A recent study highlights a dramatic increase in academic papers on computer vision that contribute to surveillance technology, growing more than fivefold from the 1990s to the 2010s. Researchers from Stanford and Trinity College Dublin analyzed over 19,000 research papers and 23,000 patents, revealing that 90% of these academic papers and 86% of patents involved human data. The report critiques the ambiguous language used within the research, which often refers to humans as 'objects,' normalizing the targeting of individuals by surveillance technology and highlighting the entwined relationship between computer vision research and surveillance applications.
Through an analysis of computer-vision research papers and citing patents, we found that most of these documents enable the targeting of human bodies and body parts.
The normalization of targeting humans permeates the field. This normalization is especially striking given patterns of obfuscation.
Our results indicate the extensive ties between computer-vision research and surveillance.
These technologies are created in a political and economic landscape in which the interests of massive corporations and military and policing institutions have huge influence over AI systems.
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