[0-_-0]

>it is quite clear who will benefit: those in power

I think it's more likely that you want to detect a person so you don't hit them with a car than trying to hit them with a drone missile. Detecting cancer with CV, and other improvements to diagnostics also save lives. If you could be working on these technologies and stop, your decision could cost lives.

[atoav]

If you are working on technology that detects cancer that is true. If you are working on technology that detects people, this is a harder question.

[0-_-0]

The same neural network can be trained for both problems. Advances in medical image neural networks translate to advances in people detecting neural networks.

[joshuamorton]

Generally speaking this isn't super true, the objects are different enough that the same networks aren't best at both.

[woko]

Of course, they are not directly used without changing the training data, etc. However, if we look at the big picture to make a general statement, then the advances brought by Computer Vision on natural images often help push research on medical images forward, albeit with a year (or two) of delay. One such example is U-Net (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-Net).