Artificial Vision at Work: The Digital Transformation of Work as a Transformation of the Practice and Organisation of Seeing

工作世界的数字化转型与人类感官设备的社会技术使用齐头并进。这一点首先适用于观看。在数字化过程中，在工作背景下观看被认为是一种可以被正式确定并脱离具体内容的活动，从而成为进一步实现自动化的努力的对象。在工作场所使用相应的人工视觉技术所造成的人机关系的动态，在历史上和当今都发挥着核心作用。最近，以人工神经网络的使用为特征的自动化视觉的努力已经成为一种特征。为了理解工作场所视觉数字化转型的实际、认知和组织后果，该项目将工作社会学的方法与科学理论和技术史的方法结合起来。我们研究视觉的神经模型是如何出现和转化的，它们如何渗透到具体的工作领域，并导致这种工作的特定转变。因此，该项目将工作数字化现象理解为基于技术使用和发展的历史动态的一个复杂的社会技术过程。为此，有必要追溯人工视觉技术的社会生产和使用，追溯到视觉的基本概念模型及其技术实施方式。通过这种方式，该项目能够从社会学和历史学的角度对工作场所人工视觉的“渗透”、“提供”和“延续”的过程进行分析。该项目调查与人类和机器视觉相关的实践、模型和研发路线。“实践”领域考察了人工视觉在工作行动(微观层面)、工作组织(中观层面)以及职业和专业(宏观层面)层面上的嵌入形式和后果。在医学和工业视觉检查的两个定性案例研究中，将研究使用人工视觉(替代与互补)的具体方法。案例研究的重点放在“研究与开发”领域，并在科技史的背景下进行审查。对模型产生条件的历史调查将详细说明它们的认识和技术含义，并将作为研发的中心重点，嵌入和准备为领域“模型”计划的科学-理论分析。这一领域涉及的模式不仅与历史相关，而且与在实践中调查的当代工作环境中数字化转型的嵌入形式和后果直接相关。

The digital transformation of the world of work goes hand in hand with a socio-technical use of the human sensory apparatus. This applies above all to seeing. In the course of digitalisation, seeing in the context of work is recognised as an activity that could be formalised and detached from concrete content, thus becoming the object of efforts to further automation. The dynamics in the human-machine relationship caused by the use of the corresponding technologies of artificial vision in the workplace play a central role both historically and in the present day. More recently, efforts to automate seeing have been characterised by the use of Artificial Neural Networks. In order to understand the practical, epistemic and organisational consequences of the digital transformation of seeing in the workplace, the project combines approaches from the sociology of work with those from the theory of science and the history of technology. We investigate how the neural models of seeing emerge and are transformed, how they permeate concrete areas of work and lead to a specific transformation of such work. The project thus understands the phenomenon of the digitalisation of work as a complex socio-technical process that is based on historical dynamics of both the use and development of technology. To this end, it is necessary to trace the social production and use of technologies of artificial vision back to the underlying conceptual models of seeing and the way they are technologically implemented. In this way, the project enables both sociological and historical analysis of the processes of ‘permeating’, ‘making available’ and ‘perpetuating’ in respect to artificial vision in the work place. The project investigates practices, models, and lines of research and development related to human and machine vision. The field "Practices" examines the forms of embedding and consequences of artificial vision on the levels of work action (micro level), work organisation (meso level), and occupations and professions (macro level). In two qualitative case studies in medicine and industrial visual inspection, concrete ways of using artificial vision (substitutive vs. complementary) will be examined. The focal points of the case studies are taken up in the field of "Research & Development" and examined in the context of the history of science and technology. The historical investigation of the conditions under which the models emerged will elaborate their epistemic and technical implications and, as a central focus of R&D, will embed and prepare the scientific-theoretical analysis planned for the field "Models". The models addressed in this field are not only historically relevant but are directly related to the forms of embedding and consequences of the digital transformation on contemporary work settings investigated in Practices.