// HACKER NEWS — CYBERSECURITY
How we learned to stop worrying and love campus surveillance
If you weren’t on campus this summer, then something you didn’t see – perhaps by design – was the installation of hundreds of small eyeball-shaped surveillance cameras. Building 1 alone now has 6-7 cameras per floor and The Tech has reported on the locations of more than 500 others.[1] Cameras point towards faculty members’ offices and bathroom entrances. Some are so close to faculty offices that their microphones could reasonably be expected to pick up and record what is said in those rooms.[2] It turns out that MIT is exploring adding AI capabilities provided by Ambient.ai. This could make searching for any particular person a snap. You could just type in: “Show me all footage of the curly-haired chemistry colleague going to the bathroom.” In the May 2026 Institute Faculty Meeting, the MIT administration acknowledged that they have already tested AI capacities on our campus without our knowledge or consent.
Some of our colleagues don’t like these new surveillance cameras. They say they are intrusive. They say they don’t want their movements, conversations, and bathroom rhythms monitored. They say that campus culture has become increasingly repressive, stifling speech and chilling protest. They say that the mere possibility of AI tracking sets into motion the Panopticon effect, whereby constant yet unverifiable surveillance leads us to anxiously alter our own behavior because someone could be tracking us at any moment. They say that more surveillance doesn’t equal more safety. They say that governments with a penchant for authoritarianism could enlist the information for broad-based repression. They say that facial detection and recognition systems have well-documented gender and racial biases. They say that it’s a waste of money.
For this reason, we are writing to let the community know about our new arts initiative: The Initiative to Beautify the AI-capable Surveillance Benevolently Installed by our Administrator Overseers and the MIT Corporation In Collaboration with Big Brother Tech Companies. For a handy acronym, you can refer to our project as the IBAISBIAOMITCORPICBBTC initiative.
The goal of the IBAISBIAOMITCORPICBBTC initiative is to beautify every single AI-capable camera on our campus as an indicator of our support and love for the campus surveillance now bestowed upon us from up high. To beautify the cameras, we are sticking luxurious gems of many colors on each and every camera. You can see a beautified AI-capable surveillance camera in the photo below. The gems are removable in case someone doesn’t like them, but we frankly cannot imagine who might dispute the aesthetic appeal of bedazzled surveillance cameras. The IBAISBIAOMITCORPICBBTC initiative started in August 2026 and will continue for as long as there are naked, AI-capable surveillance cameras waiting for bedazzlement.
An AI-capable surveillance camera in Building 10, post-bedazzling. Photo: Claudia Tomateo
Each gem that we place on an AI-capable surveillance camera is an indicator of our admiring appreciation for Big Brothertechnology. At a time of austerity and belt-tightening, the MIT administration loves us enough to spend millions of dollars to watch over us as closely as if we were maximum security prison inmates, or bugs under microscopes. For that reason, we, the co-authors, are paying for the luxurious gemstones out of our own pockets. No need to thank us! We do it because we love the Institute and we know that these are hard times.
The choices the MIT administration has made during these trying circumstances are so inspiring. They align perfectly with our core values. For example, deep funding cuts to the MIT Libraries have set into motion a plan to cancel our subscriptions to 700+ academic journals integral to our research and teaching.[3] But who needs journals when you have Grok and Instagram! The tiresomely old-school cost of supporting scholarship and pedagogy is so dull compared to the exciting opportunity of an Ambient.ai contract