This Is What Machines See When They Look At Us

Images used to be made by people, for people. Today, there's an entirely new kind of image: pictures taken by machines, for other machines to use. This new genre–created by cameras mounted on traffic lights, in shopping malls, on advertisements, and on computers and smartphones–is teaching computers how to see. "You have a moment where for the first time in history most of the images in the world are made by machines for other machines, and humans aren't even in the loop," says the Berlin-based artist Trevor Paglen. "I think the automation of vision is a much bigger deal than the invention of perspective."