The “Algorithmic Justice League”, founded by Joy Buolamwini, an AI researcher at MIT, has launched a campaign that aims to prevent facial analysis technology from leading to collateral damage.”Computer vision uses machine-learning techniques to do facial analysis,” says Buolamwini, named to the recent Bloomberg 50 list for her 2018 accomplishments. “You create a training set with examples of faces. However, if the training sets aren't diverse, any face that deviates too much from the established norm will be harder to detect, identify, or classify for attributes like age. With the errors, biases and lack of oversight, companies should have more accountability.”Accountability means that artificial intelligence (AI) vendors and clients commit to not allow the technology to be used for lethal targeting or other abuse, and continually monitor AI for racial, gender, and other harmful bias. In her New York Times op-ed on the dangers of facial analysis technology and during Federal Trade Commission hearings on AI, Buolamwini called for federal regulations.Now, she is urging public and private organizations including NEC, IBM, Microsoft, Google, Facebook Amazon, Megvii, and Axon to sign the Safe Face Pledge. Three producers of facial analysis software, Robbie.AI, Yoti and Simprints, already have confirmed that they will sign the Safe Face Pledge. “Audits of facial analysis systems show the technology is better at reading male faces than female faces, and more accurately classifies lighter faces than darker faces,” says Buolamwini. “My research at MIT which audited IBM, Microsoft, and Megvii showed error rates as high as 35 percent for classifying dark skinned women.”In July, the ACLU tested Amazon's facial analysis software, Rekognition, using photos of every member of the House and Senate. The software incorrectly matched 28 members of Congress, identifying them as other people who have been arrested for a crime. The false matches included Republicans and Democrats of all ages, but were disproportionately people of color. In addition to members of Congress, Rekognition has even been shown to misclassify Oprah Winfrey.

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