03.04.24 - Julie Shah (Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics / Faculty Director, Industrial Performance Center / Director, Interactive Robotics Group, MIT)

Every team has top performers -- people who excel at working in a team to find the right solutions in complex, difficult situations. These top performers include nurses who run hospital floors, emergency response teams, air traffic controllers, and factory line supervisors. While they may outperform the most sophisticated optimization and scheduling algorithms, they cannot often tell us how they do it. Similarly, even when a machine can do the job better than most of us, it can’t explain how. The result is often an either/or choice between human and machine - resulting in what we call zero-sum automation. In this talk Dr. Julie Shah presents research case studies from industry and also shares the MIT Interactive Robotics Group's latest research effectively blending the unique decision-making strengths of humans and intelligent machines.

The Good Systems Speaker Series brings together diverse perspectives on Ethical AI from across the academic, industry, nonprofit, and public service sectors. Thought leaders discuss topics related to Good Systems’ core research areas, which include AI and racial justice, surveillance, disinformation, smart cities, human-robot interactions, and smart tools and the future of work.