Teaching Machines to See: The Wild History of Computer Vision

From a wildly ambitious 1966 MIT summer project to the AI-powered cameras tracking every play in modern sports, we trace the entire history of computer vision. What started as undergrads trying to 'solve' vision in a few months has become one of the most transformative technologies in the world — and the journey is full of surprises. 00:00:00 - Introduction and what computer vision actually is 00:01:15 - The 1966 MIT summer project that started it all 00:03:00 - The Rule-Writing Era (1960s-1980s): wooden blocks and handcrafted rules 00:04:30 - David Marr's theoretical framework and the primal sketch 00:06:00 - The Statistical Era: shifting from rules to learning from data 00:08:00 - Convolutional neural networks and the deep learning revolution 00:10:00 - ImageNet and the 2012 breakthrough that changed everything 00:12:00 - Computer vision in sports: tracking players, balls, and strategy 00:14:00 - Hawk-Eye, VAR, and real-time officiating technology 00:15:30 - Where computer vision is headed next 00:16:30 - Wrap-up and final thoughts This podcast episode was fully generated by AI — research, script, voices, and production. Built with Claude, Piper TTS, and automated pipeline tooling.