The What Is Internet? book club is for people who want to talk about how we consume media in general and the way the internet is shaping society right now.

To most of us, it seems like recent developments in artificial intelligence emerged out of nowhere to pose unprecedented threats to humankind. But to Dr. Joy Buolamwini, who has been at the forefront of AI research, this moment has been a long time in the making.

After tinkering with robotics as a high school student and developing mobile apps in Zambia as a Fulbright fellow, Buolamwini followed her lifelong passion for computer science, engineering, and art to MIT in 2015, where she did groundbreaking research as a graduate student.

Unmasking AI is the remarkable story of how Buolamwini uncovered what she calls “the coded gaze”—the evidence of encoded racial and gender bias, discrimination and exclusion in tech products—and how she galvanized the movement to prevent AI harms by founding the Algorithmic Justice League. Dr. Buolamwini shows how racism, sexism, colorism, and ableism can overlap and render broad swaths of humanity “excoded” and vulnerable in a world rapidly adopting AI tools.

Encouraging experts and non-experts alike to join this fight, Buolamwini writes, “The rising frontier for civil rights will require algorithmic justice. AI should be for the people and by the people, not just the privileged few.”