While some people eagerly develop and use AI technologies, others are refusing to use these tools, let alone contribute to their development.
What do we gain from using AI technologies? How do technologies earn our trust? When do they break it? Can we intentionally prioritize human capabilities and human-created news, art, products, and more while adopting AI? Or does AI adoption necessarily lead to the attenuation of human intelligence? To what extent are those of us who develop or even just tolerate AI tools complicit in allowing the world to become intolerably AI-infested for others who have no wish to encounter AI technologies? Or are we all caught up in an inevitable march of AI “progress”?
Luis Sentis is a Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin. He is also a General Dynamics Endowed Faculty Fellow, and a member of UT Austin's Good Systems. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He was a La Caixa Foundation Fellow while at Stanford. He holds a B.S. degree in Telecommunications and Electronics Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. Before Stanford, he worked in Silicon Valley as a Control Systems Engineer for clean room automation.
In Austin, he leads the Human Centered Robotics Laboratory, a laboratory focusing on control, task and motion planning, human factors, and experimentation with humanoid robots, mobile manipulation robots, exoskeletons and autonomous systems. He is also a founding member of the UT Robotics Portfolio Program and the UT Ethics of AI Portfolio Program. He was the UT Austin's Lead for DARPA's Robotics Challenge with NASA Johnson Space Center where he helped to design and test the Valkyrie humanoid robot. His research has been funded by ONR, NASA, NSF, ARL, AFC, DARPA and private companies.
He has been awarded the NASA Elite Team Award for his contributions to NASA’s Johnson Space Center Software Robotics and Simulation Division. He is also a founding member and innovation advisor for Apptronik Systems, a company focusing on human-centered robotic products.