Videography by Juan Merlos, student, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Artificial intelligence (AI) can "see" the world very differently than humans can. The recent boom in AI technology is letting people use their cameras in new ways. One example is a research camp in South Africa that is interested in using AI for wildlife monitoring on their reserves. It is important for humans to understand how cameras with AI truly see animals before we can trust using them. To demonstrate this, we start with a video of a flying owl. By giving it to an AI algorithm, we overlay the regions that the AI understand as important for recognizing the owl in the video. While humans may pay attention to details such as its face and wings, AI may be watching other parts more closely. This challenges our ideas of perception and can greatly impact how we use AI in the real world.