A preprint study covering 20,000 computer vision papers and patents over three decades shows “The Surveillance AI Pipeline,” and why the field needs more interdisciplinary studies.

The vast majority of computer vision research leads to technology that surveils human beings, a new preprint study that analyzed more than 20,000 computer vision papers and 11,000 patents spanning three decades has found. Crucially, the study found that computer vision papers often refer to human beings as “objects,” a convention that both obfuscates how common surveillance of humans is in the field, and objectifies humans by definition.