Adam Harvey
Adam Harvey (US/DE) is a technologist working on computer vision, privacy, and surveillance. A graduate of New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, he is the creator of the VFRAME computer vision toolkit for human rights investigators, the Exposing.ai dataset forensics project, and CV Dazzle, the first documented camouflage technique to defeat a computer vision algorithm.
Full Bio
Adam Harvey (US/DE) is a technologist working at the intersection of computer vision, privacy, and surveillance. For over a decade his research has anticipated questions the field only later learned to ask: where training data comes from, what automated vision systems can and cannot see, and who bears the cost of getting that wrong. He is currently Chief Technologist at Tech 4 Tracing, an NGO applying computer vision to the humanitarian detection of unexploded ordnance.
His master's thesis at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program produced CV Dazzle in 2010 — the first documented camouflage technique to successfully defeat a computer vision algorithm, and now a reference point for an entire field of adversarial design. In 2012-2013 he introduced a new and functional form of thermal camouflage against military drones that is now widely used in military contexts. In 2017 he founded VFRAME, a computer vision toolkit built for human rights investigators working on open-source investigations, which received an Award of Distinction from Ars Electronica, a nomination for the EU STARTS Prize, and a nomination for a Beazley Design of the Year Award. Its methods have been presented at the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining and published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction. With Exposing.ai in 2018-2019 he traced the origins and endpoints of the photographs used to train commercial face recognition and surveillance systems, geomapping the information supply chains, and providing a search engine into millions of face photos, a project that helped break new ground for dataset forensics research.
Harvey holds a master's degree from New York University (2010) and a B.A. with honors from Pennsylvania State University (2001). He has been a research fellow in the Künstliche Intelligenz und Medienphilosophie program at Karlsruhe HfG, a digital fellow at the Weizenbaum Institut in Berlin, a Future Fellow in Eyebeam's Rapid Response for a Better Digital Future, and a research fellow at Copenhagen Business School, and has taught as an adjunct professor at New York University. As a freelance technologist he has built systems for museums and artists, including a custom infrared face recognition and retrieval system for Ai Weiwei's Hansel & Gretel at the Park Avenue Armory in 2017.
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