The Spring of Sight: An Inflection Point for Computer Vision and Society

You've never been a porn actor. Why might there still be porn featuring you online?

What could possibly go wrong as we give more computing devices a sense of sight? Why are Al-generated works suddenly winning visual art competitions? Can we use facial recognition to catch criminals—without penning ourselves into a surveillance state? How can nematode brains help us make algorithms less racist? How can we reduce our radiation exposure at the hospital without sacrificing diagnostic accuracy, and when do I get my own Al-powered soccer coach?

In The Spring of Sight, Robert Boscacci draws from his double background in digital film production and machine learning to explore questions like these with industry experts. In the burgeoning field of computer vision, researchers and entrepreneurs build systems to extract meaning from digital images in unprecedented new ways, and even generate convincing new synthetic images. As advancements in the field carry in a tidal wave of promising use cases, it becomes increasingly clear that we'll have to implement nuanced policies to contend with their double-edged nature.