Bioengineering Seminar Series - Damion Shelton

Damion Shelton, Associate Vice President and Executive Director of the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University, will present "What do we want from our machines?" Abstract The purpose of this talk is twofold. First, general purpose robots, including humanoids - since they look like us, occupy our spaces, and are able to perform tasks in a manner similar to us - have the ability, at least in theory, to completely replace the majority of human-performed tasks. What are the ethical, legal, and social implications of this sort of technology? It’s tempting to think that humanity has always faced these sorts of labor pressures, but is that actually true? Secondly, humans are not passive observers of our technical decisions and deployments. Most of us welcome some level of automation in our lives (we’re not washing our clothes in boiling cauldrons these days), but also push back against non-human content in the form of “AI slop” on YouTube. We have the opportunity to ask a more general question: “What do we want from our machines?”. The hard part is answering it, but this is something that it won’t be possible to be on the sidelines for. While I’ll provide my own answer as part of this presentation, the main takeaway will be this: form your own opinion, and hold politicians, industry, and yourselves accountable.