Best of Design Matters: Dr. Joy Buolamwini

**Debbie Millman** (0:01)
This episode of Design Matters originally appeared in July of 2025

**Joy Buolamwini** (0:05)
It wasn't as easy as saying, okay, let's make more inclusive datasets, and when we have more inclusive datasets, we'll have more accurate facial recognition, but accurate systems can be abused. And so the analysis had to be not just how well does the technology work, but what kind of technologies do we want in society in the first place?

**Debbie Millman** (0:32)
From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman.
On Design Matters, Debbie talks with some of the most creative people in the world about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they're thinking about and working on. On this episode, computer scientist and digital activist Joy Buolamwini talks about her career and about facial recognition technology in the airport.

**Joy Buolamwini** (0:57)
You actually have the right to opt out, but most people don't know, and it's not surprising because you go there and they say, step up to the camera.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:10)
Dr. Joy Buolamwini is a computer scientist and a poet of code who uses art and research to illuminate the social implications of artificial intelligence. She founded the Algorithmic Justice League to create a world of more equitable and accountable technology. Her MIT thesis methodology uncovered large racial and gender bias in the world's largest and most powerful technology companies. Dr. Joy's journey is depicted in the critically acclaimed documentary Coded Bias, of which she is now on a five-year anniversary world tour.
The documentary sheds light on threats artificial intelligence poses to civil rights and democracy, and she is also the author of the best-selling book Unmasking AI, My Mission to Protect What is Human in a World of Machines. Dr. Joy Buolamwini, welcome to this very special live episode of Design Matters at the WBUR Festival.

**Joy Buolamwini** (2:16)
Sometimes dreams come true and I'm living one right now, so I'm so happy to be here.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:21)
Thank you, thank you. Let's begin with Baby Joy.

**Joy Buolamwini** (2:27)
Baby Joy, okay.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:29)
You were born in Edmonton, Alberta, just as your father was finishing his PhD, and you've described yourself as a daughter of art and science. What do you remember most from that unique collision of your mother's paints and your father's pipettes?

**Joy Buolamwini** (2:48)
That's a great question. In the book, I say how my mother asked questions of colors, my dad asked questions of cells, and in that exploration, I started asking questions of computers. For me, I literally grew up with art and science as companions through my parents and in Oxford, Mississippi, that meant going to my dad's lab and feeding cancer cells, looking at squiggles on computers, learning later these were graphs and so forth, cytometry and that kind of thing. Then my mom, I just thought every weekend, you go to art galleries and pitch paintings. I didn't realize that's what really was going on, and so I grew up with those worlds and it felt very much like an invitation to be creative whether through scientific inquiry or artistic inquiry or for me, playtime.
I think that was a true gift that I see now in the way that I do my work as a poet of code.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:50)
You spent your early years in Ghana before moving to Oxford, Mississippi. What were the values that shaped you most in those formative years of in-betweenness?

**Joy Buolamwini** (4:01)
I think the first thing is my first language being Chi.
I have all kinds of accents I could switch often. But when I first came to the United States and I was in Oxford, Mississippi, they actually put me in speech therapy. They didn't realize English was my second. They should have asked more questions.
Maybe I really did need to be in there, but we can deconstruct that later. I recently returned back to Ghana last year after 30 years. I don't look that old, but it was three decades since I'd been there. It was the best homecoming I could have imagined. In what way? One of the things that I noticed is all of my relatives were looking at me, and I was looking at them, but none of us wanted to be rude or stare. We would look at each other through reflections and just catch an eye. It felt like I was time-traveling when I would see my aunts and uncles. I was like, oh, that's what my brother is going to look like in a few years, or oh, that thing I thought was just my dad. I see it in all of his siblings. So that kind of way. And then also connecting with my young cousins. I think they range from about age 8 to 26 So I'm on the older end of the cousins within a more immediate family. And so it felt like a very warm embrace, a long-awaited embrace.