Shaffer Family Foundation Endowed Science Lecture: Dr. Todd Hylton

An emerging technological revolution promises machines that are able to do what we do – smart robots, smart homes, smart cities, smart grids and smart cars. We are naturally concerned that these machines will create massive economic and social disruption and even that they may become smarter than we are. Today’s machines, however, have great difficulty fitting within and evolving with the complex, natural world that we inhabit. Today’s machines are not very smart because we don’t yet understand what “smart” is. Hence, and our primary concern today should not be “what will the machines decide to do” but instead “how will we decide to use them.” When we can build things that do what we do, we will understand how we do it; we will know how we so easily fit and evolve within an ever-changing, complex world; and we will know what “smart” really is. The real disruption, when it finally comes, is not that the robots will do things for us: it is that the robots will teach us who we are.