What AI Can Teach Us About DEI
AI as Our Collective Selfie. DEI as Our Guiding Compass.
Before I became a naturalized U.S. citizen a few years ago, I was routinely flagged at the airport whenever I returned from overseas. The process was simple in theory: a facial recognition machine scanned my face and printed a slip with either a checkmark for “cleared” or a big X for further inspection. Every single time, I got the X. I’d then be escorted to a secondary screening area, often alongside others who, like me, had darker skin. Sometimes, I’d be held there for over an hour or two.
Later, when I started working in the AI industry, I realized what was likely happening behind the scenes: these facial recognition systems were trained on data that associated brown and black faces with higher risk—so people like me were consistently flagged. At its core, the dataset wasn’t diverse enough; it perpetuated harmful stereotypes by effectively “teaching” the AI to see darker skin as suspicious. As a result, the technology ended up racially profiling travelers at airpor…
