How we learned to stop worrying and love campus surveillance

MIT has installed over 500 surveillance cameras across campus, including in Building 1 with 6-7 cameras per floor, with some positioned near faculty offices and bathrooms in ways that could capture conversations and sensitive activities. The institution is exploring AI capabilities from Ambient.ai that would enable searches for specific individuals across footage, raising significant privacy concerns among faculty members. The administration acknowledged testing these AI surveillance capacities at a May 2026 faculty meeting.