Scientists from UCLA are attempting to address issues of privacy by developing a new artificial intelligence (AI) camera that only records specific targets and actively erases everything else.
By day, Melanie Barboni is an assistant researcher at UCLA who studies volcanoes. But one of her nicknames is "The Hummingbird Whisperer," and that's because she's an avid photographer who has become friends with a colony of over 200 hummingbirds.
Many a photographer knows from experience that getting a credit line for his or her work may often be the only compensation available. That was my situation when I was employed as a student and photographer at UCLA back -- make that WAAAYY back -- in 1966-68. My job consisted of photographing just about anything on campus – student government, rallies, “love-ins” and, this being UCLA, football and basketball games.
The fine for rushing the field at the College World Series final is $1,500, but who can put a price on becoming an overnight viral Vine sensation? Well, whatever price Kayleigh, Emily, and Torrie Hill assigned to viral fame, it was more than $1,500, because they rushed the field and captured some expensive selfie footage in the process.
Pictures do a lot for humanity. They compress 1000 words into one simple photo, capture special moments and freeze them in time, put us back in touch with our history and, more recently, when 36.7-million of them are taken every second by one of the world's fastest cameras, pictures can also help cure cancer by catching it early. That last part is due to the brilliant minds in a lab at UCLA who have created what they are calling "The World's Fastest Camera."