa Deborah Raji and other colleagues examined facial auditing and its ethical limits. Buolamwini also uses poetry, public testimony and her book Unmasking AI to explain the human consequences of automated decisions. Her work links system testing with questions about civil rights, consent and public accountability.
- Now at
- Algorithmic Justice League
- Works
- 14
- Citations
- 4,616
- h-index
- 9
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.
Timeline
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University training
Studying computing and learning
Studied computer science at Georgia Tech, then learning technology at Oxford and research at MIT.
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2016
A research question becomes an organization
Founded the Algorithmic Justice League in 2016.
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2018
Measuring uneven errors
Coauthored Gender Shades with Timnit Gebru, measuring disparities in commercial gender classification.
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2019–2020
Examining the audit itself
Worked with Inioluwa Deborah Raji on follow-up audits and later coauthored Saving Face.
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2023–2024
Explaining the human consequences
Published Unmasking AI in 2023 and gave written civil rights testimony in 2024.
Sources and credits
Photo: Niccolò Caranti. License: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: commons.wikimedia.org. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.
