‘60 Minutes’ just erased the work of three Black women in tech
The ‘60 Minutes’ team consulted extensively with Coded Bias’ Joy Buolamwini, then they excluded her groundbreaking work.
This week three women in tech were silenced, if this sounds like its nothing new well that’s because unfortunately in STEM this happens a lot. Case study: Lise Meitner discovered how to split atoms alongside her lab partner Otto Hahn in the 1930’s, he took the credit and the Nobel price.
Admittedly when it happens in 2021, it does feels a bit worse. If the name Joy Buolamwini rings a bell it’s because you may have watched her groundbreaking documentary ‘Coded Bias, which made is debut on Netflix last month. It made for prime Lockdown viewing as we explored Media Lab researcher Buolamwini's discovery of racial bias in facial recognition algorithms. What does this mean exactly? It’s simple, the current face detection systems are programmed by mostly men and mostly white ones at that. Hence Joy’s face was only recognised by facial scanning systems when she wore a white mask.
This discovery led her down a rabbit hole of discovering what other biases exist across facial recognition software, and led her to starting the Algorithmic Justice League (AJL) alongside other notable female researchers. Think ‘Avengers’, but instead of fighting supervillains and bad guys these women are fighting the harms and biases of AI.
“At this point, Joy Buolamwini has to spend almost as much time actively fighting the erasure of her work and voice as she does just doing her research”
Of course AI isn’t inherently racist but if the humans programming the algorithms are prejudiced towards favouring white faces, we end up with machines and technology that adopt the same prejudices we do. In the documentary, Buolamwini showed algorithmic failures on the faces of iconic women like Oprah Winfrey, Serena Williams, and Michelle Obama. She also touched on about how difficult it is as a woman in tech, let alone a woman of colour to be taken seriously. Her 2016 TED talk on the subject has garnered over 1.4 million views.
So what happened with ‘60 Minutes’?
On the evening of Sunday May 16th 2021, ‘60 Minutes’ aired an episode hosted by Anderson Cooper on law enforcement use of facial recognition, and it included the award-winning work of the AJL.
BREAKING: Last night during @60Minutes’ episode on facial recognition, the Black women who co-authored pioneering research on #AlgorithmicBias were completely erased.
— Algorithmic Justice League (@AJLUnited) May 17, 2021
Read what happened below then take action by joining our fight to be heard ➡️ https://t.co/LxGLZaA9el https://t.co/gXZ7BQEXvY
In the lead up to the episode, producers of ‘60 Minutes’ actually met with Buolamwini, not only did she recommended research to include and subjects to interview, with an emphasis on the story of Robert Williams, a Black man who was falsely arrested due to facial recognition misidentification - she also built a custom demo of how facial recognition technologies analyse faces for host Anderson Cooper.
@60Minutes producers spoke to me for many hours. I even spent additional time building a custom demo for @andersoncooper and made recommendations on research to include and subjects to interview with emphasis on the stories of the #excoded who have been falsely arrested. 1/n https://t.co/NuKHg5FnpA
— Joy Buolamwini (@jovialjoy) May 17, 2021
Interestingly ‘60 Minutes’ decided not to feature Joy’s research at all. Instead of citing her work the programme solely featured a study led by Patrick J. Grother, a you guessed it, male scientist who leads biometric standards and testing at NIST. Grother has carefully cited Buolamwini’s MIT master’s thesis and fellow AJL founder Deborah Raji’s research as the "motivation," for his work.
The irony is almost too much to bear, while covering how facial recognition software often leaves out Black, Asian, and female faces, ‘60 Minutes’ failed to credit and effectively erased the female scientists whose original analysis demonstrated bias in facial analysis technology in the first place.
AI ethics researcher Dr. Timnit Gebru explained, "It’s so strange to see ‘60 Minutes’ completely erase our work. I was watching the episode and wondering how they didn't at least feature Joy’s research."
Deborah Raji, Joy Buolamwini and Dr. Timnit Gebru
It goes without saying that those reporting on algorithmic bias and discrimination need to prioritise the perspective of the women doing the research, as women are already woefuly marginalised voices in tech. In response Buolamwini has said, “What happened on “60 Minutes” on Sunday night isn’t about which researcher put out what research first. It’s about how Black female voices in science and technology are consistently erased. This isn’t new. Black women in America are held to a far higher standard than their colleagues, and when it comes down to these key moments where their work should be centered, it’s erased.”
The AJL has since started a petition asking that 60 Minutes creating a segment that focuses on the Black women leading the research and the work to expose algorithmic harms, by the end of 2021. Not all superheroes wear capes, but some are required to wear white masks.