The conference, which prides itself as the leading annual event in computer vision, took place last week, featuring a variety of workshops and short courses.
As reported by The Post Millennial, the controversy was sparked when Yitzhak Ben-Shabat, an attendee, noticed a slide during the Workshop on Responsible Data. The slide, titled “How has CPR research contributed to genocide in Palestine,” implicated Israeli and international corporations in alleged acts of genocide.
Ben-Shabat took to social media to express his dismay, stating, “I was deeply offended by a slide in a recent talk at #CVPR2024 that falsely accused my country of genocide. Such baseless political statements have no place in our scientific community. Let’s keep our focus on advancing science and leave politics at the door. @CVPR.”
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The contentious slide named several companies, including Amazon, Lockheed Martin, Northup Grumman, and General Motors, as participants in the so-called "genocide." This comes at a time when an Amazon employee, Sasha Troufanov, is being held captive by Palestinian terrorists following his abduction on October 7. Local activists have previously criticized the tech behemoth for its subsidiaries in Israel. The incident sparked a flurry of antisemitic comments online.
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The presenter's identity remains undisclosed. However, the workshop schedule listed Dr. William Agnew as the keynote speaker on "Mapping the Computer Vision Surveillance and Weapons Pipeline." Agnew, a former scholar at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, co-authored a paper titled "The Surveillance AI Pipeline." Despite the controversy, the event organizers have yet to respond to requests for comment.
