Robots Won't Replace Us – They'll Empower Us

Daniela Rus and Gregory Mone share 5 key insights from The Heart and the Chip: Our Bright Future with Robots.

Are you ready to welcome our robot overlords? The rise of AI and automation have made many worry that the future of humans looks bleak. But here to make the optimistic case is Daniela Rus, co-author with science writer

Gregory Mone

, of The Heart and the Chip: Our Bright Future with Robots. Daniela is a roboticist and computer scientist at MIT and you can read or listen to her big ideas below.

The 5 Key Insights:

1. Contrary to popular movies, robots and people are allies, not adversaries.

2. Robots are not all-powerful; there are fundamental limitations to intelligent machines defined by their bodies and brains.

3. We are making significant strides toward a robot-enhanced future—the future is happening now.

4. There are many possible futures with AI and intelligent machines.

5. We must harness intelligent machines to address humanity's grand challenges.

1. Contrary to popular movies, robots and people are allies, not adversaries.

Robots are tools. They aren’t inherently good or bad. Neither is a hammer. Think of this new generation of extraordinary machines as very advanced hammers; it is what we choose to do with these tools that defines their impact and value. We can choose to do incredible things. We can work alongside robots to engineer better medicines, make transportation safer and more efficient, assign them to tasks that are too dangerous or difficult for humans alone, translate conversations instantly into other languages, and even give ourselves superpowers like my favorite superhero, Iron Man.

When people and machines work together, we meld cold computation and pattern recognition with the warmth of human insight and the depth of human knowledge. We merge the heart and the chip, and allow ourselves to achieve so much more than what people or robots alone can do.